I'm working on a short graphic novel. I feel it will benefit greatly from color so I'm trying to do something with the dozen or so pages I've inked so far. Initially I was going for a simple, almost flat coloring style.
I'll post more pages and panels when I get a better idea of how I want this thing to look like in color, but for now, here's one issue I'm struggling with:



Here, the character is too far away for any complex coloring, but everything else needed more attention. I think I may have overdid the coloring on the sky (except the dark one, perhaps, but even there I could have just used one color instead of two). I never intended to do anything like that. the plan was to keep everything simple with no more than two (maybe sometimes three) different colors for any specific area, but I guess I forgot haha
Is it too much? Should I make the sky simpler, like the rest? Or maybe I should put more detail in everything else? Help me out here.

I'm a big fan of flat, easy-to-read color schemes, and I think this works really well. Do NOT add more detail - it'll wreck the atmosphere. And the sky looks great to me, in proper balance with the rest of the images. I don't think it's overdone at all: since it has no hard lines defining it, a more complex color set works quite well to balance it out against the rock and the character.

--M

I think that all of these look good, but they're also very simple. The hard/grainy/pixel transition between colors almost makes them feel like a classic videogame. So I don't think the flat colors on the character seem out of place at all.

I'm also of the opinion in general that character and background styles can exist in almost completely different realms, due to our familiarity of animation with cel-shaed characeters and fully-rendered painted backgrounds.

Oh I really love this. I also think it's just right. I suppose you could simplify the sky if you wanted, but I don't feel that's necessary, and I don't think you need more details, this is really pleasing.

Thanks, guys!
I think I'll make the sky just a bit simpler. See how that looks.

For what it's worth, I think the detail in the sky adds an emotional depth to the scene it might otherwise lack ... It's the feeling I get when I'm standing alone by the ocean: I'm small and almost insignificant next to the beauty of the world beyond ... but that might just be me. The character being colored flat demonstrates the emotional state of the character, the foreground being two shades lend to the complexity portrayed through the imagery as the eye is carried to (or from) the background / sky. I think it's beautiful ... Very telling.

If this is a style you're comfortable with and can continue it, please keep the detail. I like it.

That pretty much sums up how I felt about the images and colours (glad I read all the comments first!). They're really sophisticated and well done. I don't think you need to simplify any of them. Really nice.