Thanks, Jason, for providing me this kingdom.

Over the next couple weeks, I'll be putting together and writing as much as I can think of or find about the intricacies of comic book flatting.

I've got deadlines right now, so in the meantime anyone who's interested in seeing it happen first hand, or in asking questions while I'm at it, can join me on my LiveStream:

http://www.livestream.com/eagleflats

If you feel you're getting too many ads, you can use this page instead, which should have none, unless my adblocker's just tricking me into thinking there aren't any:

http://clockworkgate.com/streams.html

Sweet! Thanks, Eagle, for doing this! I'm looking forward to seeing what you produce here. I know lots of people who have been asking me for help in this area and I simply don't know what to tell them other than "hire a flatter".

I can only hope to add at least a little specificity to what you tell them. Perhaps in the vein of "Hire meeeeeeee!" Hahaha.

Not to derail the thread, but I watched you working for a bit today and was really curious what audio book you had playing. It sounded very interesting.

Ooohhh, that's what you were asking. I'm sorry I missed you. :/ I need a second monitor so I can stop missing everyone.

It's James Clavell's Tai Pan. Part of his epic Asian Saga. Really brilliant series.

Ya I spied on you while I chomped my lunch. It was a very cool watch.

I only wish the video were a bit larger or more zoomed in so I could see what was going on a little better. It mostly looked like you were using some kind of polygon tool to section off pieces of the artwork and then you filled them (with the keyboard shortcut for fill?). I don't remember seeing you use a color picker tool, but maybe I just missed that step in the process.

Were you using photoshop?

Photoshop CS5, yes.

I use the polygonal lasso to select areas, then fill with the bucket. If I were using "Fill" [Alt-Backspace] I'd have to worry about every border of every selection, which is a hassle and a waste of time. By using the bucket, I can make the selection loose and quick on the edges of areas that have already been filled in with colours other than the one I click the bucket on. Which is why I start by blocking out each panel with a particular shade of blue that is different from all the ones around it. I have four shades of blue for this purpose, but rarely have to use all four [a good page layout doesn't have a ton of overlapping or crowded panels]. I use blue so I don't have to worry about selecting sky areas. For interior areas, I can block out a panel in whatever background colour I feel is close to what the colourist will probably want to work with for most of it.

I switch tools mostly with shortcuts I have programmed into my Nostromo n52te, so you won't see me reaching for tools on the tool bar much. I usually forget I have the wand as a key, though.

The video seems so small because the resolution of my monitor is high. It's a 23" 16:9 Samsung with denser pixels than is usual for the size.

I pick colours by having either the pencil or bucket selected and holding Alt. CS5 will pop up a ring that shows which colour you're grabbing compared to the previous colour you had picked.

I drag myself around the page by holding Spacebar, which gives me the hand tool.

I change my pencil brush size by using [ and ].

I zoom in and out rapidly with Ctrl-= and Ctrl--.

I can scroll through the history by rolling the n52te's wheel, instead of having just an "Undo" button.

Even though I mostly use the bucket to fill, I still have one of the buttons on the side of my tablet pen for Alt-Backspace for those times when it's useful.

I have my monitor on an Ergotron arm that lets me have it hovering close to me, off my desk, so I can clearly see the smallest details without having to hunch forward and screw up my back [which is an incredibly common problem].

Thanks for watching.

For Photoshop users, these plugins have been a real godsend: Multifill and Flatten. They're free, though the Pro version, which has more controls and runs faster, is available for a fee. I recently upgraded to Adobe CS5 and a Mac and haven't tried them with that yet, but I think they'll probably work and they were great with CS3. Basically they let you take a black and white drawing, fill all the open spaces with color and then run the color to the midline of the ink lines, so that, when you overlay the inkwork on top, you have a pre-flatted image. All you have to do then is flood-fill the requisite areas, which saves a ton of time.

--M

Yes, that's what I was using for Project Waldo, Locke & Key and various others.

I'll be covering them at some length soonishly.

I kept hearing about these plug-ins, so I finally installed them this morning, and yeah. Certainly a time-saver. Not so perfect with my line art, since I'm not one for clean, touching lines, but so far it's better than doing it by hand!

Did you bitmap your lines before running them?

I still need to give you a proper video for my 'weirdo' flatting method, Jason.

@Eagle-
Yeah, no worries there. The issue is that I ink very loosely and it results in a lot of spots to fill-- or I don't finish the line between two objects so the color leaks through. Not a huge deal though.

In Multifill, do you use the "Join Areas" option? I have mine set at 20 pixels and "Height Width". It helps a bit when there's lots and lots of tiny little areas, but as often as not they'll get joined to the wrong surrounding area.

Or "Flag Areas", which turns all areas smaller than whatever dimensions you set to whatever colour you set. I really don't care for it.

Sorry, guys. I'm in the middle of moving. Will get back to this.

Ah... I went to spy on you flatting today and the feed was downsies. I suppose that would do it. Happy moves!

The move's retarded, but thanks for the sentiment. I'll be back to work tomorrow.

I never got the Multifill/flat plugin, it just couldn`t get it to work properly.

So I flat manually again. I have found a process to speed it up though, I use some techniques mentioned in this tutorial video:

She uses the select tools though, and when I`m working fast my photoshop and tablet quickly think I`m done and close the selection, even when I`m not done yet. So I use the pen tool instead of the selection tool and convert the shape to a selection afterwards (I made a ps action for it to quicken this). It gives me far more control and I can undo between the points too so when I`m selecting complicated shapes I don`t have to be scared the selection closes which would make me have to start over again.

Henrike, can you not just hold down the shift key to continue making your selection even after closing it?
You should try playing around with quick masks too. Very useful in cleaning up selections.

I know how to add to selections, but sometimes the selection closes so that it goes over things I don`t need to select and I`m doing longer about cleaning up the selections than I do when I`d use the pen tool, I like the pen tool a lot for making selections.