Throughout the weekend, Comic-Con hosts several panels dedicated to the craft of comics. Hi-Fi Academy presented the “How to Color Comic Art” panel with Brian Miller (Action Comics) and Kristy Miller (Femme Magnifique), who work on coloring comics, toys, board games, movie posters, and more.

They started at the beginning by showing black and white art and pointed out the merit of ensuring that size formatting is correct. From there, they showed how to go to flat coloring then color rendering, color holds, and special effects. “Don’t just make Superman look good once, but on every page, in every issue all year,” Brian Miller said.

Kristy talked about how it’s become easier for entry level careers to begin with more affordable tools while Brian talked about utilizing tools like Layers and Channels in Photo Shop. Brian showed how to go under the line art when coloring and Kristy explained the importance of understanding color theory, of warm and cool colors.

They showed how to use magic want to layer paint so you don’t color over other stuff and how to highlight values to add shading within a color. They shared that it’s a trick to repeat later, for instance hair color can be the same on each page. Brian showed attendees how to add light through shading versus painting on darker colors and Kristy emphasized paying attention to making color shade match across different colors in the same area of the body on a character.

As the process continued, they told people to consider reflective light that can look more dynamic, atmospheric perspective shows what is in front versus behind, and color choices can be interpreted by time of day and mood.