ComicBook Maker Color Page Test

3 panel graphic novel page featuring 2 coworkers.

Hi art friends!

I’m 5 images away from completing the first draft of The Takashima Extraction. One of the ideas I’m toying with is a callback to The Wizard of Oz movie with Judy Garland but in reverse: The opening and closing of the story is in color and the extraction is in black and white.

To track my completed images, I have a the slide deck where I drop the completed shots. I watch the deck after each session to keep myself going and see how the images tell a story without words. I was dropping the color version of the files because Comic Book Maker converts them to black and white. Otherwise, I’d have to add a Smart Filter or layer filter to convert the image to black and white. With over 100 images, I didn’t want to spend my limited creative time doing this for all the images.

One day, I was updating my deck with one of the extraction images and just for fun, I added a black and white filter and exported the B&W file for my deck. That’s when the idea struck to make the Extraction section black and white: Keaton’s phone call to the Fixer is the turning point in his story. He makes a conscious choice to do something he knows is wrong but he can’t help himself.

The only filter I’ve played with to date in ComicBook Maker is to remove the moire pattern because the pattern looked good in some images but horrible in others. But one of the filters is Black and White.

Today’s post shows the color section of the story: a conversation between Keaton and Camille. It’s as easy as turning off the Black and White filter.

After I finish my final 5 shots, I’ll start laying them out in the Black and White templates of Comic Book Maker. If I don’t like the way the color section looks when the book is assembled, I can just re-select the Black & White filter and I’m done. Easy peasy.