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Introduction: Comic Book Coloring in Flash

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to color a comic/cartoon themed picture with Macromedia Flash. You won’t need a graphic tablet to do this, however, a tablet would be helpful/will speed up the whole process.

I’ll show you two ways of coloring. First of all, we’ll do a rather basic cel shading coloring, one would use in animations and a more complex vector coloring.
I assume that you have a basic understanding of the program itself and of its drawing tools.
If not…well…you better check these things out.

So, open up the program and import your sketch. I did mine directly in Flash, but here are some basic tips on how to prepare your pencil sketches:

1. I usually scan my images at 600dpi and double their size, if I want to have a massive print in the end. However, Flash only supports a maximum document size of 2800 x 2800 pixels, so you have to be careful with your final scan size. Most of the time, 300dpi will do the job just fine.
2. Once you got your scanned image, open it up in Photoshop or any other image editing software and adjust the levels under Image – Adjustments – Levels. Here’s the Levels window.
   
   
   
   On the very right you see the highlights tab (3). Adjusting this one will “erase” the lightest pencil strokes in your scan. On the very left is the shadows tab (1) with which you can darken the clean lines. The mid tone tab (2) in the middle will level out the difference between lighter and darker lines. If you got the preview box checked, you’ll see how your sketch changes.

When you’re satisfied with the outcome click OK and you’re finished. Save your image either as a png or a bitmap to make sure that you don’t lose too much of its quality 

Now, let’s get to work.

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