We have a sketch that we like for final presentation purposes, the rough one anyway. What we now have to do is turn that into a work of art.
You will need some form of pen or ink to create the final outline of your character to scan. I use either an artline pen (relativelly thin one that doesn't tend to bleed a lot for that fine detail, or the archaic device that you use with an ink well. It may make it a little rougher, but for some reason I find the end result can actually be better. But the end result is, of course, up to you.
Put your page on another page or card so as to not leak through, I've had a few cleaning issues because I failed to note how thin the paper is...and how thick the ink can be.
Basically all you do is ink the outline of your character, spend time on it, make it clean as possible (or hashed depending on your style once again, and really get into the characters art. Your whole characters' end result starts from here, so you might as well get it right now, saves you editing, cleaning and fixing the thing up heaps later on.
Inking is something that needs practice, just like everything else. I find a varied line is good for character, it adds vibrancy. Although I'm always paranoid about overdoing it. I recommend overdoing it sometimes on a test character, sometimes if you go overboard on something you get even more impressive results.You may have seen other works that you find suit your purposes better. Once again research styles and material. Emulate, and build on that information.
Once you have inked your character to suit your purposes you can erase the former sketch so you can scan your work, if you worked lightly initially you will find there is less to clean up. Sometimes this is inevitable though and it's just a case of cleaning it up on the computer.
Scan your image at a reasonable size, 600dpi is a good start on grayscale settings. We do it so high so we can create the piece large, and then scale down at the end. You then have the ability to have it at a reasonable resolution no matter what application later on if need be. You can never scale it up either (without losing quality anyway) so it's wise to be safe from the start. It will also allow you to work on extremely high detail that will be super cool extremely high detail when scaled down.
Once your character is in (for my character I will be using photoshop 7, although you can use whatever image manipulation tool you want) you can clean up the image to your satisfaction. The main tools I use here are erase, smudge and even the clone tool if I need to keep some texture you have created.
You may need to play with the levels to bring out the quality of greys better. Use Image | Mode | Levels in order to do so and make your main line work how you see fit to continue on with colour. Using the White level and Black level is also a good way to do it as it. They tell the image where the 'White' is and reflects that change. Simply select the white level and click on the whitest part of the image, or vice versa for the black. Play around until you get a good result. If you use this method I recommend keeping it to greys (if you were using this in another coloured image for example) especially with midtone as you get some rather odd effects otherwise).
Convert the mode of the image from Greyscale to RGB.This can be found in Image | Mode
Select the linework layer and name it 'Artwork' (or whatever befits your mood at the time) and set that layers properties from 'Normal' to 'Multiply'. What this does is makes the black solid and white see through with everything in between. Very handy to colour between the lines, as the between now falls behind. Also, Lock the layer so that you cannot edit it. This is very important as it gets very frustrating when you find you have painted onto the wrong layer later on.
Make a new layer BELOW that initial layer, and this is to be your main colour layer (it is always possible to separate all your different colours to different layers. Once again it's a matter of preference. For this tutorial though I'm keeping to the one. Label this new layer 'Base Colour' or something to that effect.
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The colour layer has all the base colour information. For example, if you character had no light or shadows whatsoever, this would be the colour that you would be putting here. We can of course edit the colours later (darker / lighter as we see fit) but this will be a good indication of if your characters colours work on the whole.
A good palette is hard to find, work on colours you find that work and save them in your own personal swatch. Look on the net for colours you like, look through pantone colours, colour pick them off photos, you name it. The source is quite large in finding the colours for your characters.
My character, of course, is dark due to his clothing. The mechanical arm is a mix of steam engine tech that is 'inspired' by the Steampunk comic. So a bit of junky, dirty tech is needed for that. Skin, on the other hand, is a whole new kettle of fish, and needs some good colours to make that right. Once again, source that from other reference. And the best reference is skin, of course, so photos are good.
The end result is as follows. You could, of course stop there, it looks pretty cool. You've coloured between the lines like all good children should...but you can ALWAYS do better...so here we go.
