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[Tapas Insider] Creating Worlds with Colors - Dojo
Mar 23, 2021
Coloring is hard. So hard in fact, that coloring a webcomic is a profession on its own. A well drawn comic with beautiful colors draws the reader's attention and helps to establish the mood of a scene. Colors tell a story, and nobody knows this better than Dojo, the Studio Tapas Art Lead, who has lent his incredible coloring skills to support many artists on their Tapas comic series. Check out our new [Tapas Insider] and read until the end to join our raffle for 15,000 bonus ink!
As a creator, I saw Dojo’s name on many series I’ve read over the years. First joining Tapas three years ago when he landed a contract position as a typesetter, Dojo quickly became a colorist and is now our Studio Tapas Art Lead, handling up to nine projects for Tapas during the busiest months.
“I was trying to get into webcomics because I had gotten a degree in comics but wasn't really doing anything with it at the time. So I went ahead and started posting my comic on Tapas.” Dojo had received his Sequential Art degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design, which is generally used for jobs in game design, animation or comics. “Considering most animations were transitioning into 3D, it sounded like I’d be drawing the most doing comics. So that’s what I ended up doing, thinking I would eventually move into storyboarding.”
Now, years later, Dojo has fully engulfed himself in the world of webcomics, having worked with numerous creators to help them bring their series to life, while also working on his own projects. “For my first project working at Tapas, I was just helping add flats to a comic,” he explains. Flatting is the process where you take an artist’s lineart and fill sections with color. “It is not always color accurate which is something a lot of people seem to think it needs to be. It's just a base color for the colourist, which they use to fill in the exact colors they want and work their magic.” Soon afterwards, the Tapas team needed coloring support for a series and the rest is Dojo-history.
As a colorist, Dojo is also known to experiment and expand on what we commonly see in the webcomic scene. In his personal work Paisley Brickstone, most characters are signified by specific colors, and backgrounds change based on mood rather than location.
“What I always do when first creating a series is to figure out how many characters I'm going to need. From there I assign each character’s main color. More important characters also receive a secondary color. For that, I tend to stick with a particular color theme - when a character might have a lot of red in their outfit and another one has a lot of blue, I try to pick colors that compliment that that look nice together or suit the mood.”
To gain insight from an experienced colorist, I asked Dojo what some of the more common mistakes he sees up-and-coming creators make regularly.
“Something I see pretty frequently is people feel the need to make everything in its natural native color. You look outside and you're just like “Oh yeah, every tree has to be brown, every leaf has to be green!” and stuff like that. There's not a lot of thought put into whether these colors actually harmonize together,” Dojo muses. “Something that I feel helps a lot with spicing things up a little is not necessarily using just a straight-up basic brown but using another color that compliments the mood you're going for instead.”
Keeping a grasp of your colors can improve the artwork and also save you time! Instead of having a large number of colors in one panel that all clash together, reduce it to 6-10 colors instead. This can feel limiting but can lead to a coherent design while also simplifying your coloring process. “Don’t forget that each color you add to a particular character design may have to be repeated hundreds or thousands of times in a comic - less is more!”
Creating comics at the level Dojo has been for the last few years can be exhausting for both mind and body, and creators always have to be aware of burn out. I asked Dojo for his insight on what he does to keep sane while also working on multiple comics.
“One thing that I try to do is not work on the weekends anymore. I might work on my own personal projects, but I don’t make it a huge thing,” he explains. During the work week, he also sticks to a strict 8 hour workday. “Unless there are emergencies which luckily there aren’t that many. This is mostly for my own sake. There was a time when I wasn’t very strict and it was definitely wearing on me - I had to make sure that I would take breaks to chill, walk around, stretch and do exercises just to stay healthy. Also, drinking lots of water helps!”
While you can find Dojo’s name on many of our Tapas series, he is also busy on his personal projects! Follow Dojo on Twitter and get ready for his new comic, which is planned to release around the end of this year! Until then, check out Paisley Brickstone (PBJ High) and join our raffle:
Test your own coloring skills and win 15,000 bonus ink!
Download the line art created by Dojo and fill it with colors! Be as creative as you want! Post your design on our forum thread here, or on Instagram or Twitter using #Tapascolorchallenge by 04/09/2021 for the chance to be one of 6 random winners of 15,000 bonus ink!
(Rules: 1 submission per person. The submission period will end at 04/09/2021 - 11:59PM PDT. Winners will be notified via PM on Instagram, Twitter or our forums by 04/13/2021.)
Thank you for reading,
Isabell & Victoria
Creator Happiness Team
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