color

COLOUR IN GRAPHIC NOVELS

-------------Cahill's OUTSIDE THE BOX

The principles of comics colour

- Virtually all colour printing is do

ne with four colours of ink:

yellow, cyan, magenta and black.

- Every graphic novels are made of dots of those four colours, the white of the paper, and a process in your brain that makes you see a merged colour (the so-called process colour printing).

Saturation

            There are two different scenes within this picture, and not just because there is an actual boxed-in scene within the larger picture. The background picture is far more saturated than the foreground image, with the result that the foreground image is given much more ‘pop’. This clearly marks the static figures in this image as central, in contrast to the dynamic moving figures in the background portion of the image. This also raises an interesting question with respect to focus. Typically, a first glance at an image would take note of the dynamic elements of an image before the static elements, yet here the use of colour saturation interrupts this process and replaces it with a reversed attention to static elements over dynamic ones.

- The use of colour to highlight a scene while desaturation the panels around it can draw in emphasis to a location, and hone in the readers focus.to bring a single character into focus in a large scene, turning the surrounding environment into a single colour pallet, or desaturation it, while colouring or saturating the figure is a great way to

POP someone into the reader’s focus.

 

Reds

  

            There are a number of reds throughout the image; however, its use has several applications. The red pops out in contrast to other muted colours in the image, in the curb, the truck, the red lights in the intersection, the shirt of one of the figures in the inset frame of the image, and the skirt of a figure in the background frame of the overall image. Almost all of these reds are in the lower half of the frame, which has the effect of creating visual weight on the bottom of the page. Although quite often when red is used for identity it signals a ‘good guy’ or ‘ultimate hero’, in this case, the figure in the inset (more prominent than the red-skirted woman in the background frame) is small, faceless, and almost lost against the red object behind him/her. Perspectivally, he/she is nearly lost in the large red object and in the scale of size in comparison to the large yellow-jacketed figure in the foreground of the inset.

 Yellow

 The figure in the yellow shirt is not only in the centre of the page, he is also the largest figure in the image. His prominence is therefore just one of three figures that he is the focus in some way of the image. He is certainly the first thing the eye is drawn to when the image is first viewed, and on closer examination, the only one with facial features. However, it is the yellow jacket that first draws the eye to him, and it is only later that these other details (size, facial features, centrality) become obvious. Although yellow is often used for a sidekick or weaker character, in this image it is not clear that this is his role.

Monochromatic                           

            In contrast to the red and yellow pops of colour of certain elements of the image, the monochromatic tones of the setting suggest that its importance is diminished in relation to the characters and colourful elements of the scene. The exaggeration of the reds and yellows in contrast to the monochromatic background elements makes the reds and yellows all the more important, and the rest all the less. Yet this also sets up the foil of colour for the bright reds and yellows to be seen. In a background of deep, rich, or bright colours, the reds and yellows would be lost.

- Flashbacks, pauses in the timeline of a page or particular instance can be highlighted with either the addition of colour (for monochromatic/black and white comics), or the reduction of colour (into monochrome or black and white)  In flashbacks, or storytelling/recollecting of the past (especially the far past), dropping the colour pallet to tones of sepia make for

a great technique for giving an aged look. For story lines that jump heavily through time this can be a great technique for keeping things clear, and allow for much smoother transitions through panels.