How to create your own Comic Chat Character - Part 3

Brought to you by The Phoenix On-Line Foundation and Bob - AKA Bud O

By now you should have at least a dozen or more poses, in 1 bit black and white. Time to start adding the color. In the previous lesson, I mentioned that you cannot add color to a 1 bit image. Therefore, we need to increase the color depth of the images. For practical purposes, we can increase to 256 color (8 bit), or 16 million color (24 bit). If your character does not require flesh tones, then 256 will possibly be adequate. But for flesh tones, and true rendition of all colors in the final AVB, I have found it best to set the color to 16 million. To increase the depth of your poses, open them, one at a time, in your paint program, then save as changing the drop down color selection list to 16 million, or 24 bit. Once they are all converted, then open the first pose, usually Neutral 1. Now you will have available to you the Windows 16 million color "wheel".

Color the first pose as you like, then color the background last. Remember that the background is going to be transparent in the final AVB, so don't use any color for the background that is also in the character, or you will have a "hole" showing through the character. Typically, I use the light gray for the background. The code for the proper gray is Red-192, Green-192, Blue-192...or the hexidecimal code is #C0C0C0....those are zeros, not O's. Be sure to have your computer set to 24 bit high color or you will have all kinds of color problems.

Keep the first pose open at all times, so you can "pick" colors from it to "pour" into the remaining poses. If you change your mind later on a major color, it's no big deal to go back and re-pour the areas.

At this point, the experimentation is up to you. If you want to convert your 24 bit images down to 256 depth, then import into the editor, go for it. You may be able to squeeze the file size down some. For this purpose, you should keep 2 compete sets of poses, (in different folders). One set in 24 bit, the other in 256 color. Make an AVS and AVB from each set and compare the color rendition and file size. One of my characters has 31 poses, all 24 bit images, yet the AVB file size was only 95 kb. When I tried to remake with 256 color depth images, the flesh tones turned gray, and the reduction in file size wasn't enough to help. Now I only work in 16 million colors, sure simplifies things. You should use no more than 16 different colors for your entire set of poses. (Keep the colors consistent from pose to pose). I always make a color chart from the colors used and keep it on file with the avs and original images. The chart should include the hexidecimal code for each color for exact duplication later.

When you have the first pose completed, go ahead and import it into the editor, make an avs and a trial avb. Then try it out in Comic Chat offline. Set the comic view to 1 panel, so you can check for any "holes", or stray pixels of color, then check with 4 panels to see how the character stands out with various backgrounds. Then place more characters into the same frame (by sending emotion), (you may have to make the black outlines heavier, you need a minimum of a 2 pixel black border around each image to make it stand out against any background others may be using.) Don't wait until you have all the poses imported, made the avb, proudly loaded up, then shout "Oh No" lol......been there done that. A lot of work? You bet, but if there is something wrong, now is the time to find out. There is after all, no real shortcut to success, takes a real effort.

There is a feature available in the editor to "smooth" the character. It does a nice job, but with a couple of drawbacks. It adds a dithered border (ghost) around the character, and it increases the file size double or more.

I've purposely rushed into the final stages in case some are getting impatient. Next time I'll digress a bit and go over some additional creation tips.

The "rule" for today: Avoid scanned or web imported images, mostly in jpg, that have already been badly blurred by compression. Your cleanest, sharpest and brightest character will be the one you create from scratch.