What Great Feedback Looks Like, and Lessons on Colour

Last week, among the colour keys, I posted the panel below and said I didn't feel like it was working. How could I get it to work? Maybe with a little help from a friend?

This week: how to give great feedback, some happy reminiscences about working collaboratively, some realizations about the nature of lighting, and a funny little punchline for it all.

Reader/Patron/Friend Sarah commented to say "I might have a solution" for my problems with this image.

It's important to mention that I have known Sarah for a long, long time. We went to animation school together (in 2000!), she and her sister provided character voices in my "grad film," she got me my first job in the Vancouver animation industry, and she was one of the first people to read DD and, foolishly, to encourage me to continue. So when she says "hey I have a suggestion," I say, "yes, please and thank you." I'm happy to take suggestions from strangers, but I'm enthusiastic about taking suggestions from Sarahs.

Why? Let me show you.

THE DRAWOVER.

This is what Sarah sent me.

This is professional-level, grade-A feedback, sometimes called a "drawover." It's useful to me, of course, but I'll tell you why I think it's an example of generally excellent professional feedback/criticism.

• The language is impersonal and offers a straightforward course of action. Nothing like, "ehh, something about this just isn't working for me," and no, "you forgot to do this," or, "you didn't do that." It's all about the behaviour of the imaginary light in the imaginary scene.
• It's as clear as you could possibly expect. All the text is typed out and everything is colour-coded to minimize confusion. In the middle panel, the green arcs pair with the horizon line to describe how the shapes of the reflection should appear.
• Even if I'm an idiot and I skim over all the text, the progression of the images is clear, and I can just compare and contrast the "before" and "after" images (but all the callouts help me notice things I might not have, otherwise).

It is my sincere wish that everyone everywhere working in any job is able to expect feedback like this from their coworkers or collaborators. It doesn't feel like a luxury, per se, but I notice when it's not there.

Collaboration is what I miss about making comics solo. Some of my fondest childhood memories are lying on the floor with my friend Mark, a huge sheet of cartridge paper laid out before us, and we'd just draw tanks and planes and spaceships attacking great force-field shrouded bubble domes. Pew pew pew. If you layered one Crayola colour over another, it created a fluorescent colour, for the lasers of course.

Later, my friend Hamish and I would amuse ourselves by making home movies together, well before making, editing, and sharing video was trivially easy.

I love making comics the way I do, but I wish it weren't so solitary. It's why I generally recommend young artists to discover how much they like working among other people: if you like being collaboratively creative, pursue animation or game dev. If you truly appreciate solitude, comics can offer a lot of that.

Anyway, besides fixing my image, what did I learn from this collaborative interlude?

LIGHTING CAN BE COUNTER-INTUITIVE.

Drawing is hard, but understanding light and colour is harder.

In this panel, I knew I wanted a hot, sweaty tropical pirate haven sort of feel. How do I accomplish that? Certainly the answer is to include more warm colour in the image, right?

The whole big wall is a warm putty colour, even the sky and water are painted in muted greens that are "warmer" than using cool blue colours.

If we take a look at Sarah's drawover, we notice that cool colours take over. The big wall is now a cool grey. The reflections in the water are darker and cooler.

And yet… it feels warmer?

The shadows in the tunnel are hotter and the bright highlights both on the characters and on the masts in the background have been boosted. Those are small details, but they have a big effect, doing the work of carrying the "warm" feel even though they're proportionally smaller parts of the image.

Not all of us are artists, but we've all spent our lives observing the world around us, and regardless of how much you study the specifics, you know how light behaves. You and I have an intuitive understanding of what looks right and what looks wrong. In the case of this image, the little details of the highlights and the hit of hot light in the tunnel tell us, "outside of the panel, a bright, hot light is shining from the left." We only see clues about that light, but those clues are enough to help us imagine the time of day and the environment we're in.

MY TAKEAWAYS.

This panel puts a cherry on top of a few lessons I've been learning as I've been colouring DD4. They are…

• Sometimes, lighting is in the details. You need to add that hot rim of bright light for a scene to feel like it's day-lit. You need to paint all the little bright spots for dappled shade to feel like dappled shade. With the sort of rendering style I'm using, the image will not feel complete until those details are included.
• Listen to the principles. In the image above, I simply neglected to paint the reflections the way they should have been painted. I've painted a lot of water, I have learned a lot about how reflections work—I have a good grasp of the principles—and yet somehow I posted that colour key without giving appropriate thought to how the reflections should behave. Sarah called me on it, she was right, and the image is better for having properly-behaved reflections.
• Plan for colour from the start. Understand the principles of lighting and use them to make better compositions at the thumbnail stage. I've been telling myself this since Day One of this project, and it remains true. Now, admittedly it's hard to plan for colour if your lighting skills aren't strong. Mine are improving with every page I paint, and I'm glad to be working on this project a chapter-at-a-time because with all the lighting stuff I learn from painting one chapter, I can incorporate my improved understanding when I work on the thumbnails for the next. Like, with this image above, the reflections should have been a considered part of the composition at the thumbnail stage. In general, I think I'm doing well in this aspect, but this panel is one example where I dropped the ball.

THE KICKER.

As I was writing this post, I noticed something.

On the magnet board next to my desk—the exact place I painted that colour key—I have this card featuring Monet's Le pont d'Argenteuil.

It's got a bridge face in shadow, receiving cool indirect light from the sky. Warm light underneath the arches. It's got bright sunlight at an angle. It's got believably-rendered reflections. It's not exactly the lighting scheme I want for my colour key, but it's close enough that it might as well be saying, "hey! Look at me! I can tell you everything you need to know!"

There it is. Right in my eyeline the entire time.

I feel a bit silly about that.

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EDIT: Whoops! I forgot to mention: Sarah is the author of the beautiful WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD graphic novel—if you like DD, you should definitely at least check it out. She also runs a Patreon campaign here, and posts lovely thoughtful posts that I always enjoy reading.

EDIT 2: There's a sale on at INPRNT.com, where I sell prints of the Delilah Dirk Travel Posters. Looks like everything's 10% off, and apparently their international shipping rates have also been dramatically reduced! That's some good news.

Next week: Reader Jason recommended a web-based tool to help with flatting! I tried it! I will show you the results and talk about whether or not it will be useful!

Until then,
I remain,
Oblivious to my surroundings,

TC