Part Seven: Color Guides

Initially, I planned to approach the color process old-school. My idea was to print out all the pages and color them by hand using Dr. Martin’s dyes and markers as a reference for the final digital files. I thought the hand-colored guides—complete with handwritten RYB notations—would be cool artifacts, especially for conventions or shows. I imagined displaying them alongside the “original” art boards I had printed.

That plan was quickly abandoned. It was simply more efficient to finish everything digitally. Working digitally also gave me the freedom to experiment, easily swapping out colors to see what combinations worked best.

Like much of the book, I colored the pages in Procreate on the iPad. Ironically, for a book intended to replicate a very specific type of comic from a pre-digital era, a large part of it was done on a tablet. I sampled colors from a scan of an old 64-color chart—these weren’t exact CMYK values, just rough approximations, much like traditional color guides were simply reference points for someone else to separate into final CMYK values. I approached the coloring loosely, not overly concerned with staying within the lines, but more focused on discovering the color combinations that felt right within the aesthetic of the era I was emulating. I didn’t write out RYB codes since they weren’t necessary for my separations.

Previous: Inks & Letters
Next: Final Pages

Pages that relied on typography—like the ads, letters pages, and editorial sections—were designed and assembled in Adobe InDesign, then exported as image files to be colored in Procreate like the rest. This maintained stylistic consistency and gave those pages a more analog feel. That workflow applied to interior pages only. The covers were assembled in InDesign, as they typically featured cleaner, more deliberate separations.

The content of the ads evolved over time. Many of the classified-style ads were swapped out as I revisited older comics and discovered new ones to emulate. A few ads also feature my local comic shops and retailer friends, adding a personal touch to the homage.