Ever notice how girls with odd skin color tend to be kind of tall? Throw the comic a vote to see what I’m talking about. Max is 6’1″, Dabbler is 5’10”, and I have measurements for some of the girls but I had to make assumptions about a lot of the others.

I hadn’t planned on using this picture again, at least until it was totally finished, but I spent a lot of time on it and I don’t really have anything else ready at this point. I say totally finished because in my head it will have at least 5 girls of each hue (including the non-hued “chalky” ones at the one end and the “dusky” ones at the other. This is assuming I can think of 5 of each color. Blue seems to be the easiest. Yellow will be tougher, as will “dusky.” Red is curiously difficult as well. I’m constraining myself to characters people will have a chance to recognize, even if they’re kind of obscure, so “some red demon chick” doesn’t make the cut, nor does someone’s OC they’ve drawn three times and put on DA 7 years ago.

The final version may have a different background on it as I’m thinking of adding some lounge chairs or pillows for some of them to sit on. I’ll also post a bigger version of it and also probably make some prints to sell at cons and what not. Compare this one to the first version posted up at DeviantArt.

Update: Ok, I think I have enough applicants, thanks for the interest but I need to close submissions so I can start sorting through the folks I have.

Ok, well, not all. Just one probably.

It’s become clear to me that I need a little help with the comic so I can focus on some of the side work, most notably putting the book together and the eventual kickstarter. To that end I’d like to hire a colorist to take on some of the work. Initially I’m thinking two pages/one project a month (I draw 2 pages side by side), at least to start, but if someone just really likes coloring backgrounds or something I’ll consider that too. Fame and fortune await!

Before I post the details, let me temper enthusiasm so I don’t get 100 emails to wade through. It’s a lot of work. At best, it takes me two whole days to color the two pages. Not two evenings, but two 12 hours days, sometimes well into a third. I’ll be the first to tell you I’m quite slow though, so a lot of other people might be able to do it faster, but it’s not something anyone’s going to knock out in 4 hours. Initially the pay will only be $100 per two pages which isn’t great I’ll admit (depending on how fast you are I suppose) but that will go up to $200 when I hit my next Patreon milestone and will continue to increase as the campaign grows. You’ll get credit on the pages you work on of course, so it’ll be a good way to get eyes on your DA page/tumblr/webcomic, whatever, but ideally I’d like someone interested in doing this for a while, maybe even taking over all the coloring eventually. I’d really prefer not to have auditions for a new colorist every 3 months if I can avoid it.

Personally I color in Paint Tool SAI, and a little in Manga Studio 5ex, but I save the files in PSD format for cross compatibility reasons. I don’t care what process you use to color as long as your style isn’t too jarringly different from mine, as I don’t want it to be distracting as people read through the comic. I’ll probably insist a few things have to be done exactly my way like the eyes, but I’m certainly not opposed to hiring someone better than me. :) I rarely pay attention to light direction or ambient color for instance, but that’s mostly to do with keeping the process streamlined and on schedule. I have tried several times to make a video of how I color, but I think my voice becomes quite unengaging if I’m not actually speaking to someone, (don’t hire me to narrate your penguin documentary) so I may set up a stream for prospective colorists so I can do some Q and A. Anyone would be welcome to attend, but obviously if I’m working on a future page it’ll be totally spoilery. I’ll post about that if it looks like it’ll happen, probably be on a Friday and/or Saturday.

If you’re interested, email me at grrlpowercomic-at-gmail and I’ll send you some finished inks and a color palette to work from. I’m not quite sure how to handle getting the file back to me as they tend to get up into the 200MB range, but we’ll figure that out as we go. I use dropbox for everything, but I have a paid account, and if you don’t, and a dozen people are uploading giant PSD files into a mutually shared folder, it can choke out the amount of space in a free account pretty quick.