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.

The vote incentive is finally updated and it should be pretty cool when it’s finished. I don’t normally use multi-colored penciling, but in this case I did to make it more obvious what I’m going for in the final picture. It was surprisingly hard to find a red chick to use. You’d think there’d be scads, and I’m sure there are a bunch I couldn’t think of. Same thing with orange. I very nearly used Ashoka from the clone wars, but at the last second I remembered Starfire is orange. I vastly prefer the Cartoon Network version of her to the battle bikini babe version she appears as in the comics, so I went with that. Dabbler and Maxima should be obvious, but I’ll let you guess at the rest of them for now. Green might be hard to guess until she’s colored since she’s all clammed up, and honestly she’s a little bit more to the yellow green side of the spectrum so She-Hulk may yet make an appearance. :) The final version will have proper attribution to their respective creators of course.

I do need some input on Indigo. I was planning on using a drow. I’ve seen them colored charcoal black, which is how they’re described in books, but that’s boring . Usually they’re dark brown, blue or purple, so I thought I could use one of them. The problem is I’m having trouble thinking of a famous one that’s also visually distinct. Everyone knows Lolth, but she looks different in every picture so she wouldn’t work. I don’t think they’d invite her anyway. I was thinking of using the generically named “Drow Ranger” from DOTA2, but really she’s a little generic looking too. Someone suggested Arachne from Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, but she’s more of a dark gray. I’m not married to the drow idea, but off the top of my head I can’t think of any other dark purply blue ladies, so feel free to suggest some.

Edit: The picture has been updated with inks and flats, I decided to go with Traxex after all in the “indigo” spot. Indigo in quotes cause if you ask 20 people what color indigo is you’ll get as many answers. If I had all the time in the world, I’d love to keep adding ladies to this picture to get a bunch of in-between colors. She-Hulk for a darker green, Ahsoka for a darker orange. Stupid not enough time havingness!