Manga Line Art Coloring

This door colors a manga ink page with flats that can take screentone afterward. The style starts as Japanese manga. The note already says limited flats, no gradients on skin, and the original ink kept. Shiny cel hair and soft webtoon skin are the other two doors. This one should still look like it can be toned with dots.

Black and white still do most of the drawing. Color is for hair, a garment, and maybe an eye accent. Skin stays a single flat, because a gradient fights the screentone you will lay in Screentone later. Shadows that the ink already drew — a hatch under the chin, a solid black under the hair — stay black. Do not ask the color pass to repaint those blacks as gray airbrush.

Backgrounds in the line art get the same restraint. A wall is one gray or one warm paper color. A detailed sunset painted into an empty panel is a new illustration, not a flat. If the page is a multi-panel sheet, say so. “Color each panel separately, do not merge panels, do not add tones.” The model likes to help by drawing speed lines you did not ink.

Upload the ink layer, or a scan where the lines are darker than the paper. Blue pencil under the ink confuses the edge. Crop to the page you mean. A note that a toner can use: “black hair, navy uniform, skin unshaded, paper-colored background, keep the panel borders, no screentone yet.” Add dots on the screentone tool after the flats are right. Coloring and tone in one pass usually invents a pattern you cannot edit. Hold the same navy on the next page. A new blue every panel reads as a costume change the ink never drew. Skin stays one flat on this door. A blush gradient belongs on the webtoon coloring page, not under screentone.