How I Colorize My Cartoons by Randy Glasbergen 

 

I’m often asked what software I use to create my cartoons, so here is a quickie answer…

1) First I sketch my cartoons in pencil on paper, sitting at a big oak drawing table. Very low-tech. If I’m not happy with my first sketch, I’ll feed it to the shredder and start over. Sometimes it takes as many as four or five tries before I get it right.

2) When I’m satisfied with a pencil sketch, I trace the drawing with black ink using a Flair felt-tip pen. Still pretty low-tech. But I probably ordered the pen online from Staples, so some high-tech does creep into the process.

3) After I erase the pencil marks and clean up any stray lines with Liquid Paper (God bless you, Mrs. Nesmith)  I scan my cartoons (Epson DS-6500) into Photoshop CS6 on my Mac and save as a high-resolution TIFF file.

4) I add color to the black and white TIFF cartoon with a Wacom tablet and a wonderful, easy software program called Colorize. There’s a quick video demo @ http://www.gdykes.com/  I love Colorize because it’s fast and easy, nearly as simple as coloring in a coloring book…and it automatically stays inside the lines! If you’re an illustrator or cartoonist who has never used Colorize, please check it out. It’s a small software company that would love your support!

5) After I’ve colorized my cartoon, I bring it back to Photoshop for last minute adjustments before saving it to a cartoon database on my computer. I generally save one copy as a TIFF and create another copy in GIF format to put on my website.

I’ve tried other colorizing software (Corel, Illustrator, Painter) but nothing comes close to Colorize for speed, simplicity and ease of use…and the finished results always look great, bright, clean, sharp in print and digital format.

Here are a few cartoons I’ve created using Colorize Software …

 Randy Glasbergen / Glasbergen Cartoon Service @ www.glasbergen.com  

E-mail: randy@glasbergen.com