clean up on computer

[AJartist]

of course theres not a single clean up artist whos not doing their work on the computer? however, there I found zero tutorials on how to do it with these programs.... i photoshop, toon boom and flipbook. They do explain a little...but for the most part the directions are very vague!

i'm working with a tablet (not a cintique), and i'm having trouble filling in my color lines. For example...

in the drawings below, i'm roughing it the old fashioned way with primitive paper and pencil.......then for the black outline i use a fiber castell pen.....then I scan it........then i select my desired colors for the character and the outlines in photoshop elements. ( i also have the regular photoshop)

however, this is the way i'm doing the colored outlines......i make little color barriers in certain areas...like in Olive oils head...you notice how the brown flesh stops at the hair....i made a little color barrier there, so when i get the paint bucket tool to fill in the outline it dosn't run all the way through the hair and outline the entire character in a flesh line.

thats the way i've been doing it...but i suspect there's an easier, proffesional and less of headache to do this.

anybody have any suggestions?

bye the way...these drawings have their fair share of problems. one arm on popeye is bigger than the other, and olives feet down match. they were kind of a rushed job just so i can scan these in and expriment with color outlines.

http://donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=293&pictureid=1339

http://donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=293&pictureid=1337

http://donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=293&pictureid=1340

[C. Siemens]

I don't really know any other way to do it in, let's say, PhotoShop than to paint little "colour borders". What I sometimes do, though, is to pick out the main colours of the character and then paint whole sections of lineart. For example, a dark blue outline works for most blue, grey and green areas, a deep brown for most hues of brown, yellow and red and so forth. I don't think you need to outline each and every area in a darker hue of the area itself ...

[Solium]

Good suggestions C. Siemens.

One way I try to speed things up is by selecting all the line art and filling different layers with the outline colors I want to use. Say flesh tone for skin on one layer and blue for a vest on another layer. I then mask out where the blue outline overlaps the flesh tone. Or just use the selection tool to select then delete unwanted lines.

All in all there's no "fast" way I know of doing this if you want multiple colored outlines.