theCROSSBRONX//OEMING-BRANDON

Colorist Nick Filardi takes you inside the making of a page with two videos detailing the process of colors and production finishes and shares the final result. The page selected for the making of is Cross Bronx issue #4, page 8 depicting Detective Rafael Aponte starring down his reflection in the cracked glass of a bar back mirror.

Nick: With Cross Bronx, the main thing I wanted was to separate it from POWERS. To be able to open any page in the book and have anyone realize that they aren't reading anything else Mike was doing, just Cross Bronx. POWERS has a very polished superhero feel to the color, which works very well. For Cross Bronx I headed in the opposite direction. I wanted a dark, gritty, moody feel. To achieve that I added a lot of texture where I can, taking a cue from Dave Stewart's work. However, Mike's work is very stylized and cartoony. I didn't want to add "real world" textures or try to digital paint anything. So, I picked one brush to tackle it all. Make the coloring compliment his style and not try to pull the reader away from what he was drawing.

Nick: The two screen caps are the black and white page, and then the flats. Flatting is the process that preps the page to be colored. I prefer to have everything in pretty bright colors, so what you are looking at is a noon day sun kinda look. All the colors are true to what they are. There are no shadows, highlights or gradations of color.

Coloring The Cross Bronx Part I
Basically what I'm doing in the first part is washing it with a color to unify the piece; giving it an overall mood. On previous books I wouldn't do such a strong wash (I think this page was like 60% or 70% wash). Again with Cross Bronx I wanted a very dark, moody look. Then I go in and add cuts and highlights. I also change the colors if I feel they got too washed out and begin to blend too much into the background. The main thing that I want to do at this step is to push the reader's focus to where it should be. Obviously on this page - you want the reader to be looking at the mirror. To do this I kept in the brightest part on the page.

Coloring The Cross Bronx Part II
On part 2 I add a radial gradation of color from the mirror onto the bottles. This makes the contrast less as you move away from the mirror, and moves your eye away from the corners of the page. Finally, I add texture to the ceiling wall, and bar. This page took me about 40 minutes from black and white to color.