Grayscale base for paintover - tips please

[Ragathol]

Heyo. I have this very nice commission picture of my comic characters made by the very talented John "Inkmo" Kantz, and now I'm gonna color it all proper like.
I thought I'd try out this grayscale base method, and colorize over it. So, I need a solid base. What should I think of? It's obviously not finished yet, but do you have any pointers to how I should progress? All help is appreciated.

[JL.Alfaro]

check out the tutorials area, I think there is something on that there. nice piece!

[Koncept]

hey
here is a link i used
http://www.androidblues.com/JealousyStepbystep/jealousystep.html
hopefully the person doesnt mind me linking it, but i guess if he made a tutorial he'd like it being used anyways.

let me know how it goes, im working the grayscale method too.. almost gonna go into color. my thread is in the crit center too if u wanna look, called bonds

[Ragathol]

Thanks for the comments and link, I'll se what I can do.

[Wilhelm87]

Nice piece so far, can't wait to see it finished! :teeth:

edit: One small crit, maybe make their cast shadows a little darker, and also, i think the rope should be more stretched, as he is kindoff leaning to it. But I guess thats too late now.

[Psionic]

Looks good so far, lookig forward to seeing the colour go on there!

[Cookiedough]

The backgroundgradient is distracting. Because you added blacks there too and color, it's perhaps harder to judge if your values are alright now. I think you can vary the greys a li'l. Now it looks like an overexposed photo when it comes to lightning. That will add some more depth to this piece. Get your values right first.

I know the lineart is someone elses: the dude looks like he's gonna fall and i can't find his left foot. I realise it's hidden behind the girls foot, but part of her shoe really confuses me, makes it look like the heelpart is his foot, but of course that can't be. Or something like that. Is this intentional?

[Ragathol]

Thanks for your comments.
They're actually both girls, just that Jemma on the left is rendered as some sort of caveman for some reason XD
Yeah, I have nothing to do with the lineart really, but I guess Jemma's left foot is hidden behind the rock or something. I'll try to clarify it when I paint it.
I've worked a bit more on the grayscales, but I'm not on my home computer right now... I'll post the new version in a few days.

[Ragathol]

Update with the new version.
Turned it all b/w now.

[Wafflehouseninja]

If you are using photoshop to color using a color layer then you cant leave the skin white. Color layers keep the value of the underlying layer so if the skin is pure white then even with a dark purple color on the color layer the skin will still be white.

[Ragathol]

Ah, yeah.. I noticed, hum.. But thanks for the heads-up. I'll have to do something about that.