Colorizing line drawings

[Drewbacca]

I have something of a silly question, does anyone know of a good program to colorize line drawings like the picture of the Ostsol I have as my avi?

[Juodas Varnas]

I like using GiMP.

It's free and pretty easy to learn.

[Valkerie]

Check with Deadborder.  Has quite a few examples in his colorization thread.

[Wrangler]

Check with Deadborder.  Has quite a few examples in his colorization thread.

What he said.

I am novice myself and use MS Paint. With older images like that unseen Ostsol picture you got you need painstakingly draw lines over the image's art/details. I found if you don't the program will not see the "lines" of the original art unless it's been done already.

Here some Examples.  This unseen Phoenix Hawk IIC from one of the early sourcebooks. I got lucky and didn't need to add the lines so detail of the art wasn't lost when i added the paint colors in. Same case with this newer art for the Behemoth 2.  In Some cases i had to add those lines.

[SteelRaven]

Yeah, your going to have that problem if you just use paint bucket. You need to use multiple layers to avoid the white outlines that will allow you to color behind the lines like a transparently or animation cell.

If you haven't done much coloring using layers yet, you can find multiple tutorials on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDasj3Wb6Yk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nOJOcrlWLs   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6EBrw19Y9o

There is also multiple Freewere art programs, GiMP is the most well know but I have recently started using MediBang and Krita. Each program is a little different with there own strengths and weaknesses so you may need to find a video addressing how that particular program works though the techniques themselves stay the same with a few exceptions (not every program offers Vectoring if your into fine details)     

[Deadborder]

I use GiMP for mine, and do such through a complicated layering process that I inherited from somebody else (who probably took that from somebody else and so on..). I'll do a write-up and tutorial at some stage when I'm not at work and have a few examples in front of me.