Colors add life to a visual and deciding upon a color scheme for a character will indirectly decide the mood of the character and the scene.

So when we start with coloring a character we need to keep the following things in mind:

• Our character’s skin tone:
   Which will be derived from the place he belongs to.

• Color for clothes and accessories:
   Situation dependent and also use reference for choosing the colors.

• Swatches:
   Once the colors for each element of the character are finalized a color swatch is made which    is a palette of colors of the character.

• Time of the Day:
   The color palette will vary according to the time of the day or lighting of the scene. Hence,    separate color swatches should be made according to the time and space of the shot.

Once this is done a color reference model is made which is basically a character completely filled with flat color tones. Also, there are three aspects in tonal values:

• Midtones,
• Shadows and
• Highlights.

So while deciding the color reference model, the colors for the highlights (lighter areas) and shadows (darker areas) are defined. Usually for cartoon animation two shades (Midtones and Highlights) are easier to work on while coloring.

The more detailed the coloring is, the tedious the process of ink and paint becomes. Once the color model is ready it is sent to the ink and paint department for coloring the cleaned up shots.

Kindly refer to the video for a detailed process: