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Comics: the mechanics of the medium

Started by Jim_Campbell, 07 August, 2014, 03:40:10 PM

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Jim_Campbell

Quote from: James Dilworth on 05 February, 2016, 06:15:38 PM
I'll admit to not really understanding the philosophy of flatting. 

Do people find it faster to produce pages this way?

It's not a philosophy or a stylistic/artistic choice, it's a necessity of the four-colour printing process. I'll refer again to the example on the first page of this thread which shows the flats without the linework.

If you just went and selected areas of the art with the magic wand, you'd end up with white gaps in the colours where the linework is. You absolutely do not want this, because if the printing press is out of register by the tiniest fraction then you'll get a white halo around the art.

Selecting with the magic wand would unquestionably be the quickest and easiest way of making selections, but creates problems at the print/production end. Any solution that makes sure that there are no white gaps in the colours solves this problem — flatting like this also makes it easier to render the final colours, because it creates easily selectable areas out of the art.

Cheers!

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

James Dilworth

I understand the mechanics of it.

I don't understand why a modern colour artist would choose to work this way.

Why not just lay down a base colour layer, much like a traditional underpainting, and put it on multiply.  Then work onto that layer with varous brushes and the artists own individual technique?

Colour separations and selections just seem like a long, drawn out and slightly mechanical way of producing artwork.


The Legendary Shark

#62
Before the Council decided they had the right to throw all my stuff away, I had a Wacom tablet (oh, how I miss it!) and I used to trace images in Corel Draw, a vector graphics program. It was time-consuming and fiddly work (being nothing more than advanced tracing) but I found the results to be far better than Photoshop-type work.

First I'd trace, by hand, the black lines - one by one - then merge them onto one layer. Then I'd trace out the colour layers underneath, which I suppose is a bit like flatting. I was generally pleased with the results.




[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Jim_Campbell

Quote from: James Dilworth on 05 February, 2016, 07:32:41 PM
Colour separations and selections just seem like a long, drawn out and slightly mechanical way of producing artwork.

There's no reason I can think of why you couldn't work like that, and I'm not saying that every comic is coloured this way. TBH, I think it's a product of the stupidly short deadlines everyone works to in comics — it enables the job to be subdivided and the load spread between multiple people... more or less the same reason why there are pencillers and inkers.

Cheers

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

James Dilworth

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 05 February, 2016, 07:42:41 PMTBH, I think it's a product of the stupidly short deadlines everyone works to in comics

That's fair.  Everyone has to get the comic out on time.  Probably just my personal tastes/bias.

James Dilworth

Quote from: James Dilworth on 05 February, 2016, 07:32:41 PM
I understand the mechanics of it.

I don't understand why a modern colour artist would choose to work this way.

Why not just lay down a base colour layer, much like a traditional underpainting, and put it on multiply.  Then work onto that layer with varous brushes and the artists own individual technique?

Colour separations and selections just seem like a long, drawn out and slightly mechanical way of producing artwork.

Actually, you know what, I apologize for this post.

Who the fuck am I to question other people's work methods and techniques? 

I don't like it when it's done to me and it's stupid of me to do it to other artists.

Sorry.

JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 05 February, 2016, 05:49:38 PM
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 05 February, 2016, 12:41:12 PM
Hey Jim, I forgot to ask you before - what did you think of the comic typeface on the Future Shock DVD box?

crossbar 'I's that would be visible from space


That was the first thing I noticed!  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to spot that if you'd never mentioned it here before, but I subconsciously would have known something was off.  Or maybe you've just made me hypercritical of lettering ;)
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

ZenArcade

Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: James Dilworth on 05 February, 2016, 08:12:08 PM
Actually, you know what, I apologize for this post.

No apology needed, sir.

Cheers!

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Old Tankie

I am too, not that I understand much of it, I know deadlines can be a big problem.

JayzusB.Christ

Here's a thing I was wondering a bit about lately.

Why is it that so many comics put every emphasised word in bold? Alan Moore does it extensively; and it's common in American comics in general - it's also done in the prog; but to a lesser extent. 

As a seasoned comic reader I've grown used to it and barely notice, but I can't help thinking it's a bit unnecessary - text novels don't do it (except if it's very important to stress the word in question) and many great comics writers like John Wagner keep it to a minimum.  The reader is perfectly capable of unconsciously stressing the words as he/she reads them, in my opinion.

Garth Ennis slags the practise off in The Boys, and in fact rarely does it himself.  Linkara also parodies it hilariously when acting out the comics he's crucifying over at Atop the Fourth Wall.  For me, it can absolutely ruin a strip when the writer puts the 'wrong' words in bold; i.e. the ones that would not actually be stressed if the dialogue was spoken aloud - I found early Nikolai Dante to be absolutely riddled with this kind of thing, and I thought the story really picked up when Robbie Morrison 'fixed' the dialogue (i.e. massively reduced the amount of bold type, thus making the dialogue flow naturally).

Now, I have nothing against the bold-type for stressed words thing if it's done properly.  Alan Moore uses it a lot in Watchmen; and it works, of course, because he knows the score what words are stressed. But I can't help thinking it would work just as well if he didn't bother with it half as much.




"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Old Tankie

A nice tutorial on how to draw detailed buildings on a computer on artist Thomas Romain's Twitter page.

Steven Denton

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 17 February, 2016, 01:40:25 PM
Here's a thing I was wondering a bit about lately.

Why is it that so many comics put every emphasised word in bold? Alan Moore does it extensively; and it's common in American comics in general - it's also done in the prog; but to a lesser extent. 

As a seasoned comic reader I've grown used to it and barely notice, but I can't help thinking it's a bit unnecessary - text novels don't do it (except if it's very important to stress the word in question) and many great comics writers like John Wagner keep it to a minimum.  The reader is perfectly capable of unconsciously stressing the words as he/she reads them, in my opinion.

Garth Ennis slags the practise off in The Boys, and in fact rarely does it himself.  Linkara also parodies it hilariously when acting out the comics he's crucifying over at Atop the Fourth Wall.  For me, it can absolutely ruin a strip when the writer puts the 'wrong' words in bold; i.e. the ones that would not actually be stressed if the dialogue was spoken aloud - I found early Nikolai Dante to be absolutely riddled with this kind of thing, and I thought the story really picked up when Robbie Morrison 'fixed' the dialogue (i.e. massively reduced the amount of bold type, thus making the dialogue flow naturally).

Now, I have nothing against the bold-type for stressed words thing if it's done properly.  Alan Moore uses it a lot in Watchmen; and it works, of course, because he knows the score what words are stressed. But I can't help thinking it would work just as well if he didn't bother with it half as much.

Bolding comes in two forms. Some people bold for emphasis and some for Key words. According to Will Eisner you should bold the important words in text so that it can be read at a glance. If you can get the gist of a block of text from just the key words their is a lot less chance of misinterpretation. In a way it subliminally directs you to the intended interpretation.


JayzusB.Christ

Thanks! I suppose comics being a primarily visual medium, there's more chance people will just skim over the text rather than reading it carefully.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 19 February, 2016, 07:46:18 AM
Thanks! I suppose comics being a primarily visual medium, there's more chance people will just skim over the text rather than reading it carefully.

I dislike the 'bold important words' thing. I understand it, but I don't like it. For me, it pulls me out of the narrative by breaking the meter of the dialogue.

To re-use my illustration of a previous discussion of the difference...



However, I also agree with JBC about the over-use of emphasis in the naturalistic style — it presupposes that the reader lacks the ability to infer speech patterns when (as JBC notes) they seem to manage it perfectly well in novels and other prose narratives, which might occasionally deploy the very rare italic or all caps emphasis.. I've had a couple of scripts recently where 'normal' dialogue is the standard all-caps but has four different lettering styles that deviate from it, sometimes all in the same balloon... even I can't figure out the distinction between some of these styles, and I'm lettering the thing!

Cheers

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.