Ian, have you recoloured archival stories for publication, like the Masterworks or DC's trades? If so, how do you balance capturing the feel of the original publications versus making them more in line with today's production values?

Have you ever recoloured old material where you looked at the originals and thought, "Wow that was a really great job!" or "Wow this needs a whole lot of fixing!"

I don't have trained eyes like yours, so I'm curious if it's even possible to distinguish between good and bad colourists in old comics, where they had no modern tools at their disposal (no Photoshop, no nothin') and they were very limited in the range of colours and shading they could use.

A question? For me? I'm honoured

Okay, one question at a time. Normally, when we recolour Masterworks, Archives, and other stuff (like the 'Millenium Editions' a few years ago)(all of which I have done, by the by), you follow the original colouring exactly.

And I do mean exactly. If you see a dark red, you don't just pick any dark red, you pick 100%yellow, 100%magenta, because that was the precise colour used at the time of most of these comics. You are restricted to the (extremely) limited colour palette used at the time.

Marvel and DC are basically wanting to recapture the original pieces as close to original quality as possible. All the modeling must be the same, all the colours (even if they seem silly, misprinted or whatever). The only thing that is different is the quality of paper (which actually runs into a huge problem - quite often, some old books will look positively garish when recoloured on new coated stock. But, that is what the client wants.)

So, really, this is more of a restoration job than an actual colouring job (the difference is in the Conan reprints, which I'll discuss in a bit).



Yes and yes. Particularily in the early and mid-eighties, the quality and sublety of colouring really jumped ahead (even though they were still stuck with the same limited colour choices as their predecessors). Especially books like Daredevil, where I guess a bit more experimentation was permitted (Daredevil didn't always have to be red - if the scene demanded a different lighting scheme, he could easily be in blue, for example - if the lighting were right, this happens in real life all the time). A lot of the street-level type books (Batman, Daredevil, stuff like that) had much more interesting colouring done than many other books of the same time.

As to fixing - first off, just to be clear, we are never permitted to 'fix' anything In fact, the bigger the original 'mistake', the more we had to keep it in.

An example - most books (even today this still happens, but it used to be a whole lot worse) would print off-register. This means that the Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black plates would not be completely lined up. So, on the left side of Daredevil, you might see a sliver of pink/magenta, and on his right side, you might see a sliver of yellow. If it is only off by a little bit, you tidy it up when recolouring. Quite often, though, if it is off by a whole lot (and is clearly a mistake, not just someone being artistic), the collections editor may insist on it being left as-is. That is how it originally looked, thus that is how it should look today.

But you are probably asking more about mistakes made by the colourist as opposed to the printing process. Yes, I've seen lots (where characters were the wrong colour, but not for any sort of storytelling or 'lighting' reason, for example), and would love to fix them. But I can't.



I think so, although I think that may have more to do with editorial/writers ideas and policies rather than the skills of the colourist themselves.

As I said, a lot of 'grittier' books in the eighties had better colouring, which is probably just an attempt by the editors and writers to get away from the garish colour scheme that most 'regular' superhero funnybooks have. Thus, the style of colouring has always been dictated by the style of book, and some styles (pre-relevancy Green Lantern, for example) just want gung-ho, simple flat colour schemes - make sure GL is green, and the bad guys are red, but there is plenty of yellow to cause trouble, for example.

Actually, I've got issue #225 of Iron Man open in front of me right now (reference for a ... project I'm working on ). Now, this is from '87 (before computer colouring by a few years yet), but actually has better-than-silver-age colouring by Bob Sharen in it. Specifically, he was able to, even using the limited techniques of the time, pick out a lot of strong highlights on the various armour suits, add interesting lighting effects on the floors and walls (such as a yellow spotlight over Tony and Rhodey on panel two of page eight - this clearly wasn't in the original artwork..probably, although it may have been red-lined...but was added to increase tension in the scene), and even play with colour theory and mood (panel five of page 7, Tony is in the foreground and is much, much darker than Rhodey behind him - again, building dramatic tension, as well as being a warmer colour than Rhodeys' clothes behind him, thus pulling him further into the foreground).

There is another good (colouring-wise) scene later in the book - panels five, seven, and eight on page 17. Tony and Brie (his flavour of the month) are watching a movie in a theatre. The entire scene is done in blue, with strong yellow highlights on the figures. This does a great job of creating the environment even more, making the whole scene that much more 'real'.

By '87, most Marvel books had stuff like this in them (even the bulk of DC books were this good). I can think of bad colouring at the time, but I don't want to name names

***

Oh, the note about the Conan reprints. When we do those, we are not given the originals to compare. We recolour them completely, letting the story and our skills and knowledge decide what we will do with the pages. Dark Horse wants us to have as clean a slate as possible to work with.

Sometimes, though, I do pick up the original books, usually after I have coloured the one in question, for comparison. It is interesting to see what the original colourist did back then, what decisions they made, and how they compare to the independant ones I've made.

...wow. Longest. Post. Ever. I sure can ramble on.

Any follow up questions? Clarifications? Bueller?

That's cool though, Ian. I like understanding it from your expert point of view. I do have a kind of oddball question, not quite a followup though.

Have we reached a point with the colorists where they are more of a painter, someone who adds almost as much to the page as the penciller? I look at the variation of shade and color on a simple face and understand that adds depth, but when I look at an entire panel, I see such color variety it starts to make me wonder who much time a colorist puts into the books now.

Definitely!! Well, not quite as much as the penciller, usually It depends on the book, the style, and (to be perfectly frank) the cost. I guess it mostly comes down to time, though.

Obviously, it depends on the book. Scooby Doo and Looney Tunes books don't take that long, but something like yer typical Superman book right now takes between four and ten hours (sometimes longer) per page.

Especially if you look at something like what Dave Stewart is doing on the ongoing Conan book - painting over pencils (with no inks), especially the approach he is taking with it, is a completely different animal. It is something I've played around with a lot (and even did for one cover for Paradox), and hope to do more of.

Another difference (and a really important one) is not just the depth of modeling, or the flashy fx, or the more obvious stuff like that - using the computer (with the huge variety of colours available) allows the colourist to use a subtler palette.

F'rinstance, Vertigo books aren't known for lots of fx or painterly textures or stuff like that usually. They do, however, use a much more muted, greyer palette than most other books. And, usually, it works great (sometimes, some folks can make pages too dark and muddy - the key is to know which colours look like what in print. This is a surprisingly difficult skill to master), setting a nice tone for a book that relies entirely on colour theory rather than detail and fx.

And, it is nice to see there is a bit more recognition for colourists in the industry. In particular, Dave Stewart, Dave McCaig, and Richard Isanove are all getting a bit of name recognition, even by fans.

Those Conan reprint books are gorgeous.

Thanks very much

In the Dick Giordano book I'm reading, he talks about some of the production changes he initiated when he first went to DC in the late 60s. The production staff would only let the artists use 100% yellow. Dick asked Sol Harrison (then head of production at DC) why that was.

Sol replied that it was too expensive. Dick asked how much it would cost and Sol said he'd look into it. A while later Sol came back and apologized. It didn't cost any extra money, they'd just never investigated that as an option.

I'm sure somewhere in DC history this is known as "The Great Color Change of 1968."

There is similar stuff at Marvel of the era - they only used two values of yellow (25% and 100%) for quite a while. I don't know when that changed, though

I have a follow-up for the guest speaker of the week!

WHY would they not have you colour-correct obvious errors, like Spiderman being green?
And, do you have a few cover shots of the Conan collections you've worked on for Dark Horse, so I can go buy some of your work? It would be interesting to look at them in contrast to the originals, as you say.

Yer in fer a treat there! I bought those solely for the colouring!

DADDIO-speakage is infectious! Run! Run for your lives, you damn fools, before there are none of you left!!!!!

Gwarsh - all this attention

Well, I suppose I can just hotlink the cover shots on the DH website - first, though, you can find ordering info here:

http://www.darkhorse.com/books/title.php









Notice that I didn't put up the cover to volume two - that's cause I didn't work on it Proceed at yer own risk

Back to the earlier question - I guess that Marvel (and DC) are more interested in the books looking as much like they originally did, errors or no errors in colouring.

Okay, there is one glaring exception that I forgot about - Spidey's eyes are always colour-corrected to white.

However, the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing quite often still has brown eyes in the reprints - it was brown (well, orange really) then, it is brown today. Unless it was blue.

Ian, how is your surname pronounced?

Just like it is spelled

More or less.

Sew - ko - lew - ski .


uh, what does that have to do with colouring?

If I made a separate thread members would have gotten upset. "Hey, how come you don't care how MY surname is pronounced! A lot of people get Smith wrong you know!"

okay, Boo-erns

Well, it colors how we pronouce your name. However, coming originally from the Cleveland area, I was exposed to enough surnames such as yours to not need the assistance.

You'd be surprised - lots of Ukrainian and Polish folks around here can't seem to get it right. Probably because it isn't complex enough - some folks figure some letters must be silent, or will add letters that aren't even there.

I feel your pain. Show of hands: Anybody see a "t" in the middle of my last name? It never ceases to amaze me how many people do.

Heh - here is another bit, one that I'm not sure most folks here will get.

It is a Ukrainian name, but with a Polish spelling (typically, names like this that are Ukrainian are spelled -sky, not -ski). I have no idea why, but there ya go.

I hear ya Frank - people like to add an 'n' (or replace the 'w' with an 'n'), even when they are copying it from something that has been typed (and thus do not have the 'bad handwriting' excuse.).

Whine, whine, whine. Poor me

Hey, if you haven't taken a look at it already, check out the 'Iron Man help needed' thread of mine - I just posted the piece of artwork I was needing the help for:)

http://www.imwan.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3724

...or pronouncing the s as fr...

My peeve? People swapping the i for the r in my last name. They say it like a cracker, or a hotel.

Man that bugs me.