Linda wrote:
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?
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).
Quote:
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!"
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.
Quote:
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.
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?