Thursday, October 8, 2009

our opening page in color

Hi folks...

Long time, no post. We're working away on our book. We got our deadline extended. This graphic novel is requiring a lot of time and energy! We want it to be as good as possible. We hope it will prove worth the wait.

Here is a colored (but dialogue-less) version of the opening page of the book. (We're awaiting the arrival of a custom-made computer font based on David's lettering style. Once we get that, and have it installed, we can begin to type in the final dialogue.)

I hope the lack of dialogue isn't disconcerting. We tried to suggest some of the coloring techniques of the very early newspaper comics. It appears to us that they were colored using water color washes, which were interpreted by the engravers for the four-color printing process.

Comics were printed in flat colors from the start--especially in small-town newspapers, whose engravers could not equal the masterful work of those in the employ of the Chicago Tribune or the New York World or Herald-Tribune.

We have tried to evoke this delicate yet complex early color process here. Our goal is not to imitate the old ways--just to suggest them, and to incorporate aspects of them into our 21st-century efforts.

We hope you enjoy this sneak preview. We're going to do our best to post here at least once a week from now on with more preview pages, art samples, photos, etc. We hope to see you here again very soon!

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge it...