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So, The Rocketeer finally came out on my dad's 80th birthday (December 16), and I finally got my comps on December 23. Yahoo! They printed awesomely. I'm so happy. The regular edition printed a skoosh darker than the deluxe, but it's so subtle that no one will really notice. I might not have noticed it myself, had I not had both versions open in front of me. The colors are perfect and true. I'm thrilled with the results.
There have been a lot of great reviews so far. Happily, all the reviewers seem to like the recoloring.
"[The coloring is] there to make the art look as good as possible. And it succeeds." - Augie De Blieck
"[The coloring] compliments the original work, it’s not overdone, and it gives the whole thing such an incredibly slick appearance that I’ll be absolutely shocked if this thing doesn’t take home a stack of awards next summer." - Chris Sims
(The comments after this review are wonderful. Just go read them. I love how Chris schools the "I like the old coloring better" people. Because, yeah, they're wrong, as the next reviewer sharply points out.)
"Stevens' art deserves the depth that Martin give it. It is wonderful art, and the coloring that was available in the 1980s simply doesn't do it justice. Perhaps the incorrect people who liked the original coloring more appreciated it because it made the book look more like a "comic book" while Martin's recoloring makes it look more three-dimensional and cinematic, but I say pooh." - Greg Burgas
Okay, now that the book is out, I'm going to talk a bit about the coloring process. I might break this into chapters because there's a lot to talk about, and I have to gather my jpegs, and somewhere in here I have to work. :)
When I recolored the series, I paid very close attention to both the Eclipse colored version and the Dark Horse colored version. I liked the palettes on the Eclipse stuff, particularly Joe Chiodo's propensity for cool foreground/warm background and that signature cyan-blue shadow color. I also liked the way the shading was done on the Dark Horse work. So I brought both influences into my work, but first and foremost, my constant thought was, WWDD? What would Dave do? How would he have colored this, had he had the chance? So all of that was in my head every time I approached a page: what would Dave have done, how did these colorists handle it, were they working closely with Dave or unsupervised, and how do I retain some of my own aesthetics? It's a lot to think about for 160-odd pages, and I admit, sometimes I got tired of the other voices and just listened to my own. But we'll get to that in a different post. For now, let me discuss some of the pages where I chose to follow the originals very closely.
( Let's start with that Betty splash that everyone loves so much. )
( Another tidbit of trivia... )
There's one more page that's lifted almost directly from Dave's original, but I'm too tired to find the files, put them together, resize them, upload them, and post them here. It's the very last page, the splash of Betty standing in the doorway. I'll tell you that story some other time, along with several others.
Oh, before I forget...I believe this appears in the deluxe edition:
In a shocking turn of events, it also showed up, already framed, in a box delivered to the studio, as a thank-you from the guys who made the book happen for Dave Stevens.
No, thank YOU, Kelvin Mao and Dave Mandel. Thank you.
There have been a lot of great reviews so far. Happily, all the reviewers seem to like the recoloring.
"[The coloring is] there to make the art look as good as possible. And it succeeds." - Augie De Blieck
"[The coloring] compliments the original work, it’s not overdone, and it gives the whole thing such an incredibly slick appearance that I’ll be absolutely shocked if this thing doesn’t take home a stack of awards next summer." - Chris Sims
(The comments after this review are wonderful. Just go read them. I love how Chris schools the "I like the old coloring better" people. Because, yeah, they're wrong, as the next reviewer sharply points out.)
"Stevens' art deserves the depth that Martin give it. It is wonderful art, and the coloring that was available in the 1980s simply doesn't do it justice. Perhaps the incorrect people who liked the original coloring more appreciated it because it made the book look more like a "comic book" while Martin's recoloring makes it look more three-dimensional and cinematic, but I say pooh." - Greg Burgas
Okay, now that the book is out, I'm going to talk a bit about the coloring process. I might break this into chapters because there's a lot to talk about, and I have to gather my jpegs, and somewhere in here I have to work. :)
When I recolored the series, I paid very close attention to both the Eclipse colored version and the Dark Horse colored version. I liked the palettes on the Eclipse stuff, particularly Joe Chiodo's propensity for cool foreground/warm background and that signature cyan-blue shadow color. I also liked the way the shading was done on the Dark Horse work. So I brought both influences into my work, but first and foremost, my constant thought was, WWDD? What would Dave do? How would he have colored this, had he had the chance? So all of that was in my head every time I approached a page: what would Dave have done, how did these colorists handle it, were they working closely with Dave or unsupervised, and how do I retain some of my own aesthetics? It's a lot to think about for 160-odd pages, and I admit, sometimes I got tired of the other voices and just listened to my own. But we'll get to that in a different post. For now, let me discuss some of the pages where I chose to follow the originals very closely.
( Let's start with that Betty splash that everyone loves so much. )
( Another tidbit of trivia... )
There's one more page that's lifted almost directly from Dave's original, but I'm too tired to find the files, put them together, resize them, upload them, and post them here. It's the very last page, the splash of Betty standing in the doorway. I'll tell you that story some other time, along with several others.
Oh, before I forget...I believe this appears in the deluxe edition:
In a shocking turn of events, it also showed up, already framed, in a box delivered to the studio, as a thank-you from the guys who made the book happen for Dave Stevens.
No, thank YOU, Kelvin Mao and Dave Mandel. Thank you.
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