coloring – Deconstructing Comics

#771 Jose Villarrubia on restoring Richard Corben

Den

Colorist Jose Villarrubia had trouble getting work from Marvel because his style was “too artistic” — but then other creators started asking for him, and he’s colored many Marvel titles since then. He’s also done photo art for Alan Moore‘s Voice of the Fire and The Mirror of Love. This August, a new edition of Richard Corben‘s Den, with color corrections by Villarrubia, will be released by Dark Horse. What can Corben fans look forward to in this new edition? And, why do recolored comics sometimes look Gaudy? Villarrubia covers all this in a talk with Kumar.

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Critiquing Comics #155: “Raptor Cop” and “Equilux”

Raptor Cop and Equilux

A policeman splashed with chemicals turns into a reptilian human: that’s the idea for J. Pedicini’s Raptor Cop. While it has accomplished art, we find some problems that make it hard to follow the story.

Equilux, by Karterpiller, aims to present a real-time story of people living in a futuristic apartment building. The series is just on the edge of being considered a comic rather than illustrated prose. That’s fine, but Tim and Mulele have some suggestions for aspects that may need to be rethought.

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#424 Nathan Fairbairn’s coloring; we ask for “Seconds”!

While some colorists’ work can be recognized no matter what kind of story it is, Nathan Fairbairn says he prefers to start from scratch in his approach to each story he colors. While his colors on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s work tends to be bright (and often influenced by O’Malley’s own vision– such as the colors of Knives Chau’s scarf), his other work may be much more subdued.

Tim talks with him this week about how the style of comics coloring can affect how quickly or slowly people read the story, what can go wrong with colors and the printing stage, the history of comics coloring, and more.

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#422 A Friendly Sketcher and an Evil Diva

While Chris Taylor goes by the pen name “Sketchfro“, he no longer has an afro and he does a whole lot more than sketch. An American living in Tokyo, he does freelance art, his own comics, and pro-level digital coloring. In this episode he talks about getting digital coloring right, drawing women with sex appeal, and the work he’ll be promoting at Tokyo’s International Comics Fest later this month.

evildiva When last we checked in on the Web comic Evil Diva, an artist needed to be paid and fans were being asked to cough up cash before the next page could be drawn. Now the comic is being published as a graphic novel, and will even get a cameo in an upcoming movie. Are the comics gods finally smiling on Evil Diva? Let’s ask the strip’s creator, Peter Menotti, and see.

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#406 Aya Rothwell, Comics Anthropologist

Having grown up with feet planted firmly on both sides of the Pacific, Aya Rothwell has always been observant of cultural differences, and this shows up in her comics. Who else would do a comic about a human visitor to an alien world, with the biggest conflict being that the human keeps getting the aliens’ names mixed up?

Aya also fills us in on using watercolors in her comics, her journey to comics via the worlds of biology and film, and more.

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Critiquing Comics #055: “Rena Rouge”

Tim and Mulele discuss Alan Caeser’s Rena Rouge–or at least, the art and coloring. The story, well… We’d critique it if we could.

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#205 What is “good coloring”?

11/9/09 What is “good coloring”?

If you’ve been feeling like mainstream comics coloring is sometimes over-rendered, hyper-realistic, and/or muddy, you’re not alone. Ron Richards has been very vocal in, er, expressing his displeasure with it on the iFanboy podcast. Ron joins Tim and colorist Brian Miller of Hi-Fi Design to discuss the reasons the color turns out that way, problems that colorists should learn to avoid, and, well, just what is “good coloring” anyway?