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I always feel bad for Igor Kordey. The guy was brought on to rush a book that had fallen behind and he did the absolutely impossible job he was hired to do. His work suffered from how quickly he'd had to crank it out and instead of the system being blamed for the problem, he get's all the crap for it. He's actually pretty good when he has more than a week to finish a book. Link to back me up. quote:Newsarama: When you came to Marvel, what was the impression that you were under in regards to your workload? Was it going to be, from the outset, just one book, or were they (or you) wanting to look to expand your load to include more projects?
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Apr 19, 2011 05:04
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Don't forget the great inking of Alfredo Alcala, which is featured (I'm 90% sure) on that second image. The guy was a beast.
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Jun 12, 2011 22:32
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Senior Woodchuck posted:"Was?" He's not dead. No, but no one seems to trust him enough to let him do anything more than scribble inks over some terrible artist's pencils once in a while. The dude is a genius in a medium run by idiots. He's cooking up a slice of tender beef and everyone's asking about the french fries.
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Jun 19, 2011 23:07
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Rhyno posted:It just shows how Bendis is falling out of touch. Sure his slang was pretty good back when USM started but now he's going down the same road every other old man writer has walked. Uh, not really. He had a term teenagers use come out of the mouth of a teenager. The argument that she wouldn't have said it might hold some weight, but saying that no teenager would say that is just not true.
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Jul 4, 2011 03:29
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LtKenFrankenstein posted:Resurrecting this thread because the sketch variant for the new issue of New Avengers really made me realize that, drat, JRjr's pencils look way better without Dean White's Colors. Observe: Jesus. I've been complaining about bad computer coloring forever now (and my complaint is that it's bad, not that it's done on a computer) but this example is just ridiculous. You can do literally anything with color when you're putting it through a computer. There are no limitations I can think of unless you want to start talking about physical texture or go way out there, but as far as practical limitations within a printed comic book using standard techniques, the possibilities are endless. What do we get? Unimaginative garbage. Lens flares, motion blurs, muddy shading, and no idea that colors can possibly mean something. I was having this discussion once online and someone posted a Red Rider BB Gun ad from the 50's as an example of "bad" old coloring to prove me wrong and they actually ended up proving my point for me. Flat color applied by someone who has some artistic training and a little bit of design sense will look better than over-rendered schlock any and every day of the week. Personally, I love JRjr (and Senior, but that just means I have eyeballs because everyone should love JRsr) and have often wondered why some of his pieces just haven't grabbed me the same way things he did in the 80's did. I hate to just think someone has lost their touch and it was pretty easy to see he hadn't when I started really looking but eventually I just sort of dropped it. Now it's all coming together. loving colorists. Why must most of them suck? Oh, and the wrestling comic is hurting my brain. There is never any excuse for that kind of garbage. Norm Breyfogle is working for Archie right now. There are plenty of really great comic book artists who just can't seem to find work that would love to get paid to draw a real comic for a giant organization with millions of dollars to spend. You don't have to let your VP of Finance's nephew that still lives at home and can't find a steady job "draw" it for you. Geekboy fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Sep 18, 2011 |
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Sep 18, 2011 06:37
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Madkal posted:At my library we have two books by Shaun Tan. The Arrival and Lost and Found. See? See this right here? This is why seeing the same overpolished superhero stuff drives me insane sometimes. Here we have this wonderful art form where we can do literally anything someone can draw and we use it for power fantasies. I mean, I love me some superheroes, but look at what we're capable of. Thanks for recommending these. I'm definitely going to have to track them down when I have some time/money.
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Sep 22, 2011 01:08
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Semper Fudge posted:Colorists Fixed that for you. Back then they at least had some idea of color concepts and did interesting things with the tools and time available to them. Now they can just gently caress up the artwork even more by adding lens flares and motion blurs and all sorts of other garbage to make it even harder than ever to tell if what's underneath is any good or not. Geekboy fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Oct 16, 2011 |
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Oct 16, 2011 22:28
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Breetai posted:That being said, have you seen the recolour of [insert literally any comic before 1990]? This is always false. Always. Okay, now I'm sure that isn't literally true. I'm sure someone has done something worth looking at, but it's so few and far between that it's ludicrous. What's really sad to me is that most original coloring doesn't look that great in reprints anymore because the paper's too slick and it makes the colors too garish. I've spent years trying to understand why a guy who had maybe 16 colors available to him (I should ask my Dad about this since he worked at print shops all his adult life until he retired a few years ago) and probably less than an hour a page to spot the colors whose work would be printed on stuff that was so cheap it would occasionally have wood chips in it could do a better job than someone with a nearly infinite number of colors, loads more time, better printing processes, and better paper. I think what it comes down to is that there is simply no one who is doing modern coloring who has an understanding of color concepts and how they apply mainly to advertising. There's a reason McDonald's is white, red, and yellow. It is a stimulating set of colors that appears all over the place in advertising. These old comic colorists were probably old ad men who were used to making kids buy Howdy Doody dolls and Red Rider b-b guns, so it wasn't anything approaching an art to them. They knew "red means this, green means this, purple means this," and brought in that mind set and just ran with it. Yeah, it was very assembly-line-driven and there was little to no "art" behind it, but it worked and it worked damned well. Today, the obsession is applying shading and effects to make it look "real," when that isn't always what best serves the story or the artwork. If you complained to a colorist from 1963 that his work wasn't realistic, he'd probably blow cigar smoke in your face and look at you like you were insane. Now, the colorists view their work as an art form (and it's not that it isn't or shouldn't be) that is equally important to the pencils and inks and they spend too much time on all the wrong things. I haven't taken the time to do detailed biographical searches on all the colorists out there, but the impression I get from looking at their work is that their primary focus tends to be on fine arts and/or computer work with no real experience in straight graphic design with an eye on advertising. They also tend to lean far more towards realism than expressionism or any other art movements (and I'd even argue most of them only took art history classes because it was required for their major and then slept through them). These don't tend to serve them well in an industry full of stylistic interpretations of reality that are pounded out at a breakneck pace. I'm at work or I'd find an example (actually, no I wouldn't because I'm too lazy), but imagine a scene where a slezy noir-ish detective is alone in his office. There's a blind letting in some bleak light, but it's dark and it's dirty. A modern colorist would look at what color everything was supposed to be (brown coat, red and yellow tie, white shirt) and start applying shading based on those colors and the angle of the light source. Some of the linework would of course be lost to the shading, but that's the price of giving these shapes real form. The end result would almost certainly include highlights too bright for the scene and give little to no feeling of mood. A colorist from the silver or bronze age would color the whole thing a couple shades of purple, maybe throw in some zip-a-tone if they were feeling really inspired and had the time, then plop a couple of stripes of yellow to show the light coming through the blinds. There might be a dull yellow highlight here or there, but that's about it. In my eyes, that second one will always look better. It tells the story better, sets the mood more effectively, and doesn't destroy the linework. I am so sick of seeing gorgeous pencils and inks destroyed by overzealous colorists who completely ignore all the work that the other artists put in because they want to lay a shadow down or apply a motion blur or something equally ridiculous and unnecessary. Obviously, this is something I've spent way too much time thinking about. As I get older, I see through the Emporer's clothes more and more when it comes to my beloved past time and distraction. I still love comics, but I'm done pretending all the writers are great (or have ever actually talked to or thought about a woman who wasn't a prostitute or stripper), that all the art is incredible, and that the business is interested in giving us something artistic. Just like the movies, the point is to sell and if there happens to be something worthwhile artistically that slips through, that's just an added but unintentional bonus. I think it speaks for the raw talent of the heroes of yester-year (men like Kirby and Ditko and everyone who worked along side them) that they created things that still blow our minds today when their primary goal was paying their rent. I am not crapping on the artists, but rather trying to lift them up a little more so that we realize how special it is when something remarkable gets through despite everything the business side does to stifle it. None of these are new complaints from me, though. I'll take something flawed but visceral over something clean but lifeless any and every day of the week.
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Oct 17, 2011 17:48
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Bluetooth human being posted:Man, you must've borrowed Cyclops glasses. You do realize that according to everything I just said, this would be an improvement right? Kismet, the first lesson I learned in art school was that having a limited criteria made me create better work than when I was sitting at home doing whatever I wanted. So that makes perfect sense to me. I'm not saying that there's no ability for people today to do better things than what was done yesterday. This isn't an old man rant, this is an art snob rant wondering why nobody can take their limitless tools and do awesome things with them. It's exactly like wondering why movies with practical effects look so great and people with CGI who can do literally anything often don't manage to outdo a guy making things out of latex in his garage. In the end, I'm blaming the industry and its fans, who should be demanding better.
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Oct 17, 2011 20:59
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Fair enough. I was at work waiting for something to process, so I had some free time with limited access to the internet. My inherent laziness is also a factor, but that's a topic for an e/n thread. Rather than reaching way, way back I'll go with some things that really stuck out to me as a kid. The first comic book I ever had a subscription to (back in the days when I couldn't drive yet and I couldn't talk Mom and Dad into constantly taking me to the comic book store) was the Australian era of X-Men. They had just gone through the Siege Perilous and the world thought they were dead. Anyway, the Marc Silvestri art was great and the pre-computer coloring was probably about as good as it got. Here are a couple of covers that stood out to me in my memory.  Here's another using the same palette for a similar result:  The limited palette and use of expressionist techniques for color choice evoke a tremendous amount of mood and feeling in these. They aren't high art, but the flat colors don't obscure the great pencil and inking work while enhancing the mood of the pieces. Now, in contrast here's a page from the recent Superman: Secret Origins, which I thought had amazing artwork and really unimpressive colors. This is a great piece in black and white, evoking mood and using the spot blacks to really make Superman, the beacon of hope, stand out from the darkness of the city behind him. You even have the sky opening up behind him, signifying the way he brings light to the world around him. It's carefully thought out and besides just being a great, iconic shot of Clark changing to Superman, it actually has some meaning behind it.  Now, let's look at the coloring job that was done.  The coloring does absolutely nothing to support the themes that Frank put into the piece and is, in fact, completely ignorant of them. There's nothing in the coloring that supports the themes of light breaking out of darkness and very little to make that S-Shield stand out the way it was clearly meant to in the original piece. So this is why it fails to do anything on an emotional level, despite having access to a million different color choices. As far as realism goes, it fails there, too. Colors tend to fade as they are thrown into darkness, which you can see just by walking around in low light. Light is necessary for us to perceive color. The shade of blue used in that blue suit (which I kind of respect, since it's the iconic "Clark Kent Suit," after all) does not change from one section to another. The value (amount of darkness or light) changes, but not the actual hue (the saturation of color). There are also way too many highlights and even if you give it the squint test, the colors aren't separate enough to make the different elements stand out. Clark doesn't stand out from the skyline behind him enough, either. If you squint, it all turns into a single bluish blob because the colors in the foreground are not significantly separated from the ones in the background. They're even lazy enough that they turned all the background lines gray to hide the fact that they couldn't separate the foreground and background enough. I've already been told I'm typing too much so I guess I'll stop there, but I hope that gives some idea of what I'm talking about. Modern coloring tends to take away detail and kill a lot of the work that the penciller and inker put into it, but there's no reason that it has to. It just does. Not everything is made of perfectly rounded plastic cylinders with highlights and shadows. There's no sense of texture or expression anymore. It's all plastic cylinders all the time and I hate it.
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Oct 19, 2011 17:48
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DarkCrawler posted:gently caress Humberto Ramos. Seriously, I can barely sketch a stick figure but I'm pretty sure that given a few months of drawing training I could at least replicate this bullshit. He is an horrible artist whose "art" isn't worth the paper it's printed on and unlike other horrible artists his stuff actually seems to get worse and lazier, at least his early stuff is sometimes tolerable. How dare he draw in a stylized manner! Like him or don't, but this hyperbole of "I can do better despite never having drawn before" is ridiculous. Heresiarch posted:Incompetence is not a "style", regardless of how much DeviantArt kids want it to be. Are you kidding me? Not liking the guy's style (and there are plenty of reasons not to) is different from stupid hyperbole. Geekboy fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Oct 20, 2011 |
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Oct 20, 2011 02:34
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Heresiarch posted:You keep moving the goal posts because you're the only one saying things that are "demonstrably" wrong. No one who is defending Ramos is saying that you have to like him. Most of them aren't even saying he's particularly good (though when he's not under a monstrous deadline, he is). Your criticisms are vague and constantly changing so that you can still feel like you're right despite evidence to the contrary. I haven't quite figured out how heavily stylized anatomy can be "wrong," though. It's one thing when mid-90's artists were doing wildly inconsistent nonsense or had different rules for men and women (because they were barely the first and had never actually seen the other in real life). For example, I love Kelley Jones' Batman. It has little to do with actual human anatomy, but it evokes incredible mood and is just genuinely visually striking.  His anatomy is "wrong," but that is meaningless. It is exaggerated and stylish, but no moreso than the work of other favorites of mine, like Bernie Wrightson or Hieronymus Bosch. Again, there are plenty of reasons not to like Ramos' work (especially some of the really rushed stuff he'd done lately), but most of what you're saying is just not correct.
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Oct 24, 2011 03:28
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Lurdiak posted:I'm saying it. Humberto Ramos is a demonstrably bad artist that draws badly and gets paid to draw badly and if you like his bad drawings you have bad art fundamentals and bad taste. Ah, yes. The "no u" defense. Very clever and well reasoned. Why, you have certainly pulled from a myriad of examples and backed up your opinions with facts and principles. I am not a fan of Ramos and doubt I've bought any of his books since that vampire thing he did ages ago. It isn't appealing to me because of what I enjoy and am drawn to, but I see what he is working to achieve with his style and he succeeds at it. Just like I'm not a fan of cubism but don't talk about it being dumb, I don't poo poo on artists in comics who do things I am not a fan of on a purely stylistic level as being untalented hacks, especially when they're good storytellers. Except for Joe Mad. gently caress that guy. Art is more than just comics and I love when people pull in influences besides Romita, Perez, and Buscema. I love those guys, but there are other ways to tell stories through the juxtaposition of images.
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Oct 24, 2011 11:29
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Wendell posted:
If I could trade hands with anyone, it would be him. I want to draw like this (but I don't draw anything like this).
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Dec 14, 2011 00:45
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