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Resurrection, dude…

jeromy — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:55:19 +0000

Ahhh! Where did February, March and April go? To say I’ve been busy lately would insult father time and we all know what a grouch he can be. Well, I’ll just start where I left off. My first couple of Resurrection man issues came out. Starting with issue six, I took over colors from “….” and whenever I take over from another colorist, I try to ape some of their style and blend it with my own. I know this is all going to be collected and read in order, so I do my best not to make the styles jump to significantly. I want a continuity for the overall order of the pages. I wasn’t completely familiar with the series, but I’ve worked with writer Andy Lanning a lot. Namely Otherworld with Phil Jimenez.

Issue six takes place in Arkham Asylum, so I got a chance to color a lot of different villains. Artist Fernando Guerra is really amazing. Sort of a throw back style, but that’s a compliment in my book. Even though his style is more classic, his process involves a lot of computer work as far as I can tell. When there are FX or layered characters, the files I receive are set up so I can pull some parts out and isolate certain elements without having to make selections. If the artist knows how to do this, (Fernando does) this works really well for me.

The editors wanted me to take the colors in a more graphic coloring direction. which I can see what they want in terms of story. Sometimes you’re going for more of a moody tone, like an independent book or a book from Vertigo, but this storyline is best served to dynamically “pop”. The lead character in the book dies nearly every issue and is reborn with new powers. Story/tone wise, death and resurrection isn’t a subtle subject. It’s brash and exciting. I’m trying to match that tone in my colors. Am I over thinking this stuff. I don’t think so, and besides, this is what I do. Why not over think it? Sure this can kill spontaneity, but I’m not referring to that. I’m thinking that these little stylistic choices I hit upon, make a difference. I’ve actually had a number of people write me or tell me at conventions, about things they’ve noticed I’m doing and ask wether they were intentional. So even if it’s a small few things, I’m going to keep putting the thought into it, because I think it makes a difference.

Issue seven, I started to feel a bit more comfortable with issue seven which really loosens me up to start trying more of my own tricks and flavors. The issue had a lot of what are sometimes referred to as Knock Outs, or color holds or special effects. Basically, it’s where you’re colors or painting is affecting the line work done by the penciler and inker. There was a lot of fire and Mitch, the lead character, was lit up with his own blue fire and there was this magic/new power signature I had to come up with. These all really make the pages glow and sing, but they often overlap, so you have to plan the colors you choose to use. Choosing the wrong background color can really flatten out a page. If the fire or magic is a similar hue, it all gets lost on the printed page. Fernando does a lot of the special effects on his own layers and I pull them out of his photoshop files and layer them into and colorize them to work with my rendered files. Overall, I really liked the printed version of this comic. I’ve been having some difficulties with how my stuff is printing lately, so that feels good when it’s close to right. It’s just something you have to play with when there are new printers involved. I just need a little bit darker darks, more interesting mid tones and the saturation to bump up, just a smidge. I don’t think I ‘ll ever be happy, but I get close.

The most recent issue to come out, issue eight, printed better than the two prior issues, because I’d tweaked my settings and monitor to really get what I see on screen to match the printed page. Granted, RGB to CMYK is never going to hold up, but I’ve gotten pretty good over the years at knowing which colors will print and how well. Reds are still difficult. I know if I was working in CMYK, I would be picking specific reds that would really pop, but some of my other colors turn out so well, I just do my best with trying to not let my reds go to pink or orange.

This issue was also chock full of special effects, but the better color reproduction worked to my advantage. This issue was my favorite one, yet. Well, that’s it for now. I have a ton of post lined up, so bear with me as I get them all in line.

-j

Drawings Next Door

jeromy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:35:42 +0000

I’m a big fan of Santigold and she recently released a new video. Upon viewing it, I loved it but I kept thinking it reminded me of something. At first, I thought it might be M.I.A., but that wasn’t it. Later that night, enjoying a winter brew at the Tap Room, it hit me. The Guys Next Door. “Wow. I wonder if that’s on youtube?” I thought to myself and then realized I have an awesome phone, let’s take a look. There it was. Many years back, I was animating all manner of things at a place called American Film Technologies. I believe we were finishing up some O.G. Readmore (‘riginal Gangsta) and I believe my friend Corey or Heather (memory fail, this was awhile ago) and I were pulled on to do some animation for an opening of a new show. The art director, Ron Elliot, was an intense guy. He explained his ideas and it all sounded fine by me. We were going to be animating graphic elements traditionally (on paper and animation disc) and then do the coloring and effects in post. The big to do about AFT was that we were the first animation company to be completely paperless. The system we developed went on to become Toon Boom, if I’m not mistaken. We had time sheets, cassette tapes of the song that we played in “Walk Man‘s” and some loose scene break downs. Small joys were things like working to get the keyboard that flies in, to be directly beneath the one singers (Patrick Dancy) fingers. Timing the key frames so the keyboard arrives just in time, doing the inbetweens ourselves and having to shoot the frames on a camera system we had set up were all great hands on touches that changed things up in a real nice way. The fact that we were getting to animate on a disc with actual paper we’d ordered from Cartoon Supplies was great. I used to love their catalogue they sent out with orders. I do have to say, listening to that song over and over again in headphones can drive a man zany. It probably only took us a week to complete, but the change of pace made me come back to the computer and the Suma Sketch with a whole new energy. I’m about to brush off some of my animation rust for some pieces in the Gothic Cowboy movie I’m attempting to complete by July. Strangely, seeing this old clip is giving me energy, once again. Not to mention it makes me laugh. That’s some cheesy stuff right there.
-J

C T P

jeromy — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:08:26 +0000

What’s this all about? You’re just going to have to read it to find out for yourself. I have this story I’ve been wanting to write for several years and I’m finally putting it out there. I’m putting up new parts every Tuesday. New chapters start on the second Tuesday of each month, but if you check in every following Tuesday, you’ll find updates and revisions that I’ve made over the course of the week. Surprisingly, the revisions and editing are turning out to be some of the most fun. If you want to read the nice fully formated and edited version, then you’re going to have to tune in next year. Yeah, next year. There are 12 chapters, which means, I won’t be finishing this until January 1st, 2013. I’m averaging about 5000 words a part, with each chapter having four parts, that puts the final page count some where around 120,000 words. Eeek. Some of it’s hard for me to read with all the grammatical errors and a severe lack of polish (not Polish), but I’m having a blast writing it and this Tuesday deadline thing is really working for me. So, if you’re into some amateur quirky satire, jump on board. Then again, If un-edited manuscripts drive you up a wall, you might just want to chill for a year. Happy reading.

-J

…something strikingly ugly-beautiful about the vibrant color choices.

jeromy — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:16:43 +0000

Yeah. Strikingly ugly-beautiful. I’ll take that. Sounds great. Comics Alliance gave a nod to a cover Nathan Fox drew and I colored for the zombie comic series Key Of Z. The other covers included in their list of best comic covers for January 2012 are really beautiful. You’ll have to scroll down to nearly the end of the post to find the Key Of Z cover. Comics Alliance always has cool posts that point me to other cool comics and really amazing artists. The rest of this cover really is a treat, so check it out when it hits the stands. This was a beast of a file. I think I colored it at 720 dpi, so you could make a giant back drop of this if you wanted and it would really hold up. I used the sort of garish colors to make the piece pop. Working on my own zombie comics for years and buying numerous other ones makes me fully aware that there is a standard aesthetic for producing traditional comics involving zombies. Nathan’s first couple of covers really established that this wasn’t going to be traditional. I took a key from his previous covers and then added my bent take on it. The details in the piece are really cool, and when you see the full piece, you can appreciate what I’m talking about even more.
Seeing this cover today, reminded me of another piece I colored for Nathan a few months back. I decided to see if I could hunt it down and there it was. Cool. A take on a rather famous cover, you can tell I had fun coloring it. I believe Nathan is currently working on the Haunt comic right now. Real perdy. Well, I have a book due tomorrow, so I best be going.
-J
Update: Cool… CBR is digging the cover as well. Check it out.

Danger ahead

jeromy — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:41:41 +0000

Danger Girl: Revolver numero uno came out this week. I provided the many colors that saturate the book. Danger Girl is an interesting book for me to color for a number of reasons. The book itself is a bevy of beautiful adventurers taking part in many over the top action sequences. The artwork, provided by Chris Madden, is very open and wonderfully dynamic. It looks a lot like some of my favorite Disney character designs. Upon picking the actual book up at the store, I cracked it open nervous that it may have printed too dark. I hadn’t had anything printed through IDW in quite awhile and was nervous my settings for other printers might not work. I’ve been doing this for years and I still get bad print jobs from time to time. Happily, this issue printed perfect. Really solid glossy paper that really matched my screen well. The book is a fun romp and I wanted the colors to match the tone of the art and story. My first thought, “mmmm, yummy candy.” Now I know I’m talking about my own artwork here, so bare with me, but the colors printed all colorful and fun. That’s
one of the things I was aiming for. I also, wanted to match a bit of the cinematic feel Danger Girl has. Chris draws every detail you could imagine and Andy Hartnell, the writer, mentions even more details in his scripts and notes. Overall, it’s a bit laborious to keep up with, but the finished product is well worth it.
Mentioning Andy takes me back a bit. Cue soft focus and dreamy music. Candle’s light. Ahhh, the good ol’ days. Danger Girl takes me back to Wildstorm studios many, many moons ago. One of the first books I worked on, after Stormwatch and WildC.A.T.S., was the first Gen 13 series. Jeff Scott Cambell was one of the new artists brought in from the Wildstorm talent search. He was at Wildstorm well before I showed up, but I actually worked on bunch of the first series. Back then, Joe Chiodo (art god in my book) with a few assistants would mock up these amazing color guides in markers and colored pencil. If you’ve ever seen these guides, you know I’m not exaggerating when I use the word amazing. Anyways, the four or five computer colorists that were at Wildstorm would divvy up the pages and all gang up to color the books. The color guides helped us keep our styles cohesive and provided an overall look for the books. The computers we used back then were so slow, we were lucky if we could finish one page in a day. We were also developing the first real digital coloring styles along with some of the other Image studios coloring departments. Joe’s guides elevated our collective look and made us all much better artists than we were when we started. I dragged out some old “make ready’s” I had, to illustrate where we’ve come from in those early days of computer coloring/painting. Make ready’s were the uncut books we got from the printer to see if anything went majorly wrong. The Gen-13 cover on the right was one of the first pieces I did without a guide. My coloring was fairly weak when I first started at Wildstorm, I just had some really good talents with computers and drawing at the time. I had been working in animation and video games, and I had self published my first couple of issues of Zombie Love, but none of these really focused on color, per se. Wildstorm acted as part job/part school. This particular cover I wanted to play with some techniques I had been imagining but had not yet had the chance to apply. I crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it on the scanner to then use as an alpha channel on the manilla envelope and the classified document. I added a texture one the wall behind the Gen-13 kids. The biggest thing I did was went ahead and manipulated the line work. Back then, the comic industry was moving from basically fill colors on comics and most artists didn’t want their line work messed with. I decided it would look cool to add creases to the photo and slightly blur the smoke coming off the cigarette. Everyone seemed happy with the finished cover, though some were nervous I was taking too many liberties with the line work. In hind sight, that would pale in comparison to what colorists/painters are now responsible for in the creative process of producing comics.
Okay, off that tangent of working with Jeff and Alex (Alex Garner was the inker for Gen-13) from way back when, move forward to, I’ve left Wildstorm to work at Angel Studios (Rockstar West) as an art director on a Disney ride for their new Disney Quest project. I was down in La Jolla to visit friends, namely Guy Major, and see what’s up with the studio. Guy and my friend Justin Ponsor (both whom I had a hand in hiring… mad props to me.. woo woo) were working on this new book by Jeff that was being written by another friend who I totally got hired, Andy Hartnell. The name of the book was Danger Girl. Andy is a great guy to hang out with and shares so many of the same likes and tastes that it feels like we were both grown in adjacent vats. I have fond memories of playing Doom II on the coloring computers until the wee hours of the morning, and trekking to Xena conventions to track down Lucy Lawless, and another trip with our friend Ian to a convention where we had the worst road side dining experience of all time. Fun stuff. So, Andy, is writing this new book and Guy and Justin are coloring it and I’m thinking to myself, let’s see what these kids are up to since I’ve left. Damn. I really couldn’t believe what was on the screens in the “pit” (common work area for the colorists). Justin and Guy had moved up a giant notch (that’s one of my stage names). Their colors were bold and so colorful in all the right ways. Jeff’s artwork took off in this whole new direction that had a more cinematic feel and all of his figures were now way more solid and stronger than what he was doing on Gen-13. Thumbing through the print outs, I could tell this book was going to be gangbusters. But I wondered about the story. Could Andy pull it off and live up to this great artwork. Well, of course he did. Why would I start this thread and not have a plan to tie it up. Andy’s fun adventure style of writing is exactly what ties the whole book together. His love of Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and Army of Darkness shines through in what’s just an enjoyable read. Is this Tolstoy? No. I don’t want to read a Tolstoy comic.. well, okay, maybe I do.. but that’s not my point. That’s where I’m going with all of this. I have a lot of admiration for what these guys had/have done and I’m going to do my best to live up to it. This is the first of four issues. Check it out (here’s a good preview of the book) if you need need some good escapism, and really, who doesn’t at this point. Have fun!
-J

Death Sentence…

jeromy — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:45:37 +0000

Comp copies

jeromy — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:04:31 +0000

Wooo…. I received comp copies of some of my comic work this week. First off, the Avengers Academy Volume 2 trade printed amazing. These colors are way closer to what I had intended and what the actual images looked like on my screen. The individual issues didn’t necessarily print bad, but they just lacked or printed a slight too saturated. There were three pencilers on this arc. Mike McKone, whom I’ve always enjoyed working with, Sean Chen who really knocked it out of the park and gave me plenty of room to play with colors and the third is my good friend Tom Raney. I first met Tom years ago at Wildstorm in La Jolla. I immediately liked his style and realized he was the guy that came from Marvel doing some, I think it was Infinity War or some other Adam Warlock story. Tom worked on Team One: Stormwatch at the time and I dug his style. I really grew to love his art a few years later when he, a bunch of other Wildstorm artists and I were doing a signing in Florida. I was sitting next to Tom and the quick sketches he was doing for fans were just great. Flash forward 15 years or so and I’m at a New York comic con party at the Empire State building and Tom comes up to me and says something like “Isn’t it great?” and I say “What?”. He told me we would be working together on Avengers Academy. Such cool news. I immediately knew what I would want to do with Tom’s art and then the story arc that Christos Gage came up with was just pitch perfect for what I felt Tom and my strengths are. Korvac showing up and battling all these Avengers and the Avengers Academy kids. Fun, fun stuff. The colors in this trade really sing. Hats off to Jen Grunwald and everyone in the Marvel collections department. This made me extremely happy. Oh, and the back cover is the cover that was deep fried on Thirty Rock last year.

The other trade I received from Marvel this week was the newest collection of X-Factor. I only colored around two issues in this collection, but they printed just as well as the Avengers Academy trade. This story arc is where I was weened off the book as it were. Somewhat sad because I enjoyed working on Peter David’s stories and I really did want to stay with the book. In this trade, new artist, Emanuela Lupacchino took over. I’d never seen her stuff before but it is really sharp. I would have loved to have colored it but lucky for the book, my friend Matt Milla took over the colors and is doing a pretty insane job. Really rich colors. Matt came into Wildstorm shortly after I left, but we have a ton of similar friends. I think Matt also used to work with Brian Haberlin, and old friend of mine that ended up running Top Cow’s color among a million other things. If you get a chance, check out what Emanuela, Matt and Peter are doing on that book. Really cool story line.

Lastly, I received my copies of Dark Knight 4 and the final issue of DMZ. Dark Knights cover is colored by Alex Sinclair and the cover to DMZ 72 is by John Paul Leon. John’s cover is perfect and I’m happy that the colors actually printed good. I had some problems on some of the final issues running a bit dark because we switched printers, I believe. There are so many variances in colors and printing that it can be a bit unnerving if you let it get to you. So many things are out of your hands, that when you finish, you just sorta half to let go of it. These two issues printed great though, so no complaints. I need to get an iPad or an android tablet so I can start seeing these issues in their digital download versions.
-J

Batman, Wonder Woman and the Flash… you need more?

jeromy — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:57:10 +0000

I mentioned that the last issue of DMZ came out last week, but another book I worked on also came out. Issue 4 of Batman: Dark Knight to be specific. I’m really trying to go all out with this book. I’ve limited the amount of work I’m taking (I just had to turn down a book, not ten minutes ago… ugh.. I hate turning down work) and I’m trying to get pages done early so I can get a vibe for entire book early on. On this issue, I zeroed in on the last page. Without giving it away, its’ a nice reveal and I really flexed my photoshop skills to compliment such a cool image that David Finch drew and Richard Friend inked. I don’t want to show you here, you have to go buy it. Sometimes rendering out of order can give you bench marks to reach or live up to. It’s like in screen writing books when they say know your ending. By establishing a really cool ending shot, you have a destination to travel towards as you work on the rest of the book. Also, coloring specific scene changes in a book can give the other artists on the book and the editors a chance to see what you’re thinking and whatever problems that come up can be worked out early, as opposed to closer to the deadline. You can then use these approved pages as color keys for the rest of the book. I tend to be graphic in my storytelling. The comics I read when I was younger were very direct in their color choices. Loud, bright and vibrant. Big color changes can be used to indicate scene changes, or plot twists. Going from a saturated scene to a more subdued palette can help the reader discern things have changed. Another good place to start when just beginning a book is a good hero shot. That’s a page where the main character is dominant on the page.

Making the strongest images in the book look well rendered and solid is beneficial to do early, so that if you’re have to pick up pace as you move closer and closer to the deadline (these things come out ever month) you’re not rushing a really important image that takes up a lot of space and importance in the book. Still, another good place to start is with new characters that aren’t normally in the book. Again, letting everyone else that works on the book know and see what you’re doing puts more eyes on the page. With this particular issue, the Flash and Wonder Woman show up. I render these up so that completely different editors for those respective books can have time to make comments or point out what may be going on in their storylines. An example would be, the DC Universe recently had a huge relaunch and a lot of the characters costumes changed. Flash has this new piping that runs across his costume and sort of powers up when he really gets going. These are all things I had to learn and apply to this book. I read a lot of comic books, but you’re always figuring out new changes and details the more and more that you work on these titles. A few years back, my friend Guy Major and I colored a big company crossover book for DC entitled Infinite Crisis. That was a real crash course for me to learn so many of the different DC characters I’d never even heard of. I could keep going, but that would take time from you gathering up your wallet and rushing to your local comic store to buy this wonderful book. I’m finishing another issue of Batman for next week, so I gotta go.

Such heaps of broken glass

jeromy — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:40:44 +0000

Shattering and avalanching

jeromy — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:15:27 +0000