digital OA as a 1 off print?

[Dark Prime 0]

i wrote russel (artist for thor 1) if the way i read the 1 off OA print thing is how i understood what he ment correctly, here was his answer

 

Yep, you're correct. I work all digitally, so my original art is a signed, high-quality print (artist's proof) of each page. Only one proof is sold per page, so it's the closest I get to original art in the traditional sense.

[Nexus]

One compromise that can work for some comic book artists is to create the interiors digitally but pencil/ink the cover the old fashioned way, so as to have some original art they can sell (I expect Felix can chime in on this point).

 

This is a no-brainer compromise, IMO. SAGA is an immensely popular comic where all the art is digital. If Fiona Staples, the artist, chose to draw only the covers on paper, she could be driving a new Mercedes every year.

 

However, given that Nick Dragotta and I have gotten the ball rolling on redrawing digital art on paper for the collector market, she could now go back and draw the covers to sell and likely still do just as well.

 

In our case, Nick has been drawing some covers on paper, not digitally, for a few issues now. But I believe there will be less of a distinction down the line between what was drawn on paper originally and what was redrawn, as this sort of thing becomes more common. In other words, if I'm right, a redrawn A digital cover will have more value than an original B cover (again, so long as there is only one hand-drawn example of the A cover). We shall see.

[MHoes]

If Fiona Staples, the artist, chose to draw only the covers on paper, she could be driving a new Mercedes every year.

Maybe Im remembering incorrectly, but doesnt Mike Deodato Jr. do this with all of his later works ? Interiors all digital, but all covers drawn traditionally on an 11x17'' art board ? It seems like a good way to handle the issue to me.

[Garf]

For the record I don't object to artists using digital I just think it's a step in the wrong direction which could lead to a process more aligned with animation. That's not necessarily going to happen but it would drastically change the collectible product if it did.

 

Recreations are interesting. When it comes to panel pages even individual panels are there to consider.

[Guest Grails]

why collect OA at all, when you can just go to CAF or other sites and print off a copy of the OA from there?

 

You know that's silly. Big difference between owning original art and a copy of the original art.

 

 

If no tangible original art exists as it was done on a PC and its just printed out, its not worth more than the price of paper to me. Since realistically, the artist could print however many copies he wanted off. I'm not knocking those who choose to collect these, just saying a print is a print to me regardless if its 1/1 or 1/300.

[Dark Prime 0]

I just don't really understand the market for digital prints. What's to stop anyone from making a high quality print from the image? If you have the digital image off of Comixology or from a high rez scan or where ever, you could just print out a copy for yourself.

i'm going by what you said on this......a large amt of OA are in pics from either the artist themselves or an owner. why go after peice X when i can just go on CAF or their websites or where ever and print the peice out myself

 

and from my understanding comixology is a site for reading books not looking at OA

 

if the digital is already colored then i'd say no out right (which is what i think you ment from the comixology post), but a "inked" 1 off is where i'm not sure about, from looking at russels site all he has is the "inked" peices not colored, going to assume he sent the file to someone else to color it

 

as i'm sure you know meny artist ink their own work. in the end i see no difference between a 1 off and OA since it's the only way the digital will become OA.......as long as it remains a true 1 off and not become a limited print and such, but as i buy for investment & enjoyment i want to make sure i will be able to sell it down the road if need be. wither i make or lose money on it is a different story and has no bareing on this discussion

[Rmfn33]

Not sure where my 2 cents would lead to this... but when Russell drew Nightwing a few months back I absolutely loved one of the spreads in that issue. I quikly emailed Russell to see if he was selling the OA for it.. I then found out what you all know that he only works in digital and he sells High Quality Artist proofs. I contemplated getting the piece and eventually got it.. I will say that the quality is really top notch. If you did not know it was digital, I would say that the majority of people would think it is a normal inked page.

 

Here is the piece below:

 

 

If anyone has any questions on it I would be glad to answer them to the best of my ability.

 

Thanks!

[Garf]

in the end i see no difference between a 1 off and OA since it's the only way the digital will become OA.......as long as it remains a true 1 off and not become a limited print and such, but as i buy for investment & enjoyment i want to make sure i will be able to sell it down the road if need be. wither i make or lose money on it is a different story and has no bareing on this discussion

 

I think this is where a lot of people on the OA forum would disagree. A print won't magically become the equivalent of OA, the comic is already done and published so the print will be manufactured outside of this process afterwards. Look at it this way... published comics that use artists who work using traditional pencil and ink method can't exist without the OA, whereas published comics that use artists who work in a digital format can still exist without the print.

 

Your original question was "does it affect the price" so it's a natural extension to consider the secondary market. I may be a bit harsh here, I might not, but if you buy a print for $300 then maybe you can sell it down the line for $50, maybe you will get zero interest at all. I wouldn't ever bet on it appreciating, because it isn't OA.

 

[Captain Canuck]

The problem I see, there is no way to guarantee that the artist won't produce and sell duplicates of the same piece. If he/she falls on hard times, are you telling they won't print duplicates of their more famous pieces to get back on their feet and claim it is the original. The problem comes all down to trust. In regards to others printing out copies from CAF or wherever else and claiming it is an original, the artist can put an embossing stamp on each of the pieces he/she sells to make that clear distinction.

[Garf]

One other thing that I don't know about which I asked earlier is if the print is of for example a published Thor comic, what's stopping the copyright owner from licensing that image or images to be reproduced in any way they see fit?

[Captain Canuck]

Isn't that the same with all OA, print or digital? If we buy the art, we don't have the rights to reproduce it, but artist or studio does.

[Captain Canuck]

Embossing stamp from the artist will help with that distinction.

[theflashunc]

I'll just echo others in the thread. Great discussion so far and one (at least modern collectors) are going to have to increasingly grapple with. Its something I'm struggling with, but I can't say I'd rule it out for the right piece.

 

The number of modern series with art I'd like to own -- but are either mostly or all digital -- is pretty incredible. I think the future is going to get here sooner than we think.

 

But I don't necessarily view this change as a bad thing. There'll still be plenty of 11x17 with pencils and India inks for those who prefer them, and who knows how many options for digital work -- Felix's example is a great one. I find this kind of stuff exciting and fascinating as markets change and evolve.

 

I could see a point in the future -- obviously not tomorrow -- when the digital file for the page itself is bought and sold as something that has value.

 

 

 

 

[Dark Prime 0]

The problem I see, there is no way to guarantee that the artist won't produce and sell duplicates of the same piece. If he/she falls on hard times, are you telling they won't print duplicates of their more famous pieces to get back on their feet and claim it is the original. The problem comes all down to trust. In regards to others printing out copies from CAF or wherever else and claiming it is an original, the artist can put an embossing stamp on each of the pieces he/she sells to make that clear distinction.

never said to print it and clam as an original, just that you now have that peice

 

though i can see what you mean as there are scamers out there that will do that excat thing (thumbs u ( honestly didn't think of this when i wrote that)

 

yes i agree it all comes down to trust, you just have to hope artist X's morals will hold up during a tough time in life

 

though i have to point out conserning prints of their most famous peices......when has there ever been a print of a paneled page? covers/splash pages yes, paneled page not to my knowledge (though i am still a novice in OA)

[vodou]

On the subject of duplication outside the original sales pitch (1/1)...that already happens. There are recreations that are not clearly identified as such, even by the original artist, sketches that all look "essentially" the same (stock pose #18 sort of thing), outright fakes/scams...endless. Wherever there is a buck to be made...somebody will eventually fill the void, scrupulous or not. There is no stopping this. And the concern of such has existed as long as people have paid more than cost of materials for something. But what can never be duplicated is a place/time/provenance for a transaction. Keep good records and you'll always have that...something the other guy won't. Or will have to fake up. So even JohnnyBoy ends up churning out another 100 copies of your 1/1...only yours will have a PayPal (or whatever) receipt timestamped 10:15 am ET 10/14/2014, showing $300 moving from your account to JohnnyBoy's.

[Bronty]

True, although if the 1/1 cover becomes 1/1001, will anyone care that that the 1/1001 came first? I think the 1/1 gets massively devalued if many more such prints are made - meaning the time stamp becomes a cold comfort. And, as has been mentioned by several I don't trust that others won't get made over the years as financial situations and/or morals change ( and one tends to influence the other). The trust issue is huge

[Bronty]

Even with hand drawn art, the published art is more valuable than unpublished for precisely this reason. You can't make another. You have the printed comic and other avenues to verify authenticity. You'd almost need it to be done as part of a central program with cgc or somebody else in the industry where it's printed on special marked paper, artist gets booted from the program if they break the rules, etc. even then though I don't see a way to stop copies 20 years out

[AKA Rick]

If it's about ownership and exclusivity, the need be the one who possesses a one of a kind item, then the digital prints marked as 1/1 may mean a lot to that collector. If it's about appreciating art for the aesthetics and without any thought to investment nor prestige, I'd say the digital prints may not be your cup of tea in lieu of other options, including just having a digital copy of the image (even in publication form) or printing out a larger size of the published cover/page, much like how you see so many pirates out there making rouge "Canvas Lithographs" which many are just printouts, and you can enjoy the art visually without spending an arm and a leg.

 

If it is about being an exclusive owner and investment, I personally feel digital prints are non-options in terms of appeal to me if the price tag is over $50. To me, an unnumbered print is worth anywhere from $10-25 and a signed and limited edition print is worth anywhere from $20-100. I get it that there's a "take my word for it" guarantee or promise of these 1/1 digital prints, even with signatures and COA's, still has less appeal to me as "original art" - - I still get stuck on inks over bluelines as being less appealing 'tho, so that's just my perspective on what I like and what I don't like.

 

If it's created in a digital environment in a digital medium maybe it should just remain in that same format, digitally and everyone chalk it up as "N/A" where there is not original art that exists and not try to create some sort of hybrid collectible.

 

Artists do make a distinct decision when rendering in pencil, pencil and then inking or going digital. The factors are comfort with the medium, their ability to hit deadlines, and also the monetization of original art sales.

 

There's a lot of artists who may get paid let's say $3,000 for a cover assignment by a publisher, but make $5,000 on the sale of the original art to the collectors, so to that artist it becomes an $8,000 revenue generating effort, and that's enough reason to not go digital. Where there are some artists who get $300 per page by the publisher, and their original art doesn't really sell, so going digital enables them to get their work done faster and they're able to be productive hitting deadlines with top quality workmanship.

[vodou]

There's a lot of artists who may get paid let's say $3,000 for a cover assignment by a publisher, but make $5,000 on the sale of the original art to the collectors, so to that artist it becomes an $8,000 revenue generating effort, and that's enough reason to not go digital. Where there are some artists who get $300 per page by the publisher, and their original art doesn't really sell, so going digital enables them to get their work done faster and they're able to be productive hitting deadlines with top quality workmanship.

I think this ignores the likelihood that there are already or eventually will be artists whose chosen medium of expression is digital. Not for monetary but artistic reasons. Anybody downstream is only offered what is offered.

 

Ask any artist, most (all?) will tell you that what they imagine in their head...the physical realization is a pale shade at best. Some pieces closer to "IT" than others, but still pale. So the struggle of the thing is to get what's in their head out to the world. There will be artists that feel they get closer (aka are more successful) using digital means. With that in mind, the company, the fans, the collectors...are all already getting a rather watered down version of the artist's mind's eye vision of the thing, even before deadlines, bad inkers, etc. I'd argue the true art is the imagination. Everything else? A degraded photocopy.

 

I don't expect this argument to go over particularly well around here, but if you can follow me with the above, then you may understand why I don't have a problem with digital art and 1/1 hard copies to put in a portfolio or hang on a wall. Or 1/100, 1/1000 for that matter. Absolutely nothing -at present- is going to get me inside the artist's head here, so whatever is for sale on the table is a weak-sister, of varying quality and interest to me as a potential buyer. And price naturally matters too. This aspect of "getting a piece of the artist" as some sort of totemic object...that's the part I don't share with most of you. It's a piece of art. It's not the artist's child, a piece of their soul, a piece of them, no nothing like that (to me). That stuff, the real stuff, -that's still in their head. I'm stuck picking among what they've used imperfect tools to render in an imperfect world. That's what impresses us, I think, is how good these people come up with a degraded result. And whether the tool is a pencil or brush, or computer...all imperfect, no one (particularly) better than the other...as far as tools go. But digital may be closer? Maybe.

 

So if you like what an artist is about (whatever that means!), but they only express digitally, that's what you have to choose from. For decades comic art was only expressed in black and white, the color was added later by production folks...and if watercolored photocopies are art...still being sorted out. Meanwhile we've all been stuck with b/w comic art to collect. For decades no other option. I think all of us would prefer that comic art was expressed in color by the artists right to begin with, yes? Some folks expressed in color by choice and eventually the companies saw profit in publishing that, and so we had that to choose from. Sometimes it made sense to publish straight from pencils. Etc etc etc. All just the way it goes and we all got used to it pretty quick or moved on. Right? Can't see that digital will be any different over time.

 

However I still think some work on new terminology is needed. And it may end up that new collectors are needed to blaze that trail anyway. After all, how much success have comic art collectors had gaining acceptance for comic art among art traditionalists? Yeah still pretty much zero. We may see the same for digital collectors trying to expand the pool back to traditional comic art people too.

[Bronty]

There's a lot of artists who may get paid let's say $3,000 for a cover assignment by a publisher, but make $5,000 on the sale of the original art to the collectors, so to that artist it becomes an $8,000 revenue generating effort, and that's enough reason to not go digital. Where there are some artists who get $300 per page by the publisher, and their original art doesn't really sell, so going digital enables them to get their work done faster and they're able to be productive hitting deadlines with top quality workmanship.

I think this ignores the likelihood that there are already or eventually will be artists whose chosen medium of expression is digital. Not for monetary but artistic reasons.

 

might be interesting to get comix4fun's input as he related a story years ago about Brian Bolland preferring to work in digital these days (to his detriment monetarily) in favor of what he felt was better expression.