Confused about OA process / OA 101

[RaccoonRaccoon]

Can someone please describe the process from beginning to end on how a comic page is created?

 

Also, what are the collectible part of the process. What is preferred and why?

 

Example,

Pencils (with no ink)

Pencils with ink work on them

ink work with no pencils..

 

I guess I'm a bit confused from reading the Blue Line thread.

 

Are a colorists work collectible? Or better yet, is a colorisits work mentioned in the same breath as OA (pencils?)

[mrpunch0]

With the aid of computers it's done a variety of ways now.

 

From pencils to inks to colors on the computer.

From pencils - skip the inks - to computer colors.

Skip pencils and inks and do it all on the computers. (We hate this one)

 

But "traditionally" you go from pencils to inks to lettering with the colorist working on a copy of the final inks.

 

What's preffered? Depends on what you want.

 

Take the example of the new Spider-Man series that just came out (I don't read it, so the name escapes me).

The penciller (Mike Wieringo) had his work blue line inked. So there are two copies of the #1 cover OA out there. One pencilled. One inked.

The inked one is the final version used for publication - but Ringo never "touched" that one. So which is worth more - the published version, or the one that the popular artist actually had his hands on?

 

Some people prefer inked work and see just pencils as "unfinished". Some people don't want the inked version becasue it's just the inker's portion.

 

Me - I prefer pencils, inks and lettering all on the same board. But I only have a few pages like that because they just don't do it anymore.

[DiceX]

Dr. Dice, reporting for duty.

Here's the cliffnotes for art that was created Pre-Computer...

 

The story is taken by the penciler and a rough is created of the cover or sequential page. Sometimes this was a thumbnail, sometimes it was full size, some pencilers skip it altogether.

The penciler takes the idea and puts it on full size bristol board. (Size is roughly 11"x17"). This would have been called the "Finished Pencils".

Sometimes roughs were sketched on the board with blue pencil. The film in the cameras used to shoot the finished artwork were not sensitive to blue, thus they would not show up when transfered to negative film. This is the reason blue pencil is seen on a lot of orignal artwork. (Same principle on modern art, except it is scanned into a computer, and the blue lines can be removed by deleting the "cyan" channel in Photoshop.)

 

The Penciler sends the page to the Letterer. The Letterer puts in all the word balloons and text, including any "ZZZZZIP" or "WHOOOOSH" sound effects using black india ink. In these days, the Letterer would also be responsible for drawing all the rules on the page that broke up the panels, as well as page folios.

In other cases the letters were added after the Inker, by using photostats (stats) pasted on top of the artwork.

Photostats were created using a white photosensitive paper (brand name "Velox" by DuPont) exposed in a few different meathods. The Velox was trimmed and pasted on top of the artwork.

 

The Letterer (or Penciler) then sends the page to the Inker. The Inker takes black india ink and creates the dark black lines on the page on top of the penciled page. Another meathod was to lightbox the page so the inkwork could be done on a clean piece of bristol board.

The Inker uses the pencil lines as a guide to produce the finished line. Some pencilers are very loose (or sketched) and the inker had more interpretation to do, others were tight and the inker could simply darken the pencil lines. I'll throw in the fact that a good inker can make a bad penciler look good, and a bad inker can make a good penciler look bad.

The inker's job is also to create a sense of depth in the page by using varying line weights and well placed "spot blacks" (solid black areas). A good inker can make a black and white drawing stand alone as nice art without the need for color. Examples are Bernie Wrightson, Joe Sinnott, Scott Williams, among others.

 

The Inker sends the page to the Editor, who either makes the team rework something (a panel, a pose, a balloon, or possibly the entire page), or he would make a 8.5"x11" photocopy to be sent to the colorist.

The colorist would take Dr. Martin Dye in various colors and apply it to the photocopy to give the Seperator a guide for applying screen tints. The dyes were a fixed and specific pallette of choices. I can't remember the actual number of colors possibilities that were used, but it was in the area of 80-120.

The colorist might actually do a few different combinations of certain pages. Those would then be sent back to the Editor. If he approved them for print, they were off to the Seperator. If not, any process listed above could be reworked.

 

The Seperator would take the artwork and colored photocopies and put them into actual film negatives, using a technique that I have explained before, but am too lazy to look up or type out again. You might try searching in the Grading and Restoration forum in the stickied thread, if you are interested in that process.

 

The collectable pieces that were used in the process of creating a comic would include...Rough sketch on practically anything, finished pencils on bristol board (if it was lightboxed), inked (finished) artwork on bristol board or possibly on a semi-transparent vellum, colored photocopies, finished press proof.

Of those, finished pencils and inked artwork hold the most value by far.

 

I'll post the step by step for Post-Computer sometime this weekend, if anyone is interested in it.

[CW]

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!

[RaccoonRaccoon]

Thanks DiceX, very informative!!!