EVERY IMAGE YOU'VE SEEN ON
METROPOLISPLUS.COM HAS EITHER BEEN CREATED FROM WHOLE CLOTH (e.g., symbols
from the Superman's Symbol Page) OR HAS BEEN RESTORED IN WHOLE OR IN PART BY
BRIAN G. PHILBIN.
Back in the day (and for me, that's the
late 60s through the 70s & 80s), there was a great dearth of lovingly
reproduced comic book art. One had to purchase either the original art, a
portfolio, the very few hardback
reprint editions available, or have traveled to another country where they didn't publish
comics on newsprint or the like in order to see excellent comic art that hadn't been
mangled by the production process.
As is evidenced by my work on this site, I
understand the importance of restoring images so that they are palatable to
the modern eye. All of the 100-Pagers have been reconstructed from scans I
made of their front & rear covers and spines. Each was stitched together,
color corrected and clarified. Many, many hours have been invested in
clarifying colors, enlarging, correcting angles, cutting & pasting,
airbrushing, stitching and generally trying to be extremely faithful to the
original pages, so their clarity can come across to modern
readers/viewers.
As with so many other media, comics have undergone changes in
their production and, as with film, for example, we have developed a taste
for wondrous technological eye candy.
You can't quite fool the modern
cinema-goers eye with Willis O'Brien's Lost World or King Kong any longer, as
our eyes are trained to see the "kinks" in the stop-motion
animation process. And the performance does not quite overcome the technique.
Even more advanced stop-motion, such as Phil Trippet's "Go Motion",
which moved the model at the same time that the frame was being shot, in
order to obtain some blur to the movement was not sufficient for Jurassic
Park. However, the results of this technique have
been incorporated into all CGI to this day.
For the same types of reasons, modern printing so
far outstrips the old newsprint days that it's necessary to
"upgrade" images we present to our audiences out here on the
interwebs.
As a great enthusiast of comic books and
comic book art, every once in a while I see restoration published for sale that's simply not to my liking because it doesn't appear that it was recreated on
par with the original piece. As if the original lines by the original
artist have not been respected.
A good example is the reprinting of DC
100-Page Super Spectacular. As a cover image, I was able to scan the front,
back & spine and stitch them together with a considerable amount of
restoration to the edges of the image. If you look at a copy of the "Replica
Edition" printed in 2004 - here -
it's so different from the original cover art (which I've reconstructed
below), that there've been well-founded claims
that Dick Giordano performed a "recreation" of the cover, rather
than a restoration:
One such instance was Murphy Anderson's
rendering of The Justice Society of America. Anderson's inks are absolutely
remarkable. I always felt that his finishes over Curt Swan's were every bit
the equal of the work of Neal Adams. No one else brought more realism &
believability to the human form & face as the Swan/Anderson team (or
"Swanderson", as they would become known among the fandom).
This image appeared in late
Silver Age in the pages of Justice League of America #76. The piece was lovingly rendered
and was later re-printed in 2000 in a faux "100 Page
Super-Spectacular" for the JSA. Thing is, it would have been better to
contact the owner and work from the original, but it was published from what
appears to be Theaksonized pages (that's when they bleach actual comic book
pages to remove the colored ink, leaving only the black). The problem is that
the printed comic page is already rather dulled from the state of the original art and when you
bleach those pages, the
crispness that we're accustomed to these days is lost. It's much safer to do this
digitally.
Remember that it's
always important
to begin with the highest quality image possible. and save the file in
a lossless file format (TIFF - Tagged Image File Format - or BMP - BitMap,
for example). You can then scale up as needed and then carefully scale
down from there and - in order to ensure the highest quality resulting JPEG
image for use on the web - that's exactly what you should do. I'm typically
working with images at a width or height of around 20,000 pixels at around
200-300 pixels per inch, which takes up a lot of RAM - so your mileage may
vary.
Also, when you save in JPEG/JPG format, the image becomes compressed, so you
lose clarity the moment you use that file format.
I will typically reduce size at 85% for each re-sizing in lossless format
(until I reach the goal size), using either bicubic or Corel's "Smart Size",
which uses the best method dependent upon my resize choices.
If you have Original Art, then scanning your beginning image at the highest
resolution you can manage is the best way to start. If you don't have that, scanning
the best possible copy of the image you have at the highest resolution
manageable is the
next best thing to use when attempting to restore an image to the level of
today's tastes.
With the subject image, we aren't starting with the
original art. But there is an image of it at ComicArtFans.
Let's start by taking a look the original image, the original art, which
will give us a guideline.
The owner
has posted the original art here:
Okay, so - as you can probably see - this
image is not something I can use to re-color or restore the spread. It's far
too blurry from re-sizing & compression and the blue pencil would get in the way a bit. If
I were to zoom in too far, it would lose clarity - something we're trying to
preserve, here.
What I needed was something from a
higher-resolution scan. I only owned the reprinted version (restored in a manner I
don't prefer), and I'd have to destroy an old comic to get the full image
(see below) so I did a Google image search and found that Comic Book
Resources had used the following image, which was a high-resolution scan from
the actual comic book.
If you take something like this - which is
already a high-resolution scan - and then resize it to twice its original
size, there's still quite a lot of
value in the clarity that can be achieved by simply zooming in closely to address or
clarify details, enhancing the blacks and re-coloring it.
IMPORTANT: Even if you're starting with a JPEG
format, you'll want to save the file in a "lossless"
format - either TIFF or BMP (I prefer TIFF). The
last step - once
you've recolored, resized and saved in a new file, will be to convert to
JPEG. The image quality from which you began will determine the quality of
the finished project.
I recommend saving the largest example of
your work as a separate file prior to resizing, etc., toward the JPEG
version. That
said, let's move on.
On to how it's done.
1) ENLARGE THE IMAGE
Once I have an image to
work with, the limitations of the brushes in the program I use can sometimes
limit how detailed I can get (i.e., anything smaller than 8 pixels is
unlikely to be a good brush to paint with). When this is the case (as was in
this particular instance), I will "resize" the image - usually
about 200% - 500% larger than the image began. Once this is done, then both the
automated tools included in the program, as well as the brushes and other
tool palette options, are constrained from eliminating details which are
important. The stray flourish of ink will be missed if you're not careful.
And automated tools (automatic saturation, contrast, scratch remover, etc.)
are processes you need to use sparingly - most of the work will need to be
done by hand. When you use an automated tool, you really have to check the
effect it has on the image. Regularly. On this one, when I "fixed"
the color saturation, I had to apply it and undo it at least 20 times in
order to provide enough adjustment to help the work along, but not so much
that I would lose any of the details in the image. All this said, I have
found that Corel's "Fade Correction" tool in the Adjust > Colors tab can be
used with little or no distortion, as long as you don't have the values
turned up too strongly.
2)
ENHANCE THE LINEWORK
Before you do anything else, it's recommended that you enhance the black in
the image first thing. The ink on the page created all the black areas on any
printed page - this is the basis for the entire image and is the most
important aspect of the picture. You can lose everything else, but if you
lose any black, you've lost clarity of the image. Using the "Color
Replacer" tool in PaintShop Pro, I sample the areas which were meant to
be black, taking care not to darken anything so much that any detail is lost
from dark gray or navy blue colors. Balance is key. Then, using the Color
Replacer again, we enhance the white areas. It may take a few times sampling
the areas which were meant to be white, but have tanned over the years. The
tanning can have multiple colors that might cross over into the yellows on
the page, if you're not careful. Therefore, ensure that the tolerances are
set so that the range of colors you're replacing with white are low enough so
that you're not getting into the yellow aspect of the spectrum. EVEN IF THIS
HAPPENS, it's okay - you'd rather have a black & white image to begin
with, anyway - you can put the other colors back, you can't get the black ink
aspects of the image back if you erase them.
3) BRUSH SIZES MATTER
In both instances, it's recommended that you use a smaller brush and not just
wipe over the image willy-nilly with the biggest brush you have. If you find
that you've got enough balance in the tool that you can do a larger brush by
sampling several colors that are close to each other, wipe away. But always
ensure you're not losing anything in the process.
Check your work!
Smaller brush sizes make for less mistakes, overall. But larger brushes
are quicker, so before you use a larger brush, ensure that you've tested a
solid sample of the image which you can easily undo in order to make certain
you're not losing something in the process.
You can also tell that there was some
slight overall adjustment to the color contrast and hues in order to ensure
we get a more vivid palette, which uses another tool set in PaintShop Pro.
It's really not much, but once you get solid blacks & whites, the colors
tend to "pop" a bit more, due to the way your brain interprets
color.
4) SPLITTING THE DIFFERENCE
As you can see, there is overlap
in the center of the piece. Actually, this piece was
not originally printed as a center spread, as it's not really in the center of the
comic. So it's almost impossible to get a full image unless you destroy the
comic book. That all said, it was evident from the get-go that I'd have to split
the center of the image, like so:
And then, I'd take both halves and arrange
them so I could paste each one over the original
art image (also sized-up to equal the large version of the color scan) - taking care to line them up at MAXIMUM ZOOM to help fill in the
missing portion of the image. Once I'd done that (which, I should mention,
will take a considerable amount of RAM on your PC), I had a decent starting
place - like so:
5) TAKING A CLOSER LOOK
The above requires quite a bit of manual
adjustment, as the two images were scanned at different angles - so there's
also some drawing to fill in where the two images don't meet up. This should
be done at a very high Zoom level, in order to ensure accuracy.
Pretty much anything that requires a deft touch should be done at the highest
zoom/view level you can manage - it should be said that it's also important
to balance the size of the page to the ability to draw on it. Sometimes, a
"swooping" flourish requires a good bit of room. Other times, it's
important just to place a dot in the right place. Balance is everything.
Anyway, you can see, again, that compared to the
high-res scan from the comic, the original art is faint. Washed out. But from here, we have a basis to begin.
6) COLORING
Color choices should be made from those colors already available on the
comic book scan. This way, the original colors can be used to clarify and fill in where needed. I zoom in
and use the "Eyedropper" tool to sample colors like red, blue, yellow &
gray. Having left
green for last, note the difference in the results between those colors and
the green in the Spectre, Sandman, Mr. Terrific, Starman's cape and Green Lantern's
pants in the results
below:
7) DONE BY HAND IS BETTER
Above, you can see where I've not only
added color, but where those colors are now clarifying the black lines. This
requires quite a bit of manual coloring & not just replacing other
colors. Again - care has to be taken in order not to reduce the black, original art
lines. I do my utmost never to mar the original artist's work or intent.
Also,
in the areas where I've had to re-draw lines from the original art that are
too faint, I've zoomed in and used an airbrush tool with solid black - like
with Dr. Fate's glove in the center. You can see the difference between his
glove and Dr. Mid-Nite's, as McNider's fingers are faint next to the
clarified gray of his gloves. Those lines which are black and next to color are now much
clearer, because I worked from a very enlarged image, then colored in those
openings, drawing understanding from the line art of the first image
(original art, above). However, the center areas are still vague and require
clarifying. There, I ended up carefully (very carefully, remembering that I'm
not an artist) removing the centerline, manually straightening the lines of the roll
call at the bottom and filling in lines I could be certain of. Trouble is,
not having a super-clear image of the original to work from, I had to end up leaving out some of the
lines used for shading in the center, for fear of ruining the lines I
couldn't absolutely duplicate with confidence.
8) CUTTING AND PASTING IS FAIR... MOSTLY
Now, I have to admit that I cheated just a
bit by using a DC Bullet I had restored for my backgrounds for this website.
Rather than re-invent the wheel, I did what they always did in those days to
recreate the DC bullet: "cut and paste" and back then, they were
actually IN REALITY cutting a physical piece of paper and pasting it where it
was needed. Further cheating involved
correcting the rotation caused by scanning on both pages from the start. The seemingly
straight line of the roll call - when you zoom in on it - looks like an arc
when you scan from side-to-side. So I had to rotate both halves toward the
center to begin with - and then even further when I went to straighten the
roll call lines.
So, I'm almost done - taking into consideration
that my only real contribution is as a colorist, what I did then was take it
a step further. I used my knowledge of the characters and extrapolations of
ethnicity and powers that had been made by other writers (George Perez, for
example, who placed the Amazons squarely in the Mediterranean and John Byrne when he created the Next Men) and applied them here.
For instance, Superman would never tan or
have a sunburn - so his skin would be particularly fair. Same with Alan
Scott/Green Lantern, who's protected by his ring's energy (Starheart, if you
prefer) not only from
environment, but from aging. Also, there's
little sun exposure for Batman
& Robin, whose operations were conducted at night and who - by
extrapolation - sleep quite a bit of the daytime away. By that same logic,
Starman, Dr. Mid-Nite & Black Canary, all of whose adventures were
shown in the Golden Age to be primarily at night, would also have limited sun
exposure. The Spectre, being a
ghost/spirit entity for lack of a better term, remains, well, white as a sheet. The
Flash/Jay Garrick's speed force aura wouldn't protect him from the sun - only
from friction while using his super-speed. Anyone else
would likely be a little on the red side for having worked in the sun -
particularly the Atom (Al Pratt), who was a bit of a blue collar gent.
Hawkman, as depicted in his origin story, is Egyptian
(Prince Khufu was even depicted as blonde in the original comic) & Wonder Woman is of Mediterranean descent,
which would lend them both more of an olive hue (I'm not sure why that term
is used - it's not a green or black color... maybe it's a Mediterranean term).
I also wanted to vary the color schemes just a bit. There's no way all of
them went to the same fabric store or tailor, right? I'd already done that
with the blue in Batman's cape, etc., so I extended it to reds and yellows,
as well. You'll note that Robin & Batman's yellows are
"dirtier", carrying more of a grayish tinge, while Dr. Fate and
Wonder Woman have a more golden color to their yellows. In the red spectrum,
I didn't give a lot of variation, but Dr. Mid-Nite's tunic is dark red
(bordering on maroon), Superman & Starman's red is deeper, Flash, Green
Lantern & the Original Red Tornado remain brighter/tomato, while Red
Tornado II is a bit brighter, still.
So, in the
interest of showing them to be (albeit, only very slightly) a little more
than just a big gang of white people in Crayola® costumes, this is what I came up with:
Now, someone putting this together who was
an actual artist would have been able to do a better job - particularly if
they'd had the original image to work from. That said, I envy him his wonderfully
obtained piece, which I understand benefited Mr. Anderson directly from the
auction. My only wish is that I had the skill to draw something so wonderful
myself.
UPDATE!
Prominent ComicArtFans member
Craig Englund was gracious enough to allow me to publish a higher
resolution scan of this piece for my page. With a better look at the original
art, it's easier to see that not only had Murphy Anderson drawn many of the
JSAers with eyes visible under their masks and clearer expressions, as well, but
you can also make out whose feet were in shadow, standing behind those
seated.
Also, in the margin above, there Murphy wrote "Problems"
on each side of the top (along with what job number it was and what issue it
was intended for). From left to right, he wrote such notes as "Hawkman
Headgear?", "Sandman's Costume?", "Mid-Nite's Goggles?", "Johnny T's Hair?"
and even worked out the letters with folds in the draping of the banner. A
true craftsman at work. So cool!
You can even see that he considered using the classic
hawk-shaped headgear for Hawkman in the blue-line rough:
.jpg)
At any rate, it took me quite a
while to finally color this - here's the best version of this gorgeous piece.
Perhaps with the level of detail provided here, you can obtain a bit more
appreciation for the work that went into drawing it, as well:
Recently saw an edit that I particularly
appreciated. I've never much cared for this version of the Earth-2 Robin's
costume - too much "I'm Batman, but I'm not really Batman" going on. I much
preferred the later outfit, so I thought I'd take up the challenge and edit
accordingly. Here's the result. Please, no hate mail - this is simply my own
preference:
Here, I had a large, scanned copy of a
comic book ad for a Superman door-sized poster by Curt Swan & Murphy
Anderson. My favorite art team. This has been unattainable for me for some
years now, so I decided to freshen this one up. Here's the process for this
one:
1) Original scan. 2) Remove
majority of color from scan. 3) Remove dots from skin areas, enhance blacks
and fill in linework. 4) Add uniform colors. 5) Add skin tone and hair
color. 6) Fill in remaining colors on Superman, replace sky dot color (dark)
with sky blue. 7) Trace remaining edges of sky for cloud pattern, begin sky
fill. 8) Complete cloud fill, clean up any color discrepancies.
Here's one from the Amazing World of DC
Comics #16. Another wraparound cover, this one also comes with a key (below).
This is some early work by Marshall Rogers, who was beginning work on Mister
Miracle at this time (although, I suspect, finished by Walt Simonson, who started out doing a revival of
Manhunter for DC a few years earlier). Here's his rendering of heroes from the Golden Age of
Comics:
And the Key:
Lastly, another Murphy Anderson piece -
this time, a recreation of the cover of All-Star Comics #3, as well as
another rendering of the JSA Round Table with the rest of the team!
Hope this was useful for you in some
fashion!
Pax, harmonia,
Brian G. Philbin
Webmaster
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