Art is mounted on A3 display background, and ideal for framing. This can also be easily removed. Picture frame shown is not included. From The Time Before Desktop
Publishing…
Before comics could be put together entirely by computer (circa 2000) every US
comic had a first copy – and unlike the 100,000 copies that made it to stores,
the first copy was painted entirely by hand.
How They Are Created:
Once the pencilled / inked art is completed, an 8.5" x 11" print of
each page is taken and sent to the colour artist who chooses from a palate of
64 colour paints how best to colour the comic, creating the first look of how
the page will appear once printed. Notation
codes are added to this art either by the colourist or comic’s editor to direct
the printing company.
This first issue of the comic becomes the template, with the editor signing off
(literally) the final look, and it tells the printing company the colours to be
used in each panel – notes on the percentage of each CMYK colour are included,
either by the editor or artist, and often written directly on the art.
This is repeated for each page - A comic book may have a print run of 100,000
copies or more, but only the first completed issue is painted by hand.
Today desktop publishing
has replaced these traditional methods, and this art is now part of a lost
tradition.
History & Production:
For 40 years colour in the American comic industry used a simple, hand
separated 4-colour (CMYK) system.
The possible combinations of these tints gave colourists a palette of 64
possible colours to use in the books, though most used no more than half of these.
Many of the darker colours were indistinguishable in print limiting the palette
to 64 colours kept printing costs down, and were about all that could easily be
reproduced on the cheap newsprint paper used at the time. Airbrushing and
special colours/effects were reserved for covers, which were heavier coated
paper stocks.
Example: To create a light green, for instance, a code of Y2B2 was used. This
meant that 25% of Yellow (Y2) and 25% of Cyan (B2) are needed to get that colour.
In order for the colour guide artists to be able to communicate with the colour
separators, charts of the 64 colours with their codes were printed and
distributed to the colourists.
Photographic prints, or later Xerox, copies of the original art were made at 8
½” x 11”, and the colourists often used special 64 colour sets of Dr. Martin’s
radiant transparent watercolour (or aniline dyes) to colour them.
Then they would write codes from the chart on the guides, which the separators
used to know which colour the guide artists actually wanted. (As opposed to
guessing) and were sent to the colour separator.
The separator, which for much of comic’s history was Chemical Colour Plate in
Connecticut, would make nine acetate prints of the original art, one for each
percentage of each colour.
The black and white artwork – originally drawn at twice the printed size, then
1½ times, and currently slightly less than that -- was photographed, reduced
and printed on sheets of clear acetate. Nine copies were made of each page –
one for each of the three percentages of the three colours – and these were
turned over to a separator.
Using the coloured artwork as a guide, areas on the acetates would be filled in
with an opaque paint (Rubylith) to correspond to the colour(s) necessary.
Once the colour guides were fully “translated” and the acetates were finished,
they would be photographed with appropriate screens to create a single version
which included the percentage dots and the solid of one colour. These three new
pieces of film, along with a fourth clean version of the art which was used to
make the black, were used to make the printing plates.
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