Quick Art Comparison

Here's a page from Michael May's and Jason Copland's Kill All Monsters...

Now, here's the original art for the same page...

This is why I find studying original comic art fascinating. Copland is using a variety of techniques that rely on both old and newer technologies, and he's mixing and matching them as it best fits his personal skills and style.

See the blue lines running underneath the original inks? Those aren't done with a blue pencil; they were drawn normally, scanned and then printed out onto the page in blue. The inks over top of them, however, are done more traditionally with a series of brushes. Corrections are done with white paint. But then the grey tones are applied digitally and they're given a texture that mimics the style of Zip-A-Tone overlays.

The desired result that shows up on the printed page could have been achieved in any number of ways, but Copland chose a specific set of tools to get to that result. Were this page done by another artist, even if they were trying to match the style line for line, it almost certainly would have been handled differently.

Now maybe it's just because I have a background in art that gives me a deep appreciation for what's going on here, but I find it directly applicable to my love of comics in that it allows me to see what goes into a book's production. It gives me a better understand of the craft of making comics. The more I'm able to follow how a comic is put together from start to finish, the deeper appreciation I have for them. Knowing that that deeper appreciation comes from a greater understanding encourages me to study the medium just that much more.

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