bllklly@uwmacc.UUCP (Bill Kelly) (03/07/85)
Can it be that no one else has seen this excellent comic? Or am I
hopelessly behind the times and missed the discussion?
_Shatter_ was put out recently by First Comics (who saved our Madison
favorite son, _The Badger_). The artwork and lettering is done entirely on
an Apple Macintosh by Michael Saenz. And if you think you can't be
impressed any more by drawings done on a Mac, check this out. He's done an
amazing job -- many of the pictures look like they were digitized from
photographs. The inside cover gives some inside information on the
production of the magazine. They don't say, but apparently it was all done
with MacPaint, one page per MacPaint picture. Color was done with an
airbrush. They say "we could create the color on the Mac, but it would
take far, far too much time." Any ideas what they had in mind? I haven't
seen any attempt at color on a Mac.
The story by Peter Gillis is set in the future (several centuries from now,
I think) and is about a guy whose Arabic name Sadr is pronounced "Shatter".
He, like many others, lives by taking temporary jobs through a centralized
computer job search, and the police department is one of the big employers.
He decides to go for the big money by going after a (beautiful, of course)
woman wanted for murder. Reminds me a bit of Blade Runner. The story was
enjoyable, but it's the art that really stands out.
Shatter will be featured in _John Sable, Freelance_ for now, but will
eventually have its own title. (This one is billed as a special issue.) I
don't know whether you can order direct from the publisher, but in case you
can't find First Comics in your area, the address is:
First Comics
1014 W David St
Evanston Illinois
60201
The price is $1.75 US, $2.25 Canadian.
P.S. I'll leave the letter grading to the regular reviewers!
--
Bill Kelly
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!bllklly
1210 West Dayton St/U Wisconsin Madison/Mad WI 53706
"I will not harm any vehicle or the physical contents thereof,
nor through inaction allow harm to come to a vehicle or the
physical contents thereof." -- The Repo Codeciaraldi@rochester.UUCP (Mike Ciaraldi) (03/08/85)
> Can it be that no one else has seen this excellent comic? Or am I > hopelessly behind the times and missed the discussion? I have been eagerly awaiting Shatter, but as of yesterday (3/6) it hadn't shown up in local shops. One manager said he was wondering, because he had already seen a review from an English magazine! > with MacPaint, one page per MacPaint picture. Color was done with an > airbrush. They say "we could create the color on the Mac, but it would > take far, far too much time." Any ideas what they had in mind? I haven't > seen any attempt at color on a Mac. I think the only way to do color on a Mac right now is to make 4 pictures of the same scene, 1 representing each of the printing colors--red, yellow, blue, and black. You could do this by first making the monochrome picture, making some copies, and deleting the dots that wouldn't appear in each color. Then if you used, say, color ribbon on the Imagewriter, and printed onto clear paper, you could print out the four images (each in a different color), stack them up, and see a full-color picture. A comic book company would just turn the 4 pictures (printed in black) over to the printer, and the printer (the person, not the machine) would print them with different color inks. This is sort-of the way comics are done now. With hand-separation, the usual method for Marvel and DC, a copy of the black and white original is colored by the colorist, and sent to "separators". They cut out plastic film into shapes that fill in the colored area. An area that is red would go onto the copy that would be printed in red ink, an area that should be green would go onto both the blue and yellow copies, etc. The film has a dot pattern on it, with different films ranging from 25% to 100% coverage. So, to get different shades, the colorist can specify say, 25% blue, 100% yellow for a particular green. The separators dutifully cut out some 25% dots in the pattern of the green area and stick them on the green copy, and some 100% dots for the blue copy. The dots themselves are physically black, it's just that when the four originals (red, yellow, blue, black) are put into the press, either red, yellow, blue, or black ink is loaded in. This is somewhat of a simplification, because a modern press prints all the colors one after the other as the paper moves through it, but I hope you get the idea. Most magazines use photo-separation, i.e. a series of filters turn the full-color original into the 4 single-color copies. This is automatic, but more expensive. Photo-separation (and its new descendant, laser-scanning) permit very fine increments of shading (rather than the 3 or 4 steps of each primary color), and color changes across a very small part of the picture, rather than just as thin as a person with a knife can cut. All of this explains why standard comics have large areas of constant color, and magazines like Time (or certain deluxe comics) have a broader palette and more subtlety. You can see more of this in the Marvel Try-Out Book. Mike Ciaraldi seismo!rochester!ciaraldi