papers that color dailies
mist...@my-deja.com
funny, b/c boondocks is inconsistent from one day to the next. they
never know what color to make jazmine's hair, eyes, or skin. some days
she is a blone haired blued eyed white girl, other days she is a brown
haired, brown eyed mahogany skinned girl.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Artie5
no known reason.
Did your paper make the frontmost white half of Peter's (Foxtrot) hat purple
like mine did?
Or make Paige's hair orange/red?
Cathy's hair light brown?
Dolly's hair red/brown?
Change Asok's skin color every day?
Ratbert's fur?
They added some serious fun to the paper, when it didn't make me angry.
Bobcat
> where i live, the paper adds color to the dailies.
>
Same where we live, and as in your case, the results are unfortunate. The
Toronto Star does that to its daily comic strips now, and does it badly --
often the colours are too dark. They've also reduced their size. This
combination means that it's now almost impossible to catch the finer
details of some of the better-drawn ones. Too bad, because they feature
some of the best strips available, like Sherman's Lagoon, Get Fuzzy,
Piranha Club, Zits, etc.
Bobcat
jgmc...@my-deja.com
"Bobcat" <bob...@idirect.ca> wrote:
> > where i live, the paper adds color to the dailies.
> Same where we live, and as in your case, the results are
unfortunate. The
> Toronto Star does that to its daily comic strips now, and does it
badly --
> often the colours are too dark.
This subject comes up here every once in a while, there are more
examples of bad colorization in the archives.
Most of the problems with color dailies come from either
unskilled/inconsistent "artists" at the local papers (when we used to
get the Palm Beach Post color comics they looked like they were
colorized with a Q-tip and a watercolor panel that was a Cracker Jack
prize) or conflicts with the shading and effects added by the artist
assuming black and white presentation (Beetle Bailey's uniform comes
out muddy green with black dots).
I was just thinking about this subject yesterday when I noticed that
the King Features website now seems to have all their dailies in
color. I think that means that all the major syndicates are now
producing (for web consumption) "official" color versions of their
dailies. Now, I believe that all but the smallest markets now have
decent-quality color print capability, so there would seem to be little
technical reason why the industry couldn't move to all-color dailies
based on artist-approved color originals provided to color-equipped
papers by the syndicates, without most of the problems mentioned in
this thread.
Then again, nobody ever accused the comics business of being quick on
its feet or technologically forward-thinking.
JGM
Bill Carr
always had was what do the cartoonists themselves think of this?
Is there an uproar as when an old movie is colorized?
wiley...@my-deja.com
I don't know of ANY syndicated cartoonist who likes it, much less
approves of it. The daily cartoons are not drawn with color in mind,
so slapping bad color on top of our work only serves as a
distraction and often obliterates our composition.
Ufortunately, we're pretty much stuck with it since refusing to go
along means your feature will be dropped by the paper. And since
it is a (literally) shrinking newspaper market, no one wants to take
the chance of losing any number of client papers.
The only way we could stop it is to organize some sort of strike
against papers that are colorizing, which is about as likely as my
becoming president. I have taken my own little stand on it in that I
only allow them to color the caption boxes. The drawback to this is
that the colorized cartoons are printed at a low resolution, so the
line art isn't very clean. It looks like a bad fax.
All in all, it's simply a bad idea. Just as bad as colorizing old
black & white movies. Just because they CAN do it doesn't mean
they SHOULD do it.
One other item...technically, it's illegal for newspapers to colorize
comics as it is a copyright infringement. But, again, if anyone
complains, they lose the paper. Damned if you do and really
screwed if you don't.
Wiley
MEPeterson
>One other item...technically, it's illegal for newspapers to colorize
>comics as it is a copyright infringement. But, again, if anyone
>complains, they lose the paper. Damned if you do and really
>screwed if you don't.
Wiley:
To what extent is this being done locally, as opposed to at the syndicate
level?
I'm assuming the syndicate is doing it, which would presumably give the artists
somewhat more control -- at least more than with the chaos of having individual
papers trying to do it, yes?
Mike Peterson
Glens Falls NY
wiley...@my-deja.com
> I'm assuming the syndicate is doing it, which would presumably
give the artists
> somewhat more control -- at least more than with the chaos of
having individual
> papers trying to do it, yes?
>
> Mike Peterson
> Glens Falls NY
>
You assume incorrectly, Mike. The syndicates don't like it any more
than the cartoonists do. But they are stuck with it as well for the
same reasons. They don't want to piss off editors.
Fortunately, only about 20 or so papers are doing it at this time.
Hopefully, the trend will die out.
Terrence Marks
>I don't know of ANY syndicated cartoonist who likes it, much less
>approves of it. The daily cartoons are not drawn with color in mind,
>so slapping bad color on top of our work only serves as a
>distraction and often obliterates our composition.
>
>Ufortunately, we're pretty much stuck with it since refusing to go
>along means your feature will be dropped by the paper. And since
>it is a (literally) shrinking newspaper market, no one wants to take
>the chance of losing any number of client papers.
Why not colour it yourself (or hire your own colourist) to make sure
it's at least done well?
Terrence Marks
Unlike Minerva (a comic strip)
http://unlikeminerva.com
Tom Bromley
>Hopefully, the trend will die out.
>
>
I'm not so sure about that. Here in South Florida, it seems to be on the
increase. The Palm Bech Post was for years the only major daily with colorized
comics, but the Sun-Sentinel (which carries Wiley's "Non Sequitur" as a black &
white panel weekdays), and the Miami Herald have both added color in the last
few years.
I've noticed that sometimes the colorists will add an overdose of purple, which
tends to obscure the artwork considerably, and sometimes for whatever reason
(laziness or production error) whole panels are tinted a single color rather
than being selectively colored. Some strips -- those with minimal detail, such
as "Dilbert" -- seem to survive the process best. Those with more delicately
rendered art ("For Better or Worse", to mention one) can suffer.
Perhaps the next time one of these newspapers runs a comics page survey, they
should ask about the color. They might find it's not appreciated as much as
they would like to believe.
(Granted, the way the Sun-Sentinel squeezes works like "Non Sequitur" into tiny
spaces which render it almost illegible some days, I doubt readability of
comics is a high priority on these editors' minds. But that's a gripe for
another thread.)
Tom Bromley tgbr...@aol.com
"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Why me?' Then a voice answers.
'Nothing personal. Your name just happened to come up.'"
-- Charles M. Schulz 11/26/1922 - 2/12/2000
wiley...@my-deja.com
Oh, little things like time and money leap to mind, Terrance. :-)
It's difficult enough to maintain a daily comic strip without doubling the
workload by adding color. And contrary to popular belief, syndication does
not mean wealth. There are only a handful of cartoonists who can afford to
hire help. We are still working at 1970 wages, which was the last time there
was an increase in the basic rates for comics. And it was a very small
increase at that.
But if colorized comics becomes more common in newspapers, I will have to
take on this added work, as I simply can't have anyone else color my work.
For graphically simpler strips (such as Dilbert, Foxtrot, Garfield, etc.), it
isn't a big deal. But for those of us who put a great deal of effort into the
art work, it is quite a burden.
Peter Lynn
>
> The Detroit Free Press does this with half of theirs. The question I've
> always had was what do the cartoonists themselves think of this?
>
> Is there an uproar as when an old movie is colorized?
Yes, there is indeed an uproar when this happens (blame Ted Turner for
this trend, by the way). When I was a philosophy student, a significant
portion of my aesthetics class was devoted to this very topic.
If you're interested, I recommend you check out Chapter 2, "Colorizing
Movies," in my old text, "Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical
Debates" (ed. Alex Neill & Aaron Ridley). Here you will find four
essays attacking this debate from various angles, including both
pro-colorization and anticolorization viewpoints. I believe that the
arguments apply as much to the colorization of comic strips as they do
to the colourization of films.
In a nutshell, there are both moral and aesthetic objections to movie
colourization. A moral objection might be that colouring a movie
without the filmmaker's will misrepresents what the filmmaker set out to
achieve, and is therefore a deception. Moreover, it prevents the
filmmaker's freedom of expression, and is therefore oppressive. An
aesthetic objection might simply be that colourization is bad because it
results in less beautiful (or otherwise aesthetically inferior)
films--an easy argument to make since the colours chosen for these new
versions rarely look natural. Moral and aesthetic objections may be
considered to be independent of each other, but they also gain power
when they are based upon each other.
Frank Capra was horrified by the colorization of "It's a Wonderful
Life", since he had CHOSEN to shoot that movie in black and white, and
specifically selected his lighting, makeup, and his camera and
laboratory work for black and white film. So too did Woody Allen choose
to shoot "Manhattan" in black and white. As Wiley points out elsewhere
in this thread, cartoonists make very similar decisions regarding their
work. Look at the use of chiaroscuro in some of the great adventure
strips in the first half of the century, for example.
Personally, I felt that the impact of the film "Casablanca" was ruined
in a colourized version that I've seen. Incompetently, the main colours
injected in the movie seemed to be tan and baby blue, which in fact
suffused the entire film. As I was unable to picture a more fascist
palette of blacks and reds overshadowing the entire film, the impending
Nazi menace didn't seem nearly as serious. And speaking of Nazis, I can
perfectly imagine how "Schindler's List" would be ruined by
colourization: the impact of the anonymous little girl in the pink dress
(the only colour in the movie) would be altogether destroyed. In both
the real and proposed examples of film colorization, the director's
intent is (or would be) defeated, and the film ends up the worse for it.
That being said, while colorization of a film may be an act of
vandalism, it is not usually one so serious as drawing a mustache on the
Mona Lisa (to use the popular example), since films typically exist in
multiple instantiations. So long as some copies of the original film
remain in glorious black-and-white, and viewers are given a choice which
version to see, the damage is more limited. It's the same with comic
strips: as yet, many papers still run the uncolourized versions.
So, if you don't like the colorized versions of classic films that are
broadcast on TBS and other Turner-owned stations, seek out opportunities
to view these films elsewhere. [Side note: Moral and aesthetic
objections have also been made toward the reformatting of films to fit
on narrower television screens, a situation that seems similar to an
earlier problem with comic strips in which the bottom part was often
chopped off by publishers, so as to squeeze more strips onto a page.
Because of consumer objections, "letterbox" versions of films are now
available on videotape.]
So too with comics: if your local newspaper colorizes your favorite
comic strips, try to find another paper that doesn't, or go online to
find them. If you feel strongly enough about this issue, I suggest
measures such as cancelling your newspaper subscription and letting the
newspaper know why you're doing so. I also suggest writing letters to
your newspaper, so that you can raise your aesthetic and moral
objections in a public forum, and perhaps convince other readers to take
their own action. Colourization is done with an eye toward making more
money. If it becomes a money-losing proposition, it will be
discontinued.
Peter Lynn,
Aesthetician (the non hairdressing kind).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ultimately, of course, the colorizers will lose this battle.... if we
are foolish enough to permit this montrous practice to continue one can
easily picture young men and women discussing us with disgust and
saying, "They did this and nobody stopped them?"
"Well, there was a lot of money involved."
--Woody Allen
Terrence Marks
<pete...@freewwweb.com> wrote:
>aesthetic objection might simply be that colourization is bad because it
>results in less beautiful (or otherwise aesthetically inferior)
>films--an easy argument to make since the colours chosen for these new
>versions rarely look natural.
I know that some of you are going to ignore me when I say this*, but
it's possible to colour a strip and make it look good. Even if you
weren't the one who drew it. If the syndicates don't bother with
quality, that's their problem, but don't go around assuming that
everyone who colours something ruins it. It's insulting to those of
us who do it well.
Terrence Marks
colourist for Unlike Minerva
http://www.unlikeminerva.com
*: or come back with something like "But that's not the way it's
_supposed_ to be".
Elisabeth Anne Riba
birthday -- his cheeks all puffed out to blow the candles.
Whoever colorized the darned thing obviously didn't know who DG was,
because they colored him as a Caucasian!
It's this kind of stupid mistake that dramatizes why newspapers shouldn't
colorize the comics -- print them as the artist draws it, even if that
means encouraging the artist to draw them in color.
--
---------------> Elisabeth Anne Riba * l...@netcom.com <---------------
Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a
master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
wiley...@my-deja.com
> I know that some of you are going to ignore me when I say this*, but
> it's possible to colour a strip and make it look good. Even if you
> weren't the one who drew it. If the syndicates don't bother with
> quality, that's their problem, but don't go around assuming that
> everyone who colours something ruins it. It's insulting to those of
> us who do it well.
>
> Terrence Marks
> colourist for Unlike Minerva
> http://www.unlikeminerva.com
Yes, of course it's possible, but since newspapers don't pay more colorized
versions, what incentive is there for a syndicate to hire colorists for this
job? And since the cartoonists are not drawing the strips with color in mind,
adding color, no matter how skillfully done, still takes away from the
composition as a whole.
This was not meant as a slight towards all colorists. Sorry if you took it as
such. But comic strips are a far cry from comic books when it comes to the
art. The line art done for comic books is composed with color in mind and is
incorporated into the that process for the final composition.
I was, of course, referring to how it is being done in newspapers today. The
main culprit here is the Reed Brennan group who provides this service to most
of the papers who are running colored dailes. The people doing this work
obviously have little or no art ability and are apparently hired more for
their technical expertise in computers.
We have a very limited space and must convey our thought in a very short
period of time. Adding color where it was not intended only serves to
distract from what we're trying to accomplish.
Jim Ellwanger
tgbr...@aol.comNOSPAM (Tom Bromley) wrote:
>>Fortunately, only about 20 or so papers are doing it at this time.
>>Hopefully, the trend will die out.
>>
>I'm not so sure about that. Here in South Florida, it seems to be on
>the increase. The Palm Bech Post was for years the only major daily
>with colorized comics, but the Sun-Sentinel (which carries Wiley's
>"Non Sequitur" as a black & white panel weekdays), and the Miami
>Herald have both added color in the last few years.
My hometown paper, the Tampa Tribune, has been colorizing the daily
comics for 13 years now (they started in April 1987), unless they
stopped recently and I'm not aware of it. I know the St. Petersburg
Times and the Orlando Sentinel have both been colorizing for years, too.
While discussing this a few years ago when I was in college, a friend of
mine figured out why Florida seems to be the center of colorizing
activity: the newspapers do it so their elderly readers can't tell time
is passing as easily as they could if the comics were only in color one
day a week.
(BTW, I'm very interested to hear about the "only color the balloons"
rule for "Non Sequitur." For the April 1, 1997, comics switch, the
Tribune did just that with the Wiley-drawn "Hagar the Horrible," and I
assumed at the time it was because their colorist just couldn't cope
with Wiley's drawing style.)
--
Jim Ellwanger <trai...@mindspring.com>
<http://trainman1.home.mindspring.com/> means more winners, more often.
"The days turn into nights; at night you hear the trains."
JGM
> It's difficult enough to maintain a daily comic strip without doubling the
> workload by adding color. And contrary to popular belief, syndication does
> not mean wealth. There are only a handful of cartoonists who can afford to
> hire help.
(. . .)
> But if colorized comics becomes more common in newspapers, I will have to
> take on this added work, as I simply can't have anyone else color my work.
Wiley, are you doing your own color for the Non-Sequitir dailies on the Ctoons
website? I think that's been pretty darn good. Checking the site, I notice that
the dailies seem to have disappeared a couple of months ago, so maybe you weren't
happy with them.
I'd like to think that a bit of compromise could go a long way here. In most
cases, it would be fairly easy for artists to adapt their dailies for possible
colorization, for instance by avoiding zipatone-type shading (Non-Sequitir is a
bit of a special case here, but the Sunday strip proves it's possible). Now, if
each artist provides a color guide and style sheet to the syndicate, the
syndicate could hire a couple of talented kids to do the work for all the strips,
providing the local papers with "approved" color dailies. Surely this is better
than having dozens of different local "artists" colorizing entire pages of
dailies with the results described in this thread. And again, I believe that
this is largely being done already on Ctoons and the syndicate web sites.
> For graphically simpler strips (such as Dilbert, Foxtrot, Garfield, etc.), it
> isn't a big deal. But for those of us who put a great deal of effort into the
> art work, it is quite a burden.
No offense, but if I were you I'd be a lot more worried about papers taking
your excellent, detailed artwork and compressing it down to the size of a postage
stamp than about the syndicate adding color. To be even more blunt about it,
it's disaffecting to cry poor out of one side of your mouth and refuse to
compromise your art out of the other. Every artist, let alone every comics
artist, has had to balance art and commerce, or accept starvation. . .where's
Obviousman when we need him?
JGM
wiley...@my-deja.com
jgmc...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> Wiley, are you doing your own color for the Non-Sequitir dailies on the Ctoons
> website? I think that's been pretty darn good. Checking the site, I notice that
> the dailies seem to have disappeared a couple of months ago, so maybe you weren't
> happy with them.
>
If I were doing color for my dailies for Ctoons, then obviously I would be
providing the same for newspapers. And, no, Ctoons does not do a good job. It
is adequate at best. Again, the colorization by Ctoons is apparently done by
people with more technical training than art training. And Non Sequitur
(please note spelling here) is no longer posted there because they weren't
paying their bills. This has to do with syndicate distribution, not my
personal preferrence.
> I'd like to think that a bit of compromise could go a long way here. In most
> cases, it would be fairly easy for artists to adapt their dailies for possible
> colorization, for instance by avoiding zipatone-type shading (Non-Sequitir is a
> bit of a special case here, but the Sunday strip proves it's possible). Now, if
> each artist provides a color guide and style sheet to the syndicate, the
> syndicate could hire a couple of talented kids to do the work for all the strips,
> providing the local papers with "approved" color dailies. Surely this is better
> than having dozens of different local "artists" colorizing entire pages of
> dailies with the results described in this thread. And again, I believe that
> this is largely being done already on Ctoons and the syndicate web sites.
Why is it that we are always asked to compromise? Editors keep destroying our
work and we're supposed to just go along like good little boys and girls.
Again, what you are talking about here is adding to our workload, which is
already heavy enough producing a daily feature (as well as dealing with all
the other work involving syndication) for no more return. Are you willing to
do twice the work for no more pay? I doubt it.
As for color guides, Reed Brennan uses the Sunday comics for each comic strip
as a guideline. But that is hardly comprehensive. And they certainly can't
match the color I produce for the Sundays, nor can Ctoons. I spend a great
deal of time in producing my color so that it DOESN'T look the usual Sunday
comic.
> No offense, but if I were you I'd be a lot more worried about papers taking
> your excellent, detailed artwork and compressing it down to the size of a postage
> stamp than about the syndicate adding color. To be even more blunt about it,
> it's disaffecting to cry poor out of one side of your mouth and refuse to
> compromise your art out of the other. Every artist, let alone every comics
> artist, has had to balance art and commerce, or accept starvation. . .where's
> Obviousman when we need him?
>
> JGM
>
>
These are two separate, but equal, problems. And there is nothing any one
cartoonist can do about either. It is what editors are doing to all comics,
not just mine, and we do compensate as much as possible for their lack of
caring about the art. But to further compromise our art for the handful of
papers that abuse our work with color is quite stupid. No offense.
MK Ultra
(Terrence Marks) wrote:
>I know that some of you are going to ignore me when I say this*,
but
>it's possible to colour a strip and make it look good. Even if
you
>weren't the one who drew it.
I don't deny this. With movies, it isn't always the case that
black and white films were made specifically to take advantage of
the virtues of black and white film. Some movies were simply
made before it was possible or practical to film in colour and
were shot in a way in which the future colourization process
could actually make them more aesthetically pleasing (though not
necessarily on purpose). Laurel and Hardy's "Way Out West" has
been cited as an example of such a film.
Similarly, it doesn't really matter if someone colourizes
"Dilbert", because that strip doesn't particularly make
deliberate use of the black and white process (apologies to Scott
Adams if I have his artistic intent all wrong, but he doesn't
seem to be making much use of crosshatching or chiaroscuro). So,
yes--one could quite reasonably argue the case that "Dilbert" is
aesthetically improved by colourization, and I could agree with
this.
>If the syndicates don't bother with
>quality, that's their problem,
This, I DO take issue with. It's NOT the syndicates' problem if
they ruin the quality of the cartoonist's work. It's the
cartoonist's problem if his creative vision is being ruined, and
it's the audience's problem if they are denied the opportunity to
fully experience what the cartoonist meant to express.
>but don't go around assuming that
>everyone who colours something ruins it. It's insulting to
those of
>us who do it well.
I don't assume that. In fact, it's quite arguable that
colourization can result in new and distinct works or art unto
themselves (and it has been so argued in the case of movies),
similar to the way a good remix of a song can be considered a
separate (and sometimes superior work from the original. So long
as the original version also remains available, derivative works
can be encouraged.
BUT, if some colourists are great artists, it's also true that
many are merely hacks.
AND if the only version of an artwork that is getting through to
the audience is that which has been butchered by a hack, there is
a big problem, for the original artist and audience alike.
Peter Lynn,
Aethetician, and graduate of the Frank Capra School of
Cosmetology
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
MK Ultra
>Oh, little things like time and money leap to mind, Terrance.
:-)
>
doubling the
>workload by adding color.
For the record, I'm on the anti-colourization side insofar as it
interferes with the artist's creative intent. But, I'm curious
as to how much is actually added to the workload if the
cartoonist determines his own colour schemes.
The reason I ask is that I was recently reading a book on the
history of the comic strip ( a good one too, but the name escapes
me at the moment), that reproduced the original artwork for the
strips shown, as opposed to the versions actually printed. I
noticed that some cartoonists had simply indicated how the strip
should be coloured by the printers via blue pencil notations
(e.g. "Blue" written on the sky).
This seems pretty quick and easy. But, do you argue that the
*planning* of colour combinations would add a significant amount
of work to the cartoonist's job?
Peter Lynn,
Inquisitive guy.
[SIDE NOTE: It's really depressing how poorly Scott Adams'
original artwork is holding up after such a short time, due to
the fading of his poor-quality ink. He might want to consider
using better tools for the job if he wants any of his original
artwork to survive him.]
jgmc...@my-deja.com
wiley...@my-deja.com wrote:
> Why is it that we are always asked to compromise? Editors keep
> destroying our
> work and we're supposed to just go along like good little boys and
> girls.
I'm not sure which "editors" you are talking about here, the
syndicates' or the papers'. I agree that the homegrown colorization is
an abomination, which is why I'm suggesting the compromise of producing
color (or colorizable) work in the first place. If you are talking
about the syndicate itself, then the question is why you'd continue to
bang your head up against that particular wall.
> Again, what you are talking about here is adding to our workload,
> which is
> already heavy enough producing a daily feature (as well as dealing
> with all
> the other work involving syndication) for no more return. Are you
> willing to
> do twice the work for no more pay? I doubt it.
It's only twice the work if you are asked to provide the color version
yourself. I think it's reasonable for your syndicate to request color-
friendly artwork if that is what is required to keep up with market
demand. If all they ask for is something suitable for colorization,
but you won't let anybody but yourself do the coloring, you can't
really complain about the extra work.
> It is what editors are doing to all comics,
> not just mine, and we do compensate as much as possible for their
> lack of
> caring about the art. But to further compromise our art for the
> handful of
> papers that abuse our work with color is quite stupid. No offense.
You've chosen to work in the most restrictive format in every respect
that I can think of for an artist; why complain so bitterly when the
restrictions change shape?
For the record, I think that a comics artist ought to be able to
specify that his cartoons *not* be colored, that they run a certain
minimum size, that they be printed on their own page, be a different
shape every day, whatever. If the market will bear it. I, along with
most of the folks here would love to see a large-format comics page
where artists' intentions are respected. But I think the comparison to
films made by others is valid: everybody can agree that an artist has a
right to make a black and white film, and that black and white films
can be great art, and that artificially coloring a black and white film
is a bad idea> But everyone involved also recognizes that if you're
doing a film today and expect financial success and studio support,
you'd better be making it in color. And many good filmmakers manage to
deal with this reality without compromising their vision. But if you
can get away with being Woody Allen and insisting on complete creative
control without losing your funding, go for it.
JGM
wiley...@my-deja.com
If you will go back and read my previous posts in this thread, I think will
find all of those issues and questions have been addressed and answered. To
address them here again only wastes time and space.
Wiley
Jim Ellwanger
>On 2000-04-18 trai...@mindspring.com said:
> >While discussing this a few years ago when I was in college, a
> >friend of mine figured out why Florida seems to be the center of
> >colorizing activity: the newspapers do it so their elderly readers
> >can't tell time is passing as easily as they could if the comics
> >were only in color one day a week.
>Funny, but I think the real reason newspapers color the daily comics is
>because they print color advertisements on the same page.
Not that I've seen, although I certainly haven't seen every newspaper
with colorized dailies. The Tampa Tribune didn't add an advertisement
to the comics page when they started colorizing in 1987. However, they
did make sure the comics would always be on a color page by moving them
to the front page of the classified section (renamed "Classified &
Comics"), which always has a full-page color car dealership ad on the
back. They've since moved the comics to the back page of the "BayLife"
entertainment section, which happened shortly after the paper got new
presses that apparently meant they could guarantee that the front page
of that section would be in color every day.
--
Jim Ellwanger <trai...@mindspring.com>
<http://trainman1.home.mindspring.com/> shares the spirit.
"Invest everything you have in steam powered weaving machines."
Brooke McEldowney
ought to request of cartoonists colorizing-friendly material. I suppose
they could, but I am resolute in my conviction that syndicates have no
business looking over our shoulders and micromanaging what we do. I had a
syndicate once that regularly attempted to boss me around in the execution
of my work. Fortunately, I had a contract that forbade them to do it, and
I regularly quoted its pertinent clauses just to refresh their minds.
(That institution was an enervating amalgam of Dogpatch and the Kremlin,
but that is another story.) The syndicate's editorial function is to look
for flaws in wordage and punctuation, to advise and warn us in matters of
taste and decorum, and in general to protect their investment.
The application of color to a cartoon can be a very simple matter, easily
achieved with a color key on a black and white xerox. However, some
cartoonists have, of recent years, begun to unleash their muses, employing
color as an integral part of the composition of the cartoon, rather than
an ornamental afterthought. Their management of color has become
elaborate and amazingly subtle, something to savor.
I like to work on dailies in the same way, but as monochrome efforts. A
black and white cartoon can be just as challenging, expressive and
enthralling as anything in color. Hence, I see no need for color during
the other six days (the extra labor aside). Having said that, however, I
have to admit that I like very much what my colorist (if he likes being
referred to that way) at Ctoons does, often amazing me with the
possibilities he sees in my dailies. Most of the time, his choices are
not what I would have made, but the result is just as satisfying. And the
Ctoons people have gone to great lengths to consult with me in their work;
so I have no complaints. (I should add that they asked if they might
color my work, and I agreed. My original greyscale work can be seen on
the Seattle P.-I. site.)
Other organizations, by contradistinction, color my stuff in ways that
provoke only a vague, persistent nausea (they pay me, so I will not name
names), but that is part of the business as I was warned about it before I
ever signed my first contract. Hence I just hide my head in the sand,
consoled with the thought that in a few places my work is being reproduced
in a ways that do it justice. I can be criticized for not standing up for
my rights, but it seems wise to remember that we are not in control of the
final presentation of our work. Once a cartoon goes out via the modem or
FedEx, it enters a world that, as a matter of protocol, accords it with
the same, warm regard ordinarily lavished on road kill.
Brooke McEldowney
9 Chickweed Lane
Matthew W. Miller
<peter_lyn...@hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:
>It's really depressing how poorly Scott Adams' original artwork is
>holding up after such a short time, due to the fading of his poor-quality
>ink.
<cheapshot>
Personally, I consider it a blessing in disguise.
</cheapshot>
--
Matthew W. Miller -- ma...@infinet.com
MEPeterson
<trai...@mindspring.com> writes:
>However, they
>did make sure the comics would always be on a color page by moving them
>to the front page of the classified section (renamed "Classified &
>Comics"), which always has a full-page color car dealership ad on the
>back. They've since moved the comics to the back page of the "BayLife"
>entertainment section, which happened shortly after the paper got new
>presses that apparently meant they could guarantee that the front page
>of that section would be in color every day.
I'm going to assume that there wasn't ALWAYS a color ad on the back, since the
front and back of the section are the same side of the same sheet and thus are
shot onto the same plate(s) and run through the same presses. If there can
always be color on the back, there can also always be color on the front.
Not screamingly relevant to the aesthetic subject at hand, but we also have to
recognize the technical/mechanical side of things.
jgmc...@my-deja.com
9chickw...@home.com wrote:
> It was suggested (by whom I can't remember at this point) that
> syndicates
> ought to request of cartoonists colorizing-friendly material. I
> suppose
> they could, but I am resolute in my conviction that syndicates have no
> business looking over our shoulders and micromanaging what we do.
You're most likely referring to my comments, but I must clarify: I'm
not suggesting that dailies should be in color. I seem to find two
themes in this thread: that the DIY colorization some papers are doing
is an abomination and that color dailies may be a growing trend.
Assuming these things are true (and I'm not saying they are), then my
suggestion is that, unless an artist is in a position to set their own
terms or is willing to go out of business on principle, then the
obvious pre-emptive strike is to provide acceptable color in the first
place (hopefully through an arrangement similar to the one you have
already established with the Ctoons guy).
JGM
Joseph Nebus
>You assume incorrectly, Mike. The syndicates don't like it any more
>than the cartoonists do. But they are stuck with it as well for the
>same reasons. They don't want to piss off editors.
>Fortunately, only about 20 or so papers are doing it at this time.
>Hopefully, the trend will die out.
Let us all hope there's a specific execution for the people
behind colorizing the Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News's online comics,
at www.phillynews.com. It's a coloring job done by people who not only
have clearly never seen the Sunday comics, it's a coloring job by
people who've clearly got no idea that there are even differences
between colors.
Seriously. They've made their comics web site look as if
somebody peed all over it. And they seem happy with this.
In other bizarre coloring moves: The Asbury Park (NJ) press
began colorizing strips two or three years ago, but every time I go
back home nowadays, they run these *colorized* strips in *black and
white* sections of the paper. Not just the black-and-white original
artwork, you understand. Just... sap the CMY and print the K part.
It's got to be this nasty little Editor's Disease, that the
immature editor gets -- where he or she can't let *anything* run
without at least *some* change, no matter how stupid or petty, in
his pages.
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tv's Spatch
>(That institution was an enervating amalgam of Dogpatch and the Kremlin,
>but that is another story.)
I've just had this bizarre mental image of large women in gray dresses
chasing after members of the Politburo and dragging them over to St.
Basil's Cathedral to get hitched by Marryin' Stalin.
Thanks, Brooke. This is the weirdest thing I've thought about in a
very long time.
- spatch, wondering if they'd have made a musical out of "Lil' Andrei"
too -
--
der Spatchel R. Noyes
http://spatch.ne.mediaone.net Turn the ! upside down to reply.
http://www.catatonic-comix.com
"It's a spontaneous cursing machine." - Todd Long, regarding 'Katanga'
Terrence Marks
>Yes, of course it's possible, but since newspapers don't pay more colorized
>versions, what incentive is there for a syndicate to hire colorists for this
>job?
Agreed.
> And since the cartoonists are not drawing the strips with color in mind,
>adding color, no matter how skillfully done, still takes away from the
>composition as a whole.
Colour has its uses.
http://www.unlikeminerva.com/20/week26c.html
http://www.unlikeminerva.com/20/week27c.html
Those strips were drawn for black and white, but they needed colour.
Of course, the guy who drew it wasn't exactly a professional, but
>This was not meant as a slight towards all colorists.
Of course not.