…Just Keeps Knitting, and Knitting, and Knitting!

A vast majority of the corrections I come across in Pre-Press are done at the very last minute, just about when the book is due to the printer to be put on the presses and mass produced to be shipped out to stores.  It’s always nice to be able to work well in advance of deadlines, where we can take our time, make sure all corrections are done right, and of high quality.  But that is not always the case.  Usually we are under the gun to crank out our corrections as fast as humanly, and digitally possibly.  In a perfect world, the best, most efficient time to do corrections are on the black and white artwork that is originally turned in from an editor from original inks from an artist.  That way we can get any art corrections that need to be made, well in advance of the colorist and letterers ever seeing it.  A combination between a good editor, and one who looks over the script with a fine tooth comb, matching it up to the artwork that is going to be turned in, is the most important part of that equation.  An editor who does that, catches the mistakes and changes he wants made in the black and white stage, and makes us make any changes to a page before it is sent out to the colorist.  That is the most ideal situation, and the easiest best scenario to work from.  But because almost every book is a “RUSH”, or “HOT”, meaning the book is late and needs to be colored and lettered IMMEDIATELY, we are not afforded that option.

Because comic books are done by human artists (I hope), there is this culture of quality ahead of quantity.  This industry, whether you like it or not, is based around these amazing freelance talent who write and draw these wonderful books we love.  But therein lies the problem when you have books that come out on a MONTHLY basis where there is a scheduled time when that book needs to be in comic book stores.  A lot of money, peoples jobs, promotions, advertising, and a lot of fans rely on the fact that a certain comic book is going to come out on the day it is supposed to come out.  Fans do love quality, but they also want their favorite issue of Batman to come out when it was told to them it was going to come out.  So on a daily basis, these artists are not only working hard to draw the BEST pages they possibly can, creating art that is in my mind, superior to most mediums, they also have to do as quickly as possible.  By the time it arrives in the hands of an editor to get it out to be lettered and colored, their time frame is now very, VERY small.

The editors have to get these inked pages out as quickly as possible, for that page needs to be colored and lettered along with the rest of the book as it comes in, so the book can make it’s solicited date of being in stores.  So when a page is in the editors hands, he or she does not have a lot of time to spend looking over every detail, making sure everything is how they want it to be.  Sometimes they catch things they want changed and mark up a page for us in Pre-Press to fix before sending it out for color and lettering.  But most of the time, they turn in the page and it begins the process of being a final colored page.  We would like to do all the corrections needed for a page before that happens, but since every page these days is a super rush to get it moving and into the hands of the people that need the most time to make it pretty, it’s best to just try and get it in their hands as fast as possible.

Now that page gets colored and lettered, and it gets back in the hands of an editor.  Usually by this time the book is due to the printer THAT week or the week after.  The editor looks at all the colored pages, makes a bunch of changes, and email the colorist to do them.  Most of the time, the colorist makes all the changes they request.  Other times, it falls into our hands, and Pre-Press artists like me handle the corrections.  But when it comes to full scale art corrections, where art changes are called for, it becomes our job to fix everything in house, as fast as possible.  Colorist will really only handle changes such as artist’s patches or replacement panels that need to be fully colored from scratch.  All other art corrections are done in house at this point.  Since the page is now fully colored, it is easier for an editor to bring the page down and not go back to a colorist, and just ask, “can we do this here?”  In this case, an editor is basically asking us to make changes to not only the art itself that should have or could have been done in the black and white stage, but now since it’s fully colored, we have to deal with a color file and any changes we make now must have color corrections done to it as well.  So not only are we fixing art for a artist, but now we are also being asked to digitally re-color any changes that need to be made.

Below I have some recent examples of every aspect of what I’m talking about.  The first couple of examples is from the House of Mystery Halloween Special!  This was a collection of short stories from various artists from the Vertigo Line.  In this instance, art came in at various times throughout about a two month period.  Art was sent out as soon as we got it from inkers, and sent off to be colored and letterer immediately.  By the time all the color and lettering came in, the book was due to the printer.  At this point it was a MAD rush to make any and all changes the editor needed before it got sent out to be printed.  So, I bogged down and did the following changes to the pages below, as quickly as possible to get the book out the door.  We have to be amazingly quick with these corrections, and most importantly, make sure the high quality of art and color is NOT compromised at all by our corrections.  That means matching not only the style of the artist, but also the style and colors that the colorist is using on the pages that need changes.

In this first example, the editor got the final color for this page, and she needed two art/ color corrections made.  The first one, was to make the character in the first panel NOT look like Freddie-you-know-who.  Don’t know the legal ramifications there, but we just didn’t want that character there.  So it was my job to change that character to make it look NOT like who it looks to be.  The second correction was to change the character in the last panel to NOT be Franken-you-know-who.  Instead, the editor wanted me to change the mask to be that of a devil instead.  So I went in digitally on my Wacom Cintque, and got rid of all the first characters stripes on the shirt.  I did this on the BLACK Channel in Photoshop in the channels palette.  All our files are CMYK files, and if you go into the channels panel, you can separate each part of the document there.  So to make the ART CHANGES, I went into the Black channel only.  The color will come after the changes are made on the black and white section.  I also redrew his hand slightly to get rid of the infamous glove that we didn’t want to see.  Then I went in on the last panel, and erased the mask that was on the character.  Again, in Black and White, I redrew the mask to be that of a devil’s mask, with horns, following the editor’s instructions.  Now that that was done, I un-hide the other color channels so I can redo the coloring that would now have to be fixed since I changed the art.  The editor in this case wanted the characters shirt to be a completely different color so as not to mistake it at all with who you think it was.  At this point I filled in any color that was missing to make his shirt one whole color again, minus the stipes (once I got rid of the stripes, I needed the part under those stripes to be one whole color to match the rest of the shirt).  After I got the shirt full of color, I selected the newly redrawn shirt I drew without the stripes, and went into LAYER> ADJUSTMENTS> HUE/SATURATION.  I then messed with the hue til I got a nice purple color the editor suggested I go for.  I then went into and put in a nice little shadow where I needed to that the original color suggested to finish off the correction, with a darker shade of purple that I had laid down.  I also had to recolor the hand a flesh tone color to fix that.  I then went to the newly made devil’s mask in the final panel, and colored that a nice deep red in the full CMYK channels, also putting some lighter tones in there to give a more 3-Dimensional look.  Below is the FINAL corrected page that was printed:

For this next page, WAY more extensive art corrections were needed.  This page was would be a lot more work and would require my skills of matching the original style of the artist to make it seem like he had originally drawn it.  The correction was as followed: In the third panel, REMOVE Constantine’s arm and hand, and redraw his coat in it’s place.  Make the arm at his size, and recolor the newly drawn coat, and background that will be missing after the removal of the arm.

This was FUN!  I not only got to draw over one of my favorite Hellblazer artist’s in Giuseppe Camuncoli, but I get to do some nice color corrects on the coat, matching the folds he established.  I followed the same process, changing it first in the Black and White art channel, then going  back in and coloring it manually.  Below is the final corrects!  Notice the couch had to be finished off, too.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any COOLER, I got to do SPECIAL EFFECTS!  In the first panel, John is supposed to be using his magic!  But it’s just his hand, with no indication of him doing anything.  I was told to “go nutz, and make some magic effects”.  After a lot of time thinking about it (like five minutes, because I had about 2 hours to make all these corrections, for the book was due at the printer that day!), I just went in there and tried to do something cool that looked like he was using magic.  I created a NEW LAYER on the document in the layers palette.  I came up with these glowing sphere’s that I thought would look best, and decided to make them glowing at various brightness to make it seem like he was creating some kind of spell.  I did this by creating various sizes of spheres using the CIRCLE LASSO TOOL on the newly created layer, in CMYK channels.  I then selected all the spheres, and went to SELECTION> EXPAND> EXPAND BY about 6 pixels.  This gave me a large enough area to put the glow effect around each sphere.  I used the paint brush at a airbrush option, at a LARGE diameter, like 200.  This gave me a large brush to just click on each sphere and hold down until the airbrush gave a gloss and glow effect over it.  Very important, I had my paint brush set to about 50% Opacity and 65% Flow, which gives you half the color of the color you want, and a nice spread of that color onto the page.  I thought that worked VERY well, and gave the spheres a nice touch to make it look like he was summoning magic.  I also added that effect on the next panel to show that that’s what he created from those sphere’s, as per the editor’s request.  I finally flattened the layers, after the editor approved my changes!

The FINAL corrected page:

Those were just some of the corrections for this issue, the other ones pretty minor.  But as you can see, when it gets to the stage of a page being fully colored, art corrections are still needed and made.  Up until the final minute the book is sent out, an editor can still make changes, and does.  It is preferred by all to be able to do the corrections before a page is colored, but because of time constraits throughout the process of making a comic book, that is not always possible.  So it falls upon the DC Bullpen to make the changes needed in the fianl stages of a book, be it art, lettering, and like these corrections, color.  A Pre-Press Artist must be prepared and have skills in not only art corrections, but color corrections as well.

Well, that’s it for this week in Pre-Press, so before I sign off, HAVE A GREAT THANKSGIVING!  I am thankful for so many things, and one being my job, and my chances to share that with you.  So hope you enjoy and I hope you all enjoy the holiday with friends, family, and coworkers abound!

Corey Breen

Senior Pre-Press Artist

DC Comics