Why Does Style Matter?

Ask 10 people what colors Superman wears and nine people will reply, Red and Blue.  The tenth will add yellow to the mix.  Ask those same 10 people to compare the style of art and color from an issue of Superman to classic or popular paintings and the same nine out of ten people will give you a blank stare. The tenth will break out a flash drive containing a keynote presentation from their art history class.  What we have is a situation where 100% of the people are aware of comic books but a very small percentage have considered comic books in relation to the world of art as a whole.  To succeed as a comic book creator you, I, all of us, need to recognize styles of artwork and learn to master color styles that compliment the penciller and inkers craft.

Most comic book fans have an understanding that each comic book penciller has a unique look or style to their work but few may have thought about the color styles that go hand in hand with the finished artwork. Let’s take one of my favorite comic book characters, Booster Gold, for example. Booster Gold was originally created by Dan Jurgens but has been drawn by a variety of artist. How do you approach a page of Booster Gold pencilled by Dan Jurgens vs. a page penned by someone else?  Take a look at a Booster Gold drawing by Dan Jurgens and then one from Kevin Maguire.  Both fine superhero artist but you can see each has a unique take on the character.

Booster Gold creator Dan Jurgens indicates strong rim-lighting on his characters which influences my approach to rendering his artwork.

Jurgens has his own signature style when it comes to Booster Gold.  You can see he includes a fair amount of shading in the blue areas of the costume and some stylized shading on the gold areas.  Jurgens draws the costume to be form fitting, like a second skin, allowing much of the anatomy below the surface to remain clearly defined.  You can see on Booster’s wrist gauntlet Jurgens has defined the “horizon line” for the reflective gold surface as well as established a rim light along the upper edge of the gauntlet.  A secondary reflective light source is hinted at on the underside of the gauntlet.  I must take all of this into consideration when approaching the illustration and deciding how to proceed.  When coloring Dan Jurgens artwork I adopt a technique for rendering similar to the Cut and Brush tutorial in Master Digital Color. For the gold areas I exaggerate the contrast and ensure my cuts follow the expressive artwork created by Jurgens.  You can feel the tension in Booster’s costume where Batman is pulling on the blue and gold fabric.

Kevin Maguire's take on Booster is more open to color in general with less shading on the hair and gold areas.

This version of Booster Gold pencilled by Kevin Maguire is not completely dissimilar to what Jurgens does but there are some differences.  The most readily apparent is the openness of the hair, other than an outline there is no detail drawn for the hair so I needed to observe the artwork and decide how to best approach the hair adding highlights to indicate the direction and flow of the hairstyle as well as continuing the part in the hair established in the drawing.  Part of coloring is to make these decisions and execute them in such a way that the person viewing the finished illustration can not imagine it ever being any other way.  Another decision was to introduce the red secondary light source slightly lower left of Booster. The combination of primary light source and secondary lighting help define the form of Booster’s face in a much more dynamic way than ambient lighting alone would (and lets face it ambient light alone can be very dull and boring and we want to give readers and escape from the ordinary). Since Booster Gold has 32 issues of established continuity with Jurgens my color approach is not all that dissimilar to how I would color Jurgens.  The style is not exactly the same though as the cuts (selections) are broader allowing more light to cover the open areas of the artwork, as opposed to the tight, narrow cuts I use when coloring Jurgens.  I adapt the techniques and styles to suit the artwork instead of attempting to force the exact same style on the new art.  When the color and artwork work together the results are always more pleasing.

As a colorist, your job is to look at the black and white artwork and ask yourself, “What does this illustration ask of me?” The art will communicate a number of items you should factor into your decision making about color style including lighting, mood, action, setting (time of day, location, etc.), as well as the penciller’s approach to storytelling. You also need to be aware of the intent of the artist.  Is the artist referencing a classic movie poster or comic book cover?   Is the artist paying homage to a famous illustration or historical event?  Did the artist include famous landmarks?  In addition you will need to fully read the plot for the issue and take all the story telling elements into consideration.  Finally you may receive reference and additional input or notes from the illustrator, editor, writer, or property owner. There is so much information to consider before you start coloring it is a wonder any comic books are colored, ever.

Once you have absorbed  the story, art, and notes you need to consider the genre of the publication and weigh the expectations of the fans and other members of the creative team.  Booster Gold might look really cool colored in the style of a Vertigo comic like Hellblazer or Transmetropolitan but odds are the fans and editorial would reject that. While you should always take the genre into consideration don’t let that stifle your creativity.  If I am truly inspired to go out on a stylistic limb I may work up a version of something in secret and turn it in for review.

Sometimes I get the green-light as with the cover for Generation Lost #1.  I wanted to give the covers a signature style and come up with a look that integrated the color and the artwork very tightly together.  Much of the line-art is color held and used a variety of custom brushes to ensure elements like hair, flesh, costumes, and metal work together without looking exactly the same.  A fun, if risky experiment.

I wanted the color for the covers of Generation Lost to have their own unique style. The painted technique is similar to the Brush Style tutorial featured in Master Digital Color.

When I turned in this cover  I knew it was way out in left field for a DC superhero book and mentally prepared to color it again in a more traditional fashion.  Luckily everyone loved it. Score one for creativity!  That isn’t to say it always works out that way.  Occasionally I may sweat and toil only to receive feedback like, “this looks great but what do you think about doing it more like that issue of Legion of Superheroes Hi-Fi colored?”  Which is a polite way for the editor to ask you to go another direction instead of breaking your spirit by saying, “Are you out of your freaking mind?!?”  Never stop experimenting though. I find that even when ideas are rejected there is a project waiting just around the corner where your previous experiences will provide the perfect solution.  As creative people we want to continue to learn and grow throughout our lives and never stagnate.  Just remember, sometimes expectations and continuity will dictate to some degree the directions we must take.  The trick is figuring out how to be creative within those confines.

For the weekly series, 52, a streamlined style was adopted for a clean and cohesive look.

Speaking of the confines of continuity occasionally you may be asked to match the look of and existing series.  Here Booster Gold appeared in an issue of the weekly series 52 and his appearance needed to fit nicely with the issues being made by other creative teams. With the extreme deadlines and continuity at stake and the clean openness of the artwork led me to use the gradient tool liberally to quickly illuminate broad swaths of color.  This streamlined approach was inspired by the G.I. Joe covers I had previously colored featuring artwork by J. Scott Campbell.  That experience has taught me how to simplify my rendering in a way that looked clean and did not distract form the expressive artwork.

Booster Gold appears in The O.M.A.C. Project where the color rendering was primarily freehand brush work as opposed to cuts style rendering found in many superhero comic books.

For every project full of constraints sometimes there are none.  For The O.M.A.C. Project Hi-Fi was given free reign and I worked up a medium edge brush style that I felt meshed nicely with the grayscale nature of shaded grayscale artwork. Few cuts were used coloring issues of The O.M.A.C. Project and most of the artwork was freehand paintbrush work.  I experimented with subtle textures and lighting effects throughout the mini-series and while there isn’t much background to see on this page featuring Booster Gold I was able to paint a ton of cool castles, mountains, and other scenery and settings.  It was like a creative road trip… with lots of O.M.A.C.s.

Chris Batista's take on Booster includes heavier shading of the blue areas of booster's costume and more stylized hair. This hard brush color style was created to compliment the crisper edges of Batista's artwork.

When I received Chris Batista’s cover art for Booster Gold 14 first my jaw hit the ground when I counted over 100 figures on the cover.  Soon after I was engrossed imagining how the lighting and atmosphere might work to draw attention to Booster, then I started noticing the angularity of Batista’s take on Booster vs. the rounded curvy style of Jurgens.  I wanted to play up this angularity within the color rendering and I attached the canvas using a hard edged brush.  What I like about the results is the contrast when compared to Jurgen’s work.  Between these two artist we have completely different approaches to the same character each iconic in their own right.  They each stand alone as genius but work cohesively within the broader continuity of Booster Gold.  It would be boring if all comics looked alike.  Thank goodness we have Chris Batista and Dan Jurgens to bring us variety.

Looking over these examples you can clearly see how one character may appear in a variety of comic books pencilled by any number of talented artist.  By investing some time and thought into your approach to coloring you can create color styles and techniques that compliment the artwork and the visual storytelling. At the end of the day, nine out of ten people may not be able to tell anything beyond Booster Gold’s costume is blue and gold.  But that tenth person will be touched by what you have done. And that is why style matters.

Brian is a comic book colorist, founder of Hi-Fi colour design, and co-author of Hi-Fi Color for Comics and the sequel Master Digital Color where you will find step-by-step tutorials to create the styles of coloring featured in this story.