Thursday, September 3, 2009

Blast from the Past #221: Archie TMNT Adventures #5 cover

Here's another Eastman/Laird collaboration from the Archie "TMNT Adventures" days. This is the cover for issue #5, which Kevin penciled...



... and I inked.



Looking at this again, I see something which has always irked me -- when a penciler doesn't take the time to fill in large black areas with pencil, instead just putting an "x" in the areas which need to be filled with solid black. It's probably an efficient way to save time, especially when you are inking your own work, but I've always thought it looks lame and unfinished. When I am inking somebody else's pencils, I like to see a completely penciled page. -- PL

5 comments:

  1. -->> Basically they turn the the inker with ' Paint - By - Number ' type piece to fill in.

    oi.

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  2. Can't say I agree - in this case the pencilled version was never meant to be a finished piece of art. Only after it's been inked (and colored) is it ready to be a cover. Now, if someone were doing pencils as finished art you better believe those areas should be filled with more than x's.

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  3. "Don Smith said...
    Can't say I agree - in this case the pencilled version was never meant to be a finished piece of art. Only after it's been inked (and colored) is it ready to be a cover. Now, if someone were doing pencils as finished art you better believe those areas should be filled with more than x's."

    In general, and in a technical sense, you are right -- in the typical process of generating comic book art in preparation for printing, the penciling is not the end result one is going for -- it's a step toward that final goal.

    However, I think that complete pencils are much better for an inker to work from, as they give a far better idea of what the penciler intended for the final result. They are also just a lot more pleasant to look at. -- PL

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  4. -->> ' X s ' aside..

    it's prety fun to see the little variations on the details between the pencils and final ink, like the facial features on Baxter and how they changed a bit between Eastman's lead and Laird's inking.

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  5. -->> Real quick, Peter.. this is the cover for TMNTA #2 .

    ReplyDelete