Monday, August 28, 2023

Graveyard Shift 01

 I've started work on adapting a short story into comic format. The exercise is really just so I can take a stab at doing something that I have not written myself. I also think it would be fun to go back and do some public domain horror stories and try to nail down the style of the old Warren Magazines like EERIE, CREEPY or VAMPIRELLA.

I am starting with a short story titled "Graveyard Shift" by Rex Munsee. He's a member of the Snicker Snack Amateur Press Association (APA), which is a type of fanzine. Rex wrote the story a few issues ago, I read it and decided it would be fun to adapt it. So I wrote to him and he agreed to let me do his story, and the results will be printed in Snicker Snack and the Collectors' Club Newsletter.

The story has simple modeling and set requirements, which is a major criteria for my selection process:

  • Few character designs (there are 4)
  • Limited locations / sets:
    • Exterior:
      • Country road a night with a small car driving on it
      • Country road leads to a nice house in the woods
      • Front of the house as she enters
    • Interior:
      • Living room
      • Bedroom
      • Possibly another part of the house, like a hallway or kitchen area
    • Props (key items):
      • Hospital-type bed
      • Hypodermic & medical equipment
      • Set dressings (pictures, furniture, etc.)
      • Video camera
      • Video monitor
      • Antique mirror
If you're familiar with my workflow, then you know I start out in Poser (a 3D app) and then render line art which is composited and cleaned up in Clip Studio Paint. This makes the first step is to collect the 3D assets I need, and fortunately I already had most of the items above. The exterior of the country road has proved to be the most problematic because I didn't have exactly the sort of hilly environment I imagined when I started to block out the story and make thumbnails.

As for the character design, we'll cover that next time!

Other Posts in this Series

  • Graveyard Shift 01 - Project Overview (you are here)
  • Graveyard Shift 02 - Character Design Lauren Normal
  • Graveyard Shift 02 - Character Design Lauren Transformed
  • Graveyard Shift 03 - Character Design Victor
  • Graveyard Shift 04 - Character Design Vincent
  • Graveyard Shift 05 - Exterior Night

Friday, January 20, 2023

Retro Coloring 06: Skin Color

As noted previously, coloring comics was a two-step process performed by two different people.. The colorist indicated which colors should be used, but the separator did the actual, physical task of stripping the color separations. This is why there were often errors in the colors printed in old comics; either the colorist made an error, or (more likely) the person doing the separations made an error do to being in a hurry or simple inexperience.

Experience is also something that mattered, a lot. There was a lot of repetition in coloring comics, and as such both colorist and separator tended to skip over common things that were done over and over again. This becomes apparent when looking at old color guides: One thing that is often skipped is the code for Caucasian skin tones. This was a very standard code so the colorist really didn't need to specify it since the separators already knew what it was.

That's all good and fine, except for poor ole me living in the 21 Century! 

I actually had a little trouble confirming that these are the standard skin tones used by Marvel, DC, Archie and Harvey. Okay, it wasn't like I had to delve into books of forgotten lore, but it did take a few days to find and confirm through multiple sources that these are, in fact, the correct codes for standard skin tones from the 1940s - 80s:

  • White People: Y2R2
  • Conan's Skin (redder skin): Y3R3
  • Black People: YR3B2
  • Hulk's Green Skin: YB2