One area of Disney comics that don't often hear people talk about, but that I have many scattered opinions about, is the use of color. And I'm talking about the use of colors in general, not what the color of Scrooge's collar should be or something.
Since I have no background in coloring, I just want to start off with a couple of examples I find interesting.
Hachette has some great cover colorists. Cyrille Leriche really knows how to get rid of the black outlines. I also love what they did with Don Rosa's posters for Picsou Magazine back in the day.
Modern-day recoloring can often look strange on older comics. Compare the 1958 coloring of Donald of Münchhausen with the 1993 version. The modern coloring clashes with the wild drawings of the 1950s. I think this rings true for many older artists that keep getting reprinted, actually.
Any examples you'd like to share? Particular things you like or don't like?
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jul 22, 2020 18:36:26 GMT
Well, I will say this: except for specific artists with a unique style that visibly calls for complex shading (e.g. Mottura, Marco Rota, Turconi), I really am a stickler for solid blocks of color within black outlines. Leriche's work is gorgeous in its own way, but it's all covers and that's where it should mostly stay. Scrooge McDuck is never going to look photorealistic on an ordinary comic-book budget, and the artificial depth modern shading sometimes tries to create just ends up reminding me of uncanny-valley early CGI.
For example, I noticed a tendency in recent American printings (I use recent loosely; I mean, the last 25 years or so) to use gradiants on the mass of Scrooge's coins in the Bin, like this:
Even going beyond my preference for solid gold, it just looks artificial to me. We know the individual coin variations haven't been drawn, and a copper-colored blob over the gray blob isn't going to fool anyone. That's not how a mix of pennies and silver dollars would look and we know it.
(Although it doesn't clash as badly with Rosa's art as it does with e.g. Cavazzano's.)
I'm mostly fine with gradients, though it's true that sometimes early on people got carried away with enthusiasm over this new toy and went overboard. But I like the gradients in the sky etc. It's always seemed likely to me that colorists would have done some of that in the mid-20th century if they had had the means.
I'm afraid I mostly notice coloring when it rubs me the wrong way. Most extreme example: the coloring in Italian Minni & Company where pink was the dominant color in the palette. Because this book is for GURLZ. Pink barn on Grandma's farm, pink lamp and machines and door in Gyro's workshop, pink row of Duckburg houses, pink backgrounds, gah. I mean, there's just a huge amount of pink on every page. Less extreme: I find the Italian color scheme for the money bin alien and off-putting, both the primary-colored duplo-block bin and the gold coins, which all just looks fake to me. And I have said that I'm seriously insulted by the Fresh and Modern Folks at IDW leaving the #1 dime colored gold in comic books meant for an American audience. You Don't Even Care.
I do think that certain styles of coloring accord with certain styles of drawing, but I'm not sure I can give lots of clear examples. How much detail, how surrealistic or realistic, how swoopy or buttoned-down....
I couldn't agree with you more about the gradient coloring (also called airbrush coloring). In my opinion flat coloring simply fits the vast majority of Disney comics far better than the airbrush look which is why I prefer the coloring job the great Rich Tommaso did for the Carl Barks Library to the coloring in the Don Rosa Library. The coloring in the Don Rosa Library might be technically "correct" (for example a specific species of flower has the correct color), but generally it looks too modern and digital.
Less extreme: I find the Italian color scheme for the money bin alien and off-putting, both the primary-colored duplo-block bin and the gold coins, which all just looks fake to me. And I have said that I'm seriously insulted by the Fresh and Modern Folks at IDW leaving the #1 dime colored gold in comic books meant for an American audience. You Don't Even Care.
Ech… I've mentioned this before, but although it might just be nostalgia, Italian colours all the way for me. In the case of the gold coins I genuinely think it looks more pleasing — makesscenes set inside the Bin feel more welcoming and comfortable, so to speak. It's not scientific at all, but huge seas of silver coins simply look like the proverbial Cold Hard Cash in a way that the gold-coins-and-green-banknotes combo does not.
And I mean, Barks agrees with me.
In the case of the Money Bin's coloring… I can't honestly argue with the characterization of the Italian red-and-blue Bin as "duplo-block"; it's mostly just nostalgia. Although I do also think pure slate grey, as used in most American printings, is too dull. Perhaps, nostalgia aside, the Bin shouldn't look like a leftover from Mickey's Toontown Fair, but neither should it look like an ordinary office building. I find the grey-with-gold-coin look is a much more acceptable "subdued" alternative.
I never understood Don Rosa's dislike of the European practice of coloring the contents of the money bin yellow. Sure, the nr. 1 dime should be colored grey, because it is a 1875 Seated Liberty Dime, but why can't most coins in the bin be colored yellow? Don Rosa's argument is that the coins in the money bin should not be gold coins, because the whole point is that these are not coins that are worth much, but I have NEVER considered the yellow colored coins in the money bin made out of gold when I was a child. I always considered them made out of some kind of alloy with high copper content such as the 10 euro cent coin: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_euro_cent_coin
The Italian bin looks fake to me because it looks like a plastic toy. The gold coins look fake to me because they're supposed to be American coins, like those I have in my pocket/wallet, and very few of those are gold-toned. They are mostly silverish, plus copper pennies. When I see a bin full of golden coins, the color makes it impossible for me to suspend disbelief. Sure, the idea of a bin full of coins is already a fantasy, but if they're not believably American coins, I'm outta there.
Similarly, the Phantom's miniature coin-cathedral would look fake to me if it were golden. Is that golden, too, in European editions? Hardly anyone would be throwing a gold coin into an American fountain. I thought Gladstone did a good job of coloring the miniature cathedral: the flying buttresses were copper, as if made exclusively of pennies, while the main building was silver, which is to say, blue/gray with white highlights.
Caballero, it's interesting that child-you did not assume that the gold-toned coins you saw in the bin were gold. I'm afraid, though, that there are no American coins like unto the 10 Euro cent coin. We now have gold-toned dollar coins featuring presidents that are rarely circulated, but nothing like that. The overwhelming mass of American coinage is silver-colored: quarters, dimes, nickels, even rarely used half-dollars, silver dollars. The pennies look copper-colored, not gold.
There were lots of gold coins minted in the 19th and early 20th century, but beginning in 1933 it was made illegal for Americans to own gold coins; they were supposed to be returned to the US Treasury, and most were melted down into gold bars.
Really, now, MacDuck, "Barks agrees with me"? What Barks thought would visually appeal to people with lots of discretionary funds for investing in comics-related art does not count as a decisive vote in my opinion. And even if Experts Agree that a bin full of gold is more aesthetically pleasing and symbolically powerful, I'm still opposed to it because Fake.
The solid-gray bin doesn't look like an ordinary office building to me because of its shape, setting, and dollar-sign insignia. Though I am OK with a gray bin with a golden dollar-sign insignia (or whatever the currency symbol is in the comic's country of origin).
Yes, as fredj says, let's get some comparative scans posted, of the same page colored in different styles. We should be able to do that with Barks. How about Cavazzano, as per MacDuck's comment?
The Italian bin looks fake to me because it looks like a plastic toy.
Sure does. And if I wanted to defend it, I might say something like: "that's the point. Scrooge is a big kid for whom money is an endlessly-adaptive toy, and accordingly he lives in some kind of solid bouncy castle." But that's rationalization and I admit it. The reason it looks "right" to me is nostalgia and little else.
The gold coins look fake to me because they're supposed to be American coins, like those I have in my pocket/wallet, and very few of those are gold-toned. (…) Sure, the idea of a bin full of coins is already a fantasy, but if they're not believably American coins, I'm outta there. (…) I'm afraid, though, that there are no American coins like unto the 10 Euro cent coin. (…) There were lots of gold coins minted in the 19th and early 20th century, but beginning in 1933 it was made illegal for Americans to own gold coins; they were supposed to be returned to the US Treasury, and most were melted down into gold bars.
To which I say: bold of you to assume those are supposed to be American coins. Granted, that did seem to be Barks's instinct, at least at the beginning, in stories such as A Christmas for Shacktown — where the essential joke of the Money Bin is that it's alike to an enormous piggy bank. (Again the “childlike Scrooge” aesthetic…) But if there's one thing that has been firmly-imprinted in Duck fans, and Duck artists', minds since Only a Poor Old Man onwards, it is that most of Scrooge's fortune was earned on globe-trotting adventures in the 19th century.
(In Rosa's chronology, it is specifically the case that no significant amounts of treasure were added to the Bin after 1930, when Scrooge's adventuring spirit was broken and he became a recluse for seventeen years.)
Italian stories — or at least, French translations of Italian stories — sometimes refer to the gold coins in Scrooge's Bin as “doubloons,” and in light of all the treasure-seeking that always made sense to me. Huge swathes of the cash in the Money Bin isn't actually in valid currencies, whether it be because the countries in which Scrooge earned them stopped being countries in the meantime, or because they were already ancient treasure when he found them. To bring up that painting again (…mostly to save me the trouble of uploading another), note the jewels in the bucket. "Bin as treasure-trove" is a take with a lengthy and honorable history, even if it postdates "Bin as piggybank".
Of course, you're by all means allowed to prefer "Bin as piggybank". It's quite charming too. I'm just saying there are valid in-universe reasons why Scrooge's Bin would contain large amounts of gold(en) coins, in a way that, again, I admit it, there really isn't for why he'd shill out to paint his Bin bright red.
Really, now, MacDuck, "Barks agrees with me"? What Barks thought would visually appeal to people with lots of discretionary funds for investing in comics-related art does not count as a decisive vote in my opinion. And even if Experts Agree that a bin full of gold is more aesthetically pleasing and symbolically powerful, I'm still opposed to it because Fake.
I was being somewhat playful there. But as one of the only cases where Barks got to colour his Ducks and their world, the paintings are still of significant interest to me in such matters. And even if it's not a decisive, "canonical" statement that the money is supposed to be golden, as such, it still shows that Barks recognized that mostly-golden coins were prettier, once he was working in an even more visual medium than comics, where colors are key.
True, if the bin is thought of as the repository of Scrooge's globetrotting treasure-hunting, a bunch of gold coins makes more sense. I'm stickin' with the colossal piggy bank, though, for various reasons which I won't go into here because it will lead us off-topic.
I think you can't beat Max Monteduro. Duck Avenger: New Adventures, DoubleDuck and several other stories testify to his great talent at using shading to enhance the feeling of a story.
Although I am one of the few who really liked the 80s/90s airbrush experiments in some Italian comics. Giulio Chierchini was especially daring in this era, with his comics being actually painted backgrounds with normally drawn Ducks and architecture on top.
Casty isn't half bad when he participates in the colouring of his comics, either.
I'm certainly not a fan of the early colouring of Italian stories, although the Münchhausen example as well as some early Scarpa aren't that bad actually - but then there's so many stories which only consist of primary colours - yellow and pink skies and all. Give me a recoloured version any day.
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jul 23, 2020 22:47:12 GMT
Painted, lineart-less backgrounds are another thing — they are gorgeous experiments to be sure. But that's not a sustainable model for *all* the comics, nor would I want it to be. It's marvelously-suited to something like "L'Inferno di Paperino", though.
Re.: Don Rosa and the color of the coins, do we have specific quotes? I trust you guys on this, but since I'm researching the matter, I'd like to hear (well, read) it from the horse's mouth.
I posted this comparison below of The Last of the Clan McDuck to tell that I really like the "muddy" colors of the Uncle Scrooge-panels from the 90s. They look dirty and more realistic. I'm not a fan of the digital look of TheDon Rosa Library. These panels look too flat and fake for my taste.
When it comes to Scrooge's money bin, I prefer it to be fully gray, including the $-insignia. It's made out of concrete, and Scrooge is cheap - I doubt he'd spend money on painting it. As for his coins, I like when there's variation. Gold, silver, copper. It's supposed to be money he has collected from all over the world, not just American currency, right?