Colour Job.

It’s been nothing but computer-screens for the last couple of weeks, as I’ve been lettering and colouring my little heart out. When I started out doing this four part mini-series, my hope was that along the way, I’d hook up with a colourist for the covers, and a letterer for the interior. It became clear pretty quickly that this was going to be a one man show from the start, however. I was going to have to be both Monkey and Organ-Grinder.

So lately I’ve been doing the part of the process that I’ve been putting off for a while now. Colouring the first three covers. The biggest compliment I’ll give myself is that I don’t hate my efforts (…yet.) This is actually my second stab at colouring these covers. I coloured all three last week using a style, that now looking back on it, was maybe a bit too experimental. These covers are very much a result of reacting to what I did wrong first time around. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent staring at these three covers in the last two weeks. However, I’m dangerously close to being pleased with the results this time around, so cannot grumble. The cover I dreaded colouring the most was issue #2, as this was an outdoors scene. Nothing harder than trying to recreate the great outdoors in digital. It was the cover that I felt had the best chance of going tits-up the worse. I tried to cover all my bases on this one, and think it came out looking ok (or tits-neutral, if you like.) Like I said, it’s weird trying to recreate nature on a computer-screen. It’s no John Constable, but hopefully it’s true enough to look natural. It’s also hard to draw a horror comic-cover set in the outdoors, without falling into cliché. No old, bare tree with scary face on the tree-trunk and evil looking owl on one of its dead branches, or anything like that. I wanted it to look quite pleasant until you come to the sting-in-the-tail. The first and third covers are set indoors, which was a bit easier. It was more of trying to suggest rot and mouldy walls. Again, it’s trying to make something look sinister, without falling into cliché. I tried to keep the colour-palette cold and unsettling. I’m very aware that it is all about the colour-palette when it comes to colouring horror comics. I just hope I don’t end up hating them in a week or two, and have to recolour them a third time (starts violently sobbing…)

I’m thinking of learning Italian just so I can import and read Dylan Dog comics, and watch Giallos in their native-tongue. Would that be the nerdiest reason anyone’s ever learnt another languages?