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Philipp Lenssen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 18 October 2006
Location: Germany
Posts: 75
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 9:32am | IP Logged | 1
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A little project of mine is Cover Browser (a kind of comic book cover gallery using different APIs), and I now added a special section -- Cover Browser Labs. The purpose of the first experiment is to do visual pattern matching... e.g. which comic book cover looks most like a black triangle? One interesting result was when I was looking for the brightest covers (the ones using the most white), a John Byrne issue popped up... Alpha Flight #6!
http://www.coverbrowser.com/labs
The other Alpha Flight covers are here by the way -- #3 has got to be one of the coolest comic book covers in history:
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/alpha-flight
PS: If any of you wants to match a specific pattern, just post the
image here and I'll run it across all covers (or if you want to limit
the search to a specific series, let me know).
Edited by Philipp Lenssen on 07 December 2006 at 9:33am
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John Byrne
Trek Tart
Joined: 11 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 61882
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 10:11am | IP Logged | 2
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ALPHA FLIGHT 3 stands to this day as my favorite of
all the covers I have done. Glad you liked it!
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Soren Madsen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 April 2004
Location: Denmark
Posts: 105
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 10:15am | IP Logged | 3
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Alpha Flight 3 is my favorite Alpha cover...a couple of months ago it was actually for sale on ebay. It had a buy me now and I was to late and still kicking myself over that.
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Steve Gumm
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 577
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 10:41am | IP Logged | 4
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Soren- What's even more crazy is the Buy It Now price was $500 or maybe even lower if I recall correctly. WHAT A DEAL!!
Edited by Steve Gumm on 07 December 2006 at 10:41am
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Ryan Maxwell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7402
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 10:43am | IP Logged | 5
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JB, would you do a recreation or reimagining of that cover if requested? I'm far from artistic, so it's hard to wrap my brain around the bars interweaving like they do.
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John Byrne
Trek Tart
Joined: 11 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 61882
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 10:47am | IP Logged | 6
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The bars were a piece of cake. The trick to that cover was positioning Aurora just right, so that the "negative space" still read as her proper silhouette.As to a recreation or reimagining, I think I would prefer the former -- for just that reason. It would be less work!
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Ryan Maxwell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7402
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 10:47am | IP Logged | 7
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Thanks! I just put Aurora on your commission list, but it didn't occur to me to have this cover done. Don't worry, I won't go changin'...
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John Byrne
Trek Tart
Joined: 11 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 61882
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 10:49am | IP Logged | 8
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Incidentally, both Frank Miller and I have had to fight the same fight when it comes to "bright" covers and interior pages. Colorists almost universally want to use yellow to indicate "bright". It's the same kind of thinking that knocks out the blacks in explosions, making them red or somesuch, and not grasping at all that this makes the blast look less bright!The colorists who understand this simple concept are rare and special, and probably should be cloned at the earliest convenience.
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Roger A Ott II
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5004
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 11:02am | IP Logged | 9
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I think there might be one or two still in the business.
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John Byrne
Trek Tart
Joined: 11 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 61882
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 11:04am | IP Logged | 10
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Hence my use of present tense, Roger.
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Aric Shapiro
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4349
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 11:08am | IP Logged | 11
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Alpha Flight works on so many differetn fronts. Still one of my favorites to this day.
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Roger A Ott II
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5004
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 11:28am | IP Logged | 12
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Whatever happened to Glynis? I haven't seen her name in a credits box since the late 80's. She was one of the finest colorists to work in the industry.
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Gene Best
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 October 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 3209
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 11:30am | IP Logged | 13
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Creative question, JB -
Looking at Alpha Flight #12 ... generally speaking, when considering putting something like "And One Shall Surely Die" on a cover, what goes through your mind as a writer? Does such a thing run the risk of being a spolier? Does it run the risk of taking away from the potentially increased shock of blindsiding the reader with a major character's death? Or do you feel it sort of ups the anticipation for the reader?
Just curious as to your decision-making process ... and would you do it differently now?
Thanks!
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george taylor
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 October 2006
Posts: 110
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 11:49am | IP Logged | 14
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God, some of those later covers look awful.
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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 8722
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 11:54am | IP Logged | 15
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This is my first time reading about CoverBrowser.com. Neat. I'm sure it took (takes?) a lot of time to put together.
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John Donges
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 489
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 11:54am | IP Logged | 16
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The covers to Alpha Flight 3 and 4 are among my all-time favorites. They made a very strong impression on me at age 13.
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Soren Madsen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 April 2004
Location: Denmark
Posts: 105
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | 17
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Here`s crossing my fingers for a recreation or a really nice reimagining...
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John Byrne
Trek Tart
Joined: 11 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 61882
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | 18
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…generally speaking, when considering putting something like "And One Shall Surely Die" on a cover, what goes through your mind as a writer? Does such a thing run the risk of being a spolier? Does it run the risk of taking away from the potentially increased shock of blindsiding the reader with a major character's death? Or do you feel it sort of ups the anticipation for the reader? *** The hope is to whet the reader's interest -- get him/her on the edge of her/his seat while reading. Almost impossible in the age of the internet, of course.
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Philipp Lenssen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 18 October 2006
Location: Germany
Posts: 75
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | 19
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Somehow, I get the feeling many colorists today would've destroyed that Alpha Flight 3 cover by using too many colors, shades, "dirty" texture, lens-flares and background blurs. Of course, there's always good and bad colorists, I just guess computer colorization can be used for abuse much more effectively!
> This is my first time reading about CoverBrowser.com. Neat. I'm sure
> it took (takes?) a lot of time to put together.
Glad ya like it! Think of CoverBrowser as an automated cover display engine... so the main work was to program it, and do manual approving (because the automation only takes you so far). It took around 2 weeks of programming and approving, though it's one of those sites that will never be finished. A lot of credit goes to the hundreds of sites which my crawler accessed to find scans, and of course, the credit for those scans belongs to the incredible artists.
If anyone sees their favorite Byrne work missing on the site, by the way, just leave a comment and I'll try to assemble this!
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John Byrne
Trek Tart
Joined: 11 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 61882
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | 20
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I get the feeling many colorists today would've destroyed that Alpha Flight 3 cover by using too many colors, shades, "dirty" texture, lens-flares and background blurs. Of course, there's always good and bad colorists, I just guess computer colorization can be used for abuse much more effectively!*** Even back in the day, I had to compromise my vision of the cover, in order to get most of what I wanted. I asked for no color at all, other than Aurora's face, but what I got was a colored logo and corner symbol.
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Aric Shapiro
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4349
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | 21
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Didn't someone post a differetn version of the cover some time back with the color removed more in line with your vision JB?
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Philipp Lenssen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 18 October 2006
Location: Germany
Posts: 75
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | 22
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*cough* *nudge* *photopaint* *wink*
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John Byrne
Trek Tart
Joined: 11 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 61882
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | 23
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No wonder Aurora looks so scared. She can't
breathe inside that f**king PLASTIC BOX!!!
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Brian Hunt
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4516
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | 24
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Ha!
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Stan Lomisceau
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 October 2006
Posts: 531
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| Posted: 07 December 2006 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | 25
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in the alpha flight snow blind i liked how for the snow there was no
drawing like there was so much snow yo ocouldnt even see. you have to
admit it was very brave for mr byrne to do something like that it was
really taking a risk but look at how it has resulted. a really great
comic! i never saw anyone do something like that.
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Topic Closed)
