| Author |
|
Armindo Macieira
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 October 2006
Location: Portugal
Posts: 955
|
| Posted: 01 March 2008 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | 1
|
|
|
Hello, mr. Byrne
What's your position concerning backgrounds? Which of this options illustrates better your feelings:
a)"I hate doing backgrounds, but I got to do them, so,... better do them right!"
b)"Doesn't bother me, some are fine, some are boring,... go to do them all!"
c)"I love doing backgrounds! I can spend hours with details on buildings or ships or whatever!"
And it was always like that?
Thanks.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132282
|
| Posted: 01 March 2008 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | 2
|
|
|
(c) is probably the closest.I like doing backgrounds -- but I also understand that sometimes the foreground action is sufficiently more important that the backgrounds should be dropped completely. It's one of the few "effects" we can do in comics that can't be done -- or, at least, can't be done without looking, at the very least, odd -- in movies.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Thorsten Brochhaus
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 August 2004
Posts: 328
|
| Posted: 02 March 2008 at 9:55am | IP Logged | 3
|
|
|
In the movies they use the focus instead.
Nowadays the focus effect is used in comics too, emulated with photoshop filters, probably. However, I don't really get the point of doing it, besides making comics look more like movies.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Greg Woronchak
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 September 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 1631
|
| Posted: 03 March 2008 at 8:09am | IP Logged | 4
|
|
|
I love how Neal Adams used background detail sparingly, and yet I never noticed that until he mentioned it in an interview. He tended to start off with an establishing shot loaded with information, and afterwards the reader would instinctively 'fill in the blanks'.
I think I prefer a well drawn suggestion of a background, rather than detail overload that tends to distract.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
e-mail
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132282
|
| Posted: 03 March 2008 at 8:31am | IP Logged | 5
|
|
|
Despite being known for his incredibly detailed backgrounds, Kirby was also a master of What To Leave Out. Especially during the early 60s at Marvel, when he was drawing what seemed like a million books a month, and doing what today would be called breakdowns. Even when he was cutting corners to speed up the process, Jack knew when to draw backgrounds, and when not to. In the early FF issues, some of his most powerful panels/pages have not a whisper of backgrounds to be found!
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132282
|
| Posted: 03 March 2008 at 8:32am | IP Logged | 6
|
|
|
In the movies they use the focus instead.
••
Not "instead". Focus is one of their catalog of effects, and one that cannot be duplicated very successfully in comics. But it does not have the impact of simply dropping the background completely.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Joel Biske
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 18 January 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 761
|
| Posted: 03 March 2008 at 8:45am | IP Logged | 7
|
|
|
In the movies they use the focus instead.
••
Not "instead". Focus is one of their catalog of
effects, and one that cannot be duplicated very successfully in comics.
But it does not have the impact of simply dropping the background
completely.
----
That's one of the thongs that bothers me most about todays computer coloring... at least the ones who don't get it. Thinking that you can throw a selection around the foreground/main figure and just throw a blur on the rest and you get a depth of field/focus effect.
Ugh.... makes me cringe every time i see it...
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
e-mail
|
| |
Bill Dowling
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2176
|
| Posted: 03 March 2008 at 8:47am | IP Logged | 8
|
|
|
I just watched The Matrix yesterday. The parts of scenes where there's no background whatsoever are very striking.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132282
|
| Posted: 03 March 2008 at 8:58am | IP Logged | 9
|
|
|
THE MATRIX makes good use of a lot of "comic book effects", but their limbo-set scenes are something other than what I'm talking about here. To go to their "white space", there is a transition -- they are in a different "place" than they are when there are backgrounds. They don't drop backgrounds in the middle of a scene, for dramatic effect, as is done in comics.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Steven Cassidy
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Posts: 611
|
| Posted: 03 March 2008 at 9:10am | IP Logged | 10
|
|
|
The use of sound in movies is probably a better way to describe it. Often there is much background noise, and then not, and then only select noises -- all in the same scene(s) to gain different affect from the scene.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132282
|
| Posted: 03 March 2008 at 10:27am | IP Logged | 11
|
|
|
Barry Windsor Smith tells the story of working on an issue of CONAN in which the Cimmerian had to enter a bad guy's lair in which all sound slowly faded to nothing. He contemplated how to do this and, since he was coloring the issue himself, elected to have to color bleach out until, at "zero point", everything was black and white.He turned in the coloring and, as he told the story, a few days later came into the office to find the editor filling in all the "missing" color.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Andrew Hess
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9842
|
| Posted: 03 March 2008 at 10:50am | IP Logged | 12
|
|
|
well, there's an example of an editor trying to correct too much.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Topic Closed)
