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Topic: Question for JB: Zip-A-Tone Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Eric Ladd
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Posted: 21 August 2019 at 11:03am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

JB, Page 10 of Elsewhen Issue 3 got me thinking about all the ways a night time effect can be done and Zip-A-Tone came to mind along with your experiments with Duo-Tone on Namor.

When do you think a Zip-A-Tone effect works for comic art? Any guidelines?

Thanks in advance.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 21 August 2019 at 11:21am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Zip-a-tone is an artifact of a bygone age. With today’s coloring, it’s really not needed.
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Ron Grant
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Posted: 21 August 2019 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

But there is something about that "artifact of a bygone age" that and cheap newsprint makes it a comic to me.
New ways are not the best ways.
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Eric Ladd
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Posted: 21 August 2019 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I like some of the effects, but JB is correct in that they can be achieved with better printing these days. Even if you want a dot or line pattern you can drop in Zip-A-Tone like effects right from Photoshop or Procreate. If you were doing this page today you wouldn't drop in the pattern behind Arkon and you would make the woman's hair brunette with inking or color instead of a dot pattern. It does make it easy to spot comic art from that particular era though.


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Brian Miller
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Posted: 21 August 2019 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

JB didn’t say anything about better printing of today. He said the coloring of today. 
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Robert Bradley
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Posted: 22 August 2019 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Has anyone used it as extensively as Tom Palmer early in his career?

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John Byrne
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Posted: 22 August 2019 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Has anyone used it as extensively as Tom Palmer early in his career?

••

Many, in the Seventies and Eighties, tho few with Tom's skill. He had/has an kind of intuition about when and how to use Zip, while so many others just slap it on where they think it looks "cool"--whether it does or not.

One inker in particular I had words with about his use of Zip. He had a fondness for particular patterns of dots that conflicted with the line screen in the printing, and created little flowers everywhere. When I asked him to stop he said "I like the flowers!"

(It wasn't Terry, btw.)

Another had picked up on Neal Adams technique of using leftover scraps of Zip to create interesting forms and patterns, but he had nothing like Neal's eye. More often than not he'd lay one Zip on top of another, and in the printing it would just turn black.

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Robbie Moubert
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Posted: 22 August 2019 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Slightly different because it was never intended to be coloured but I remember being particularly impressed with Brian Bolland's use of Letratone (as it was known in the UK) on this Judge Dredd story.


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John Byrne
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Posted: 22 August 2019 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

If that’s really Letratone and not some form of Duoshade, then I have ANOTHER reason to hate Brian!!
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Robbie Moubert
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Posted: 22 August 2019 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

It's quite possible I'm wrong! Now you've mentioned duoshade I'm looking at it with new eyes and am leaning more in that direction.
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Dave Kopperman
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Posted: 22 August 2019 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Possibly even ink wash or marker (which I would normally expect to be 'splotchier,' but as JB hints, if anyone could make it work, it'd be Bolland).  The reproduction makes it tough to say.  I wonder if there are any original Dredd pages with the same technique online.

But I think JB is right - it's likely DuoTone board.  What I originally thought was a third tonal value is 'just' crosshatching, so there are only two tones.
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Dave Kopperman
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Posted: 22 August 2019 at 3:24pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

I personally never understood the use of mechanical tones on pages meant for color reproduction.  The effect was muddy 95% of the time.  But in B&W and in the hands of a master craftsman, it's one of my all-time favorite techniques and I lament the loss of it as a tool in the digital age.

Personal favorite use would be by Gerhard, particularly in the later Cerebus volume "Going Home."  There's a sequence set on a barge during a misty morning that's just stunning - I can't find it online by I'll try to scan in in later.  
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