White House in Orbit

reinder · Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 6:25 pm Post subject: White House in Orbit

I've got some bad news and some good news:
The bad news: more delays in the schedule for Feral. The good news: I'll be bringing White House in Orbit to the website over the Christmas period, continuing to update daily, with large, re-scanned, cleaned-up, remastered comics. I'm even considering updating seven days a week throughout 2007. For more information, read my blog entry on the matter.
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Reinder Dijkhuis
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Mojo Rat · Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 15

Oooh, nifty (although havent read the blog entry yet) I quite liked that comic of yours (although for the most part i like all of your comics that I have seen)
i thought the old newspaper texture look that the white house in orbit had was quite a nice touch for them.

reinder · Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:23 pm Post subject:

Good of you to mention that, because I looked at the original series on its original site the other day, and I really didn't like the newspaper texture. In fact, I was thinking of recolouring it, or even running the entire series in black and white...

So how does everyone here who has read the old comics feel about the newspaper texture.

(Note that I'm deliberately not linking the original site, just to avoid spoiling things for the much larger section of the readership that hasn't read WHIO yet.)
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Reinder Dijkhuis
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Mojo Rat · Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 15

Expanding a bit on my previous statement. as i said I liked the texture thing. I thought that id added to the feel of the 1920's feel of the comics and was something that I had not seen done before. So to me it made them stand out.

Geir · Joined: 05 Jun 2002 Posts: 124

reinder · Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2006 12:19 pm Post subject:

Well, the case against the newspaper texture is that:

* It's a lot of work. If I rescan the pages from the stories in question, I won't be able to use the old colouring base. Back in the day, it was colouring the pages that added the most stress and aggravation to the process. It might not be so bad this time, but I've learned that optimism about that sort of thing comes with a heavy penalty.
* It's even more work to apply it consistently, which I didn't do last time around. I've gone off the idea of having storylines alternate between colour and B/W in any way, so it'll be every page within a storyline or none at all.
* Dressing up the comic as an artefact detracts from the comic as a comic. All that meta-post-modern pretending we were dealing with old historical material was fun, but it distracted from the contents of the storylines themselves.
* Many of the comics treated in that way were blurry and hard to read. Generally, I don't think the work spent on the newspaper-textured colouring benefitted the accessibility at all. Actually, I recall that Geir was one of the people who complained about this at the time.

So, on balance, I'm not too keen on bringing back the newspaper texture. However, I could be swayed by a strong showing of reader opinion, or.... a strong showing of generosity. If I can get paid a colourist's rate for coloring the pages, I'll happily colour every last one of them, and throw a newspaper texture in as well. Sorry to be mercenary about this, but the wallet's in a poor shape right now.
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Reinder Dijkhuis
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Mojo Rat · Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 15

To be honest. As a consumer of web comics I guess I never thought about the different stages of these things like with the newspaper look. I had assumed that the texturing was just some filter put over it alll.

No worries though i like the comic regardless I thought it was a really fun theme for a strip.

reinder · Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 4:02 am Post subject:

Well, it is a filter (a GIMP script-fu, to be precise), but to apply it, I have to colour the pages first, and then I have to tweak the finished work quite a bit. The colouring stage is the hardest, or at least it was, back in the day. I don't like the unfiltered colours in the original version (the use of the texture effect often gave me a license to slap any old combination on the pages), and in many cases I don't like the finished result either. I think many of the pages will look better in B/W.
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Reinder Dijkhuis
Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan | Blog |
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Mojo Rat · Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 15

You know. That just looks downright painful watching him walk there. Reminds me of the last wedding i went to for some reason, 12 hrs in rented shoes with no support.