Max Bunker in Zagreb

Last night my girlfriend took me to a comic convention, “crtani romani show” in ZKM in Zagreb, where their guest, Max Bunker, author of the Italian cult comic “Alan Ford”, was answering questions about this serial.

Alan Ford as Bunker said owe it’s Popularity in the countries of Ex- Yugoslavia to Nenad Brixi, the man who didn’t literally translate, but actually invented the expressions in this comic. But what really was especially interesting for me was not the fact that the comic never really had any popularity in other countries except Italy and Yugoslavia, but bunker’s arrogance and the way he tried to ignore every question about Magnus (who was the other part of Magnus & Bunker tandem) and his significance to the serial.

One could get an impression of that famous relationship between coauthors of the comic, where the artist always takes all the fame and the writer ends up with no credits at all. In this case I guess that artist did get all the fame but writer got the riches. I couldn’t stop thinking of Magnus’s later works, Very serious in fact, such as Alias Unknow. And the contrapuntal Alan ford in it’s later years. Maybe Americans can not understand the need to stop the serial when all is drawn from the story and the situation. But we here feel that there is no need to tell the same story again. This situation exists in the Balkan because we never had any comic industry. All was done individually. Because very few authors could actually live from their work there was no need of making things less then fun. And I believe that’s what the comic should be- pure fun. I don’t think someone should reed a comic because of it’s addiction.

One of the attendants noticed that tone equipment was as if it was provided by Grunf (crazy inventor- ex- third reich pilot). Audience in the back, couldn’t hear anything so they started to be sarcastic, and it was strange that max bunker, the legend, wasn’t finding it fun. He actually used all the answers to commercialize his product. It is funny that something you read since you were a little kid and was so incredibly funny and ingenious, could be done by someone so interested in it’s material value. But the strangest thing was that, Bunker was so determent to dement something so obvious, something we all knew, that, same as Magnus drew him self as Bob Rock (one of the characters), he also drew Bunker few times in the comic. Usually Bunker appeared as a suicidal man who is not able to kill him self. And I remember that once he drew him self in the flat of the old building as a poor cartoon artist throwing darts in Bunkers picture on the door. I just feel that I cannot read a comic when I know the author didn’t enjoy making it.

COL- ERASEless

My first post here. I'm doing an animated music video these days- my first serious, classical, hand drawn, frame by frame, animation. I think I will place some of the sequential drawings later. When I went to get some instructions in the Animation and New Media Academy in Zagreb- they thought me how to draw my sketch with the tech-pencil and later trace it on the light-box. I used it since, and have produce one comic-strip that way, but I noticed that my drawings are loosing the touch. The line lost it’s freshness, and since I started using felt-pen instead of ink, my comic got the Japanese kind of feeling, which I considered then as a quality and character of the drawing, but as I finished the comic and took it to some friends from academy to see it I suddenly began ashamed of my work. As if I cant draw anything.

This is what my pages turned into when processed that way…

I don’t say my penciling is great, and this isn’t a perfect example but there is much more of the anatomy and shading before my light-box processing.

My desperate look made one friend of mine to speak about some tutorials he found on the net. So he gave me his interpretation of what he read (I have to explain that; in our, post-communist countries things like col-erase pencils, and other capitalist shit, wasn’t really what you can see in all art stores): "You do the sketch in blue (meaning any blue colored pencil) and then scan it- turn to black and white mode, and the blue will disappear".

The story didn’t quite fit my reason ‘cause I kinda knew that if you turn it to black and white the colors of smaller valer intensity will turn to raster, that’s what I was getting all the time when scanning my pencil drawings. And I liked the result but that was not the way to get rid of the under-painting. And I just continue to work my way. But the loss of freshness in the drawings just kept bothering me all the time. Not mentioning that all the drawings I found on the net used blue under the black drawing. It just made me crazy… last night I took some blue pencil I found in my drawing kit and started the procedure. I don’t have to tell you how satisfied I was, and finally I could do the rendering and rasterizing with no fear that I will blow up the line. And this is what I’ve got…

The morning came. Had to erase the blue lines. No way. Converting to black and white mode gave no result. I’ve done my one little investigation about the problem and found out what you call col-erase pencils, but what to heck, now I wanna erase the blue digitally. Here’s what I’ve done (as I don’t use photoshop-like all true professional artists- I will give you my solution in corel photo-paint but the point is the same):

Under Image>Adjust>Selective Color you minimize magenta and cyan in the blues, now you have a bit of light gray where there was blue. Now go to the Image>Adjust>Brightness-Contrast-intensity and toggle a little between contrast and brightness (I set brightness to about 7 and contrast to 11, but it depends of the drawing) until you loose all of the gray from the drawing. You’ll notice that if you set high contrast you’ll lose some of the thinner lines from the drawing. Now I end up with erased blue lines from the drawing but I have very pale black lines. I want to make them 100% black. Here’s what I usually do. I go to Object>Create>From Background and, using the Transparent Color Selection Tool simply turn white-transparent. Now again go to Image>Adjust>Brightness-Contrast-intensity and turn brightness to 0. You end up here with 100% black, clear drawing but with rough edges. Now I use smooth to get something more like I wanted. This is the final…

Please if you know a simpler way of getting this and of course the way to get my drawing better. The line still loses when I blur it. I’d be grateful to learn. Drop me a link in the comments or private. But I guess I’ll be of to buy those pencils these days, anyway. Thank you.