2015 – Two Years of Comics!
Well guys, I got so caught up in recoloring old comics I forgot to draw a new one for today. I also completely forgot that we just passed TWO YEARS of Carbon Dating comic strips.
While I officially launched Carbon Dating at The Amaing Meeting, I began posting comics early so new visitors would have enough of an archive to read through – beginning in April 2013.
Thank you all for your support this far. I’m working hard to put together the first hardcover print edition of Carbon Dating. Right now I have all of Chapters 2 & 3 colored, but don’t think I’ll be able to recolor Chapter 1 in time for my print deadline. Should I include the original comics in black and white? Thoughts?
I should mention that a Kickstarter for the books will probably be coming soon, but all my Patreon supporters of $10 or more will already receive a copy!
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Sometimes a black and white film shouldn’t be coloured. Sorry, let me rephrase that- should never be coloured. If people want to see old black and white films in colour, there’s always those red and green glasses. Plus, you get to see it in pseudo 3D, which is 2D in old money.
Sorry, but I can’t support that. People who assert black and white films should always stay that way ought to try talking to some of the people still alive who made them, most of whom will tell you most assuredly – filming in B&W wasn’t a choice it was a necessity and if they could have filmed in color, they would have. I file all the claims of B&W purity in the same box as people who want “cinematic” effects in video games … they can take their 28fps junk with them on the way out the door, I want nothing less than 60fps (prefer 120) with NO blur, NO “scratchy film” effect … if I wanted that, I would get out my old 8mm projector, not a video game. And I sure wouldn’t have spent $400 on a new card.
I say colorize as many old films as we can, bring them to the palette the creators would have used if they could … if anyone prefers B&W, they can always go to the control settings of their TV and turn the color rendering off. 😉
Maybe we should also paint all those boring marble statues in more life-life colours too? I’ve always thought Michelangelo’s David would look better with a tan. And as for all those old black and white photos, they’d all look better with a bit of photoshopping. It won’t matter if the colours all look false or wrong, us luddites can always get our colour receptors selectively burnt out by lasers.
Non-sequitir – marble doesn’t come in various colors the way the transmitted/recorded visual medium does, and if the artist wanted colors they had many other mediums to choose from. Comparing that to a medium such as television where the option wasn’t available then, but is now, is a strawman at best. And calling it that is being generous. You could almost apply the argument against films made in B&W during the transition period where both were being used, but really the only reason all movies didn’t switch to B&W as soon as it was available had nothing to do with “artistic quality” … it had to do with money because color film was a LOT more expensive.
All this nostalgia about the “beauty” and “purity” of B&W is coming from two groups: a much older generation for whom it breeds nostalgia just because it brings back memories (don’t get me started on that topic) and a much younger one who really didn’t live in it but like so many other things attribute qualities to it that it just doesn’t have, except for them, because they don’t know it like we do.
@GreyWolf: Despite all the reasons you put up, my main reason for disliking coloured black and white films is that they are usually done badly and it looks false. As such it adds nothing except a jarring experience. However, I’m also sometimes fooled by old films that actually were filmed in colour but look like they have been recoloured. I’m not sure whether that is due to the colour process originally used or (as I suspect) by later more modern colour retouching which has been over applied.
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
And in that we would agree – a lot of the colorizations are poorly done. Either because the company doing it is using a tight budget for it, or the people doing it try to use the actual colors of the clothing and sets and don’t understand the difference between the colors that were used because of how they appear in B&W and what colors would have actually been used had it been in color. For a real laugh some time, check out the color image someone put up of what the Addam’s Family set looked like. Have some salve ready for your eyes. Just sayin. 😀
Colorized or not, my main point here is: neither is better or worse, just different. I do question the reasoning some people use for their preference because it seems arbitrary rather than purposeful – but I also acknowledge that some also have very valid reasons even if those reasons are simply “I dunno, I just like it that way …”. Sounds legit, I can run with it.
My main trigger here was the statement of how (paraphrasing here) “no B&W movies should ever be colorized”. And I say, why? Why should *my* choices be limited just so some purist can feel more justified in their own? If they are uncomfortable with their choices unless everyone is forced to agree then I think they should go address those issues and quit imposing their values onto me. Simple as that. They don’t want the colorized version they don;t have to watch it. Why should the choice be removed from my list?
That’s basically what I am getting at here.
Well, Michelangelo’s David wasn’t in color, but many ancient Roman marble sculptures were.
http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/11/dazzlers-html
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/12/were-ancient-st.html
Well for starters, it was available in Michelangelo’s time, so it was a choice by the artist. Not that it matters because just like making a colorized *copy* of a movie, if someone were to make a copy of Michelangelo’s work and use a different medium, that does nothing to destroy the original and adds to it.
Bottom line, I see nothing but a kneejerk reaction by those who insist on leaving B&W films in their original format. Colorizing them doesn’t destroy the original (you can still get it in B&W), you can view a colorized version with the color tuning turned off, and those who would prefer to see it in color can have what they want, too. If that’s what you prefer, so be it. But to act as if those who prefer it in color are somehow less than you (the 3D glasses crack – you know it, own up to it) or to deny them the option is just petty and sophomoric.
Whenever a work is remade it becomes, in a sense, a wholly new work. Just as movies based off books are not strictly better than the books merely because they add visuals and sound, so too are colored movies not strictly better than black and white films merely because they add color. In both cases something is left to the imagination of the viewer in the original work, which leads to different interpretations of the work, and anything a new work accomplishes is a specific interpretation of the original work.
Of course, I am invoking “Death of the Author” here, in that the author’s original intent (say, that a character’s hat in a black and white film was blue) is no more valid than any other interpretation (say, that the character’s hat was black). Therefore any remake of the original work, even by the original author, can be considered an interpretation of the original and thus does not supersede the original.
Granted, in the case of webcomic art, the art is almost always in a constant flux of change, and I think it’s the artist’s prerogative to update old art to fit the style of the new. This doesn’t make the new style better, merely different, and it is the choice of the author to maintain a consistent style across all the comics.
Also, some readers like seeing the original versions of a comic strip, so they can see how it developed with time. It’s understandable that you might like to redo the early comics with the “developed” style, and I suppose some people might prefer the consistency. But there are a lot of others who enjoy seeing the old style, even if it’s from only a few years back.
Happy two years!!!