Wednesday 24 January 2018

Preview of the Trailer for Strange Death of Alex Raymond.... Coming Soon!

Sean Michael Robinson:

Howdy everyone!

As I wrote last week, this will be the last month I'll be doing these posts as regular updates. I'll still be doing the Cerebus restoration project (currently collecting scans for Form & Void!), still doing the prepress and digital lettering for Strange Death of Alex Raymond, and You Don't Know Jack! and I'm sure many other A/V projects, but attempting to pass off the regular monthly deadlines (Cerebus in Hell? , these posts, working with Diamond) to other capable hands.

Next week's final post will be an addendum to my Paper to Pixel to Paper Again series, addressing working with color artwork. (Special thanks to Damian Lloyd for suggesting the topic, one I'd completely forgotten I'd promised to write about a year or so ago!) And I might pop in from time to time to share a post or two about a new book, or something that's been on my mind.

But! For this post. What I spent the last week putting together!

A Movie Trailer for a Comic Book

At the end of December I received a series of scans from Alfonso Espinosa, head of Studiocomix. The scans were a complete eight-page preview of SDOAR , put together by Dave with quick-cuts and headers, movie-trailer-style, using his all-in-one fax machine/photocopier, scissors, and a whole lotta glue.

 The files also included several scans of various additional elements that would be needed to put the pages together, including this impressive revised logo.


Lastly, there were copious notes as to how to actually put the things together, using the SDOAR scans I'd recently received.

Here's the second completed page, below...
For the most part I hewed close to the template, only deviating in a few places where I thought some unobtrusive bits of Photoshop fiddling could improve on the cut-and-paste original. For instance, the splash under the tires, especially where it interacts with Raymond's head in the lower panel. Changing the narration so that it followed (or close to it, anyway) the implied vanishing point of the card and speed lines. 


And many many many hours later, the preview is done, ready for the next stage of the Strange Death of Alex Raymond roll-out. So in a scant few months (cross your fingers!) you'll be able to see the trailer in print, and get an inkling of what the fuss is about.

(By the way, if this strikes you as an unusual way to put together a comics page, just wait till you get a load of You Don't Know Jack!)

Next week: Paper to Pixel to Paper Again... in Living Colo(u)r!

3 comments:

Jeff said...

I like how, in that second scan, the marks in the lower left corner, at first glance and in further non-zooms, look like they're part of the image but, instead, are just Dave's attempts to get his pen working. I would pay good money to buy that page.

Carson Grubaugh said...

Woooweee! Looks so slick all converted like that.

Jeff,
Dave and I will BOTH will be auctioning off all of our YDKJ related art. Dave's boards have a lot of that "getting the pen working" stuff on them. Some really great Dave Sim hand lettering will be n that set.

I THINK the plan is to have an SDOAR related auction at some point as well, but Dave is still well within the "firming up the plans" phase of things, so some of this is still in the territory of moving targets. So maybe you will get the chance.

The YDKJ work though, 100% going to auction.

Jeff said...

Carson, let's cut to the chase: Whatever is the highest bid, I'll doub...no, Jeff, be smart here...I'll beat it.

BUT. E-bay hates me. So, how about Heritage? They looooooooove me, especially because I occasionally win and they get an extra 20%.

Just sayin': I want those pages.