Wednesday 17 September 2014

Sharp Sharp Goose

Sean Michael Robinson:

Hello everyone!

While the work on High Society continues, the art dragnet continues to capture pages. Big thanks to Oystein Sorensen, otherwise known as "Norway's biggest Cerebus fan," for contributing an awesome EIGHT pages this week. We also received a few other tips as well, pointing us in the direction of some collectors who wouldn't mind contributing.

Oystein's pages couldn't have come at a better time. He brought with him two High Society pages, including this gem-




This morning I got to this great page, contributed by Dan Parker of ThirdDeviation.com. Like the pages provided last week by ComicLink, Dan's scans are fabulous, and are great examples of how little work it takes to make a great page when your scans are optically perfect. This scan, supplied at 1200 ppi at original art size, is a great example of optical sharpness. Each of the edges are clearly defined, including those edges that primarily exist as "wedges" between the lines. These areas are the kinds of places where you're most likely to lose information when working from soft digital files. The elaborate sharpening routines I've developed are designed to preserve this information in optically soft scans--but a scan like this will need very little sharpening, comparatively, because that hard-edge information has been picked up at the initial capture.






 This optical sharpness is very distinct from software-applied sharpening, which, if already processed at the time of capture, is destructive to detail rather than supportive. (As I've said before, many of the lower and mid level Epson scanners apply aggressive software sharpening whether you like it or not, which prevents you from up-scaling your output effectively. However, optically sharp scans like this one upscale just fine.)

These issues are all on my mind as I continue High Society, and project forward to the next stage of this project. I'll be driving to Los Angeles this weekend to do some tests with some high-end scanners, in the hopes of finding one that balances the various needs for speed, optical sharpness, and affordability. 

Meanwhile, please, keep those pages coming!

Dave's been working on the finder's prize for contributors to this hunt. Here's a quick peek--






4 comments:

Menachem Luchins said...

Just had a walk-in customer tell me that her Husband owns a whole bunch of original pages. I BEGGED her to have him contact me or the dragnet ASAP. We will see what comes of it.

Sean R said...

Thanks so much for mentioning this to her Menachem! A lot of the pages we're getting are from people that have seen notice on the blog, but an equal amount have been from people referring each other to us. I've actually tried a few (possibly crazy) tactics as well, including, ahem, writing to or otherwise attempting to find people who wrote Dave letters in the early issues mentioning owning pages :) Talk about long shot... and yet it's so far yielded at least one contact!

Thanks again!

Walking Man Comics said...

please let me know more about this project: I have two pages from High Society. thanks,
Matt Levin

Cerebus Art Hunt said...

Hey Matt,

Emailing you now! Can't wait to add your pages to the book :)