Wednesday 2 September 2015

Tone and Circling the Original


Sean Michael Robinson:

Another week, another late blog post...

I'm bogged down again this week, with the initial work on Church & State II and as-yet unannounced Mystery Cerebus Volume. Yes, two books simultaneously. Yes, a bit of a logistical nightmare to try to get them both off the ground, especially as they've very different from each other in terms of the materials involved...

BUT! All I have time for here is an anecdote, and a quick quiz (and prize!)





Here's a few of the sheets of tone that Dave faxed me a few months ago, when work began on Church & State I. These were sheets of tone used during the monthly production of the book, to create various background textures, tones, or other effects. The idea of sending them to me was, when adjusting a negative that was damaged in the initial photography, or an original in really bad shape, I could refer to the actual tone sheets as reference, or even scan a chunk to use to replace damaged tone on an original, if need be.

Of course, the "used in the monthly production of the book" aspect was really an abstraction until I saw one particular sheet of tone.

You might recognize the texture from various places in the series. For me it's memorable in Weishaupt's death scene. But a particular segment of this was, I dunno, REALLY familiar.



Look familiar to you?

It's an interesting mental exercise to consider what relationship this sheet of discarded tone has to the original art of the mystery page in question. A distant cousin? A ghost? A cast-away carapace? 

Recognize the ghost of the page above? Like to play along? Leave a comment identifying the book and page number (or numbers) related to the image above. First one to successfully do so wins a prize sent to their home, a prize related to the upcoming Church & State I printing. Leave a comment, and once you've been selected as the winner, send your mailing address to cerebusarthunt at gmail dot com.

Happy hunting!

19 comments:

Tom Palmer said...

It took me a minute to mentally reverse the images that were cut out of the sheet, but I think I figured it out. It's the back of Death's throne from Flight, pages 17-20 (or issue #151).

Sean R said...

MAN, you are good, Tom :) Send me an email with your address!

Dave Kopperman said...

Two things:

1) MAN, but do I miss Letratone.
2) Mystery Project?

Anonymous said...

This is very interesting! It reminds me of some of the discussions I've read about which musical instruments and studio effects were used to create Beatles songs.

Can you provide a list of exactly which sheets/types of tone were used to create the book? I see LT307 and LT394. Which others were employed?

Again, thanks -- this really sheds light into the creation process.

--Claude Flowers

Sean R said...

Hey Claude,

Great idea for a future post. I'll work something up soon!

Travis Pelkie said...

Sean implies, or I infer, that since the Mystery Project is very different in terms of materials involved, it might just be that color volume we've all been clamoring for over the years. Maybe?!

Eddie said...

How the HECK did you guys manage to recognize which image the tone came from?? The only thing I could come up with was that it kinda looked like Ger's photoshopped Transformer /"Autobot Island" creation

http://www.gerhardart.com/apps/blog/getting-back-to-the-drawing-board

which obviously didn't use the tone.

Impressive."Oitist's is very clever people."

Sean R said...

Hey Travis, not quite that exciting I'm afraid :) this one (or two) MiscellNeousvolumes Will happen tho. As soon as the remainder if the restoration work is complete

CerebusTV said...

Hey, not to be controversial, but some recent art looks like that from the mystery art owner whose pages were "forever" beyond being included!

Jeff Seiler said...

I will immediately disavow this if it ever gets out that I know this and, having written about the above post, I must foreswear all parties here included to also disavow all knowledge of the above comment, including all readers of the above comment (whether or not they had knowledge aforehand), but I do have it on good faith, from an interested third party, that perhaps, with no admission of guilt nor implication of involvement, either premeditated or accidental, by either the interested third party nor myself:

Cerebus TV might be on to something. Nice catch if, theoretically, Cerebus TV is correct.

Lawyer-speak Dude (aka, D-bag), signing off.

Jeff Seiler said...

Altso, is it just my imagination, or did the photo of the FedEx box with LetreTone spilling out of it shrink down a bit after the first day it was posted?

;)

Sean R said...

CerebusTV--

We get art from all over the place, including scans from online galleries, in-person galleries, current owners, previous owners, multiple owners, and Dave's old digital archive.

CerebusTV said...

"We get art from all over the place, including scans from online galleries, in-person galleries, current owners, previous owners, multiple owners, and Dave's old digital archive."

Including, evidently, from the artist patron formerly known as Aartvark.

Thanks, Jeff, for the non-denial denial! :-) I still agree that it's no one else's business.

Sean R said...

CerebusTV-- You're putting words in my mouth. All I'm saying is we get pages from many sources, sometimes multiple sources for the same page. Pages change hands all of the time. Some of these sources want to be acknowledged, others don't. You can see the new printing of C + S I for the full art credits, when it's out in stores.

In the past few months, I've had people miffed at me for a whole host of reasons related to the art hunt. Meanwhile, the only thing that matters to me is better looking books. Someone wants credit for sending a scan? They get credit. Otherwise, we thank them privately, and that's it.

This is more general and not really relevant to your inquiry, except to say, unless I'm thanking someone by name--

>>>it's no one else's business.<<<

As for Jeff S implying some kind of inside knowledge, I don't know why he would do that. He doesn't have access to our emails. Save directing us to a page at a store he used to frequent, he hasn't participated in the art hunt.

CerebusTV said...

Sean, if you'll note, I didn't put words in your mouth. And, you know support for the project had some hours of effort applied. It's good for the project that more scans than expected at one point have emerged and if anyone else is still miffed out there at anyone (not referring to you guys) it's self evident they no longer need to be. As for Jeff, it was a bit hard to read him, almost as hard as reading emails if you're not an NSA insider. And as agents, tongue in cheek or no, it's understood you will receive "INFORMATION THAT WILL BE TREATED IN COMPLETE CONFIDENCE." I've been told, though, that journalists have different objectives than privacy, so we'll leave that to them.

Jeff Seiler said...

Sean, you are correct that I do not have access to your emails, neither yours nor Mara's. However, I still say, based on some top secret information that I may or may not have received from an interested third party, Cerebus TV may be on to something with his original comment.

A particularly astute reader of these comments and others I've made to other daily AMOC posts could piece it together, but, if so, I would immediately disavow it.

As a former journalist, I've had my share of Deep Throats in my time.

CerebusTV said...

Jeff, we're dancing around more than since Scooter Libby outed Valerie Plame. The more important thing to know, is that photo going to be in Cigar Aficianado?

Jeff Seiler said...

LLOL! I think their entire subscriber base would dump them if I showed up there looking like that. Plus, my fellow Cape Girardeau, MO,-born-native
Rush Limbaugh would probably hunt me down and shoot me. On second thought, he's probably friends with Dick Cheney, so he'd probably just get him to do it.

CerebusTV said...

Deep Throat aside, as Freud put it, sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar! Dick Cheney... Dick Cheney? Didn't he play one of the 'friendly country folk' in Deliverance?

Nuff said!