SDoAR GoFundMe Update No. 50: Philip R. Frey on His Death March!

I have a real treat for you this week! 

Philip R. Frey walks us through the work he is doing cleaning up files for the Restored and Remastered editions of the Giant-Size SDoAR Ashcans. Just in time because yours truly is writing this from a pub in Wales with not an iod to report!

Well aside from thanking...

• Michael Grabowski
• Brian West
• Michael Ragiel

...for donating this past week to the GoFundMe campaign at  -->> https://www.gofundme.com/f/sdoar-2023. 

But first...

Just the Facts, Ma'am

• $10,125.00 raised to date from 166 donations
• 54 new pages released as mocked up by Dave Sim from 11 June to 02 November 2021
• 75 total pages available on Dropbox, including Dave's 2019 mocked-up pages
• Only $75.00 away from unlocking page 76
• If you have not donated >> $5+ donation grants access to all 75 pages and all pages moving forward! 
• If you have donated, thanks! but if you want to donate monthly, please do as this is mid month #12.

SDOAR 2023 GoFundMe -->> https://www.gofundme.com/f/sdoar-2023

And Now, Philip R. Frey!

I decided that I’d start off this guest appearance in the digital pages of AMOC by explaining how I got into this project in the first place.

I was introduced to The Strange Death of Alex Raymond via the "California Test Market Edition" I received as part of the You Don't Know Jack Kickstarter. I was struck with its engaging and idiosyncratic narrative. When word came that Dave had given up on the project, I was sorry to see that it would be left unfinished and gladly supported the Kickstarter for "Carson's Version".

And then new life came to the project when it was announced that Dave had started working on it again, albeit in a different form; mockups only. When Jennifer started the GoFundMe, I happily donated a few times before she began talking about these "ashcans" she wanted to publish as part of the campaign. 

One thing was clear to me (because she pretty much said it herself), she didn't really know what remastering a work like this involves. [I didn't! -Jen] And while I had never done anything on this scale before, I have a lot of experience with graphic design and art cleanup for many personal projects. So, I bit the bullet and sent her a note volunteering to help to whatever degree she wanted. I did a sample page and she agreed to take me on.

The problem is, I immediately became more ambitious than I think she originally intended. I didn't just want to clean up the pages. I wanted to make them as close to what I would expect from a professional publication as I could. I talked her into letting me do what we came to call the "remastered" version. The cleaned-up one we call "restored".

And how, exactly do I do all that?  Let's look at a sample page from No. 1.

To the left, the original scan. In the middle, the "restored" version. On the right, the "remastered".

Here's a detail from the page shown above as it came to me in the form of a high-resolution scan of the original mocked-up page.

My work starts with the basics. For the "restored" version, I convert to greyscale, darken all the lines to black, clean up things like blueline, tape, glue, etc. I'll replace text if it's hard to read (or obscured by the aforementioned tape or glue), but otherwise leave things as Dave had them. This is just a step more involved than the basic cleanup that Jennifer does with the pages she shares via the GoFundMe.

For the "remastered" edition, I do a *lot* more. It starts with the same type of cleanup I do for the "restored". This time, lines are (for the most part) absolutely straightened (either by adjusting Dave's lines or drawing all-new, perfectly straight ones), unless it's clear they are meant to be jaggy. Images are replaced with cleaner originals, wherever possible. For the one below, I not only had to find a clean and high-resolution enough version of the image, but clean off a watermark every time it appeared, then *add back in* some noise to help reduce the obvious .jpg artifacting and give it back some texture.

The biggest challenge (so far) when it comes to cleaning up an image is the photo of Ward Green from No. 0 (seen in Living the Line's The Mockups and near the end of "Carson's Version") that Dave appears to have gotten from an eBay auction (or a site that mirrored the auction). In his original mockups, the photo has a grotesque watermark that runs all over the image. It took a few days and a lot of iterations to clean that up to the point where I could use it to my satisfaction.

All of this is, of course, done under the watchful eye of Jennifer. [Damn straight. -Jen] She will spot errors, ask for adjustments or push me to justify some decision or other. [As in, have you lost your mind? -Jen] There's even a place where she had to pull me back from using an image that looked *too* good. [Which we can share another time, right, Philip? -Jen] All in the name of making the book look as good as possible, but retain a consistent feeling throughout.

But what do you do when you're faced with something as chaotic as this?

The answer, of course, is to despair, then get on with it. Images resourced, replaced, restretched to match Dave's original (created by laying a photo at an odd angle and taking *another* photo of it). Art extended to go beyond the crop line, etc. The pages in No. 0 are much more complex than those in No. 1. This may be because the No. 0 pages were intended to be redone by Carson, so Dave just went wild. But getting back into the swing of things, he settled into a more traditional page structure. Either way, it seemed like I flew through the No. 1 material and No. 0 has been, as Jennifer mentioned, something of a "death march".  I hack away and hack away as free time permits, still hopeful that I'll get the remaining pages done.

So, hopefully that gives you some idea of what to look forward to. 

This is Jen again. As you can see, a lot of *amazing* work being done by Philip, all of which is *volunteered*. And he has to put up with me. So please drop us a note in the comments to let us know what you think and give Philip a nice round of applause for his efforts so far!

x

Jen

SDOAR 2023 GoFundMe -->> https://www.gofundme.com/f/sdoar-2023 <<-- SDOAR 2023 GoFundMe