Forum - View topicAnswerman - Thawing Out
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Guile
Posts: 595 |
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I'm not a big fan of colored manga, or comics for that matter. I've seen impressive line work absolutely destroyed by terrible coloring. Then when I look at the drafts I would much rather have had the black and white line work than the colored one.
Color in manga is just not really needed. It's distributed in huge, disposable phone books. Cheap, quick, and easy to read. Sometimes they'll release full colored tankobon editions, but I'm perfectly fine with black and white. Manga artists are already worked hard enough as they are, to expect color on top of it would probably kill most of them. |
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iatheia
Posts: 130 |
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Except it is not actually that far off from what we are getting currently. I can think of several Sentai titles that are being released within a just 14 months of a series premiere. Take Haikyuu for example - came out last spring, fist cour will be available on dvd in June. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14886 |
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That's why in N. American comics, colorist is a skills job, and the good ones get recognition, sought after, and be well-paid.
I believe there's less cutting of screentone in lieu of digital screentone after scanning the artwork. |
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lys
 Posts: 1017 Location: mitten-state |
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Looking at them side by side, it's possible that the screentones are added digitally (I think this is being done more often with manga), and that the layers/shapes are simply redone with a colour fill for the full-colour version. Some of the "effect" screentones are still in place (like on the first colour spread (not counting the more fully-shaded art at the beginning), the shading in Blonde's hair, or the movement-blur of the arm in the bottom panel). At the very least, I'm sure the artist/colourist has a copy of the lineart without the shading (except the black), on which to add colour. However, this is an example of colourization I think is done poorly. There's no unifying colour scheme to the pages, so everything just pops in and out of focus without rhyme or reason, and it's hard for me to look at. The "soft" shading looks pretty cheap (and unnatural) to me, like they just went around all the edges with the burn tool. The colour is an afterthought. It's very different from the more fully-rendered colour art of the girl on the train, the pair walking in the sunset, etc (and I'm sure those took a lot more time to do, but there's an example of what I mean by colours being more unified). There are webcomics (and probably webtoons too—Milkyway Hitchhiking, now out in print from Yen Press, is breathtakingly gorgeous to look at) that are much more thoughtful about their use of colour, so I know comics can be made beautifully that way. But I like manga for what it is, and that includes b/w artwork. If colour became a bigger trend in Japanese comics, I'm sure there would be artists who turned it into something stylish and lovely, but there would also be those who had no idea what they were doing. Colouring is just as much an art—but a different art—as effective use of screentone. |
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getchman
 He started itPosts: 9134 Location: New Hampshire |
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sure, but it's neither a boxset nor is it dubbed |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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I've always found action hard to follow in B&W manga - I remember when I started reading manga appreciating the colour used throughout the American Battle of the Planets comics.
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4792 |
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I know it probably sounds extremely shallow, but I think manga being almost universally in black-and-white is one of the main reasons why I have little to no interest in it. Sure, the artwork itself may be amazing, but the pages as a whole just come across as...well, bland. I've always felt like manga feels more like a set of storyboards for a possibly-never-created anime series than anything else, but adding well-done color to it would definitely alleviate that impression.
And to those who (rightfully) point out that manga creators usually don't have the time and/or skill set to properly color pages, just look at the Western route, where you have separate specialized colorists working on the same series. Even as it stands, I can think of several prominent manga authors who most definitely shouldn't be handling both art and writing duties on their own. 
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13616 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Why might itasha and doujinshi not have the infringement claim get used as quickly/easily as scanlations or fansubs?
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mdo7
 Posts: 6374 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Well that might change if the TPP that contained laws/clauses to outlaw parody and make copyright infringement crimes more draconian as I mentioned on my previous post:
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Mikeski
Posts: 608 Location: Minneapolis, MN |
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Because lawyers cost money, so if the infringement isn't costing them money, there's nothing to gain by fighting it. Even if you were (attempting to) sell your itasha decals, there's not going to be that big a market when your product is targeting "people who drive a 2012 Subaru WRX who want Fate and Nanoha plastered all over it". There's a reason they're not trying to sell them, too. Doujin? I suppose they could crack down if you were trying to tell the original stories, or if you were so far off the rails it was damaging the brand. The Japanese companies seem amazingly tolerant of Rule 34, though. Scanlations and fansubs? Now you're giving away for free (or attempting to "sell" via banner ad funding, if you're a shady pirate site) exactly what they're trying to sell. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6374 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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@Mikeski
As I said, if the TPP with the clause/law making parody and copyright infringement a big felony in Japan, whatever you describe (which include the last part) could be gone in the future. |
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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For color in comics, sticking with flat primary colors is still the best, because it still showcases the linework. If manga were colored to look like an 80s anime, a lot of them would still look pretty good. It's only when you try to get fancy with it and use color painting-like techniques and digital gradients and the like that it messes the whole thing up. This is the problem with many modern western comics in their increasing attempt to look like live action movies. They try to emulate Hollywood lighting but they forget that these are still comics drawn with black lines.
If you are going to use color-painting techniques, then the whole comic should just be straight up painted a la Alex Ross. But slapping on those techniques onto traditionally drawn comics is always a disaster, IMO. As for the posters here criticizing black and white manga for being bland, well, I actually agree to a certain extent. A lot of mangaka have poor black-spotting skills, and often look like a bunch of outlines and screentones. The ones that do have good black spotting skills are not surprisingly the most popular internationally. Rumiko Takahashi has good black spotting skills, which is why she is one of the most read mangaka internationally. Her black spotting ability pulls the artwork together and give it clarity and readability. You can criticize her stories, but you can't criticize her draftsmanship. That's not to say that relying mostly on clear outlines with little black spotting can't be done visually dynamically. But you have to have very good design sense and draftsmanship to pull it off, and many mangaka do not have those skills. For more examples of good black-spotting in comics, google Alex Raymond, Leonard Starr, Milton Caniff, Alex Toth, Mort Meskin...all these guys look great in black and white. |
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Ohoni
Posts: 3421 |
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As for coloring manga, I totally agree that it would not be economical, or workflow-prudent to color Weekly Shonen Jump on a regular basis. It would add at least a week to the production schedule, and cost a lot more.
Coloring Tankobon is much more feasible. It can be done and it can look great, but it would likely double the cost per book, given they'd have to hire another guy and use better printing methods. Also, they'd have a talent shortage, as skilled colorists are much more rare in Japan than skilled manga artists and assistants. Most coloring in Japanese works just look ugly, with truly talented coloring few and far between. Taking a fully finished B&W manga and coloring it is a lot more involved than just slapping flats on it, you really need to reshade elements of it, but plenty of amateur web artists do this with Jump pages all the time as fan works. |
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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It's pretty interesting that itasha car manufacturers are somehow able to paint official artwork with very little risk of a lawsuit. I think this may explain why the itasha community has quite a noticeable following these past years.
It's times like this that I wish itasha vehicles would make their appearances in the U.S. somehow. Last edited by Mr. Oshawott on Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:10 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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mdo7
Posts: 6374 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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About Itasha in the US, it's small but I don't expect it to grow like in Japan. But I don't know how long itasha car can last in Japan giving that Japan's copyright law is becoming more draconian (that and my concern about the TPP). |
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