Valley of the Dinosaurs No. 1 – The Remastering

It’s a logical next step in the Valley of the Dinosaurs project that I would turn to the stories after completing restoration and remastering on the covers. While I have scans of the lineart for many of the 11-issue run, scans for issue No. 1 don’t appear to be out there. So a good chunk of the remastering for this story involved extracting the lineart from the published comic and retouching printing flaws.

THE COVER

As published.

Remastered.

INTERIOR ART RESTORATION

As published. With no original art to be found for this story, the lineart needs to be extracted from the published comic.

A Before-After comparison. Drag left and right to view. On the left, the extracted lineart. On the right, the final lineart.

The extracted lineart required contrast adjustment to make it a pure black and retouching to remove any remaining tones and printing defects. While I think Fred Himes did a great job on his artwork for these stories, I feel his dialogue lettering was rough and not up to the standards audiences expect today. All balloon lettering was replaced, but the sound effects were left as is. Any holes in the art caused by the lettering update were drawn back in. Finally, panel borders were redrawn to finish off the polish on the lineart presentation.

NEW COLOUR FOR “FIGHT THE ANGRY MOUNTAIN”

For the new colour version I wanted to respect that the source material was an animated series. Characters are consistently coloured based on the show’s original style guide with a simple shadow layer and a highlight layer for modelling. And with the colour tools we have available to us today, the vibrancy of the original animation carries through in this new version.