Jim Aparo spent most of his comics career at DC Comics, associated with Batman, Aquaman, Spectre and a plethora of team-ups in The Brave and the Bold. He was a triple threat, pencilling, inking and lettering his stories.
As the 80s progressed, the pressure to draw more pages meant that his duties became limited to pencilling only, and we lost that Milt Caniff-influenced expressive inking Aparo readers loved. So finding this commission from 1986 in his distinctive style was quite welcome.
And it seemed like it would make a good cover.
Original art by Jim Aparo.
Prepped for production.
Colour.
Trade dress created and added. Additional figures from the 1982 DC Style Guide and an issue of Adventure Comics.
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Scott –
Does size of finished piece matter when coloring? Is coloring for a comic book cover the same as coloring for a poster? Cost more?
Hi Danny –
Size? Yes. for the purposes of discussion, let’s say comics are 7″ x 10.5″, printed at a resolution of 300 dpi.
If you colour at a lower resolution, you’re likely to see jaggies of individual pixels on edges.
Just as people often draw comics at 10″ x 15″ and then the art is shrunk for reproduction, colouring at 600 dpi is one way to get sharper edges.
Covers vs posters. Comics today are printed with the full spectrum of CMYK. In the old days, colour was limited to hand-cut screens in set percentages.
Now, for posters, you can do those in one colour, two colour or more. If they’re silk screened, you’re generally going to limit your colours to a few to keep complexity and costs down, but it’s technically feasible using half-tones and photo-silk methods to make full colour.
If posters come off the printing press like comics, you’re generally going to think of them as b&w, or b&w and one accent colour, or full four-colour CMYK. You’re only limited by cost.
The biggest up-front cost for printing is the making of the printing plates and setting up the job on press. After that, it’s only additional ink and paper which is why the cost per unit drops the more you print, but the base cost is the base cost and you can’t go lower there.
Now that we’ve moved into the age of digital presses, price and capabilities have changed once again. What I’ve described concerns traditional printing presses, which companies like DC and Marvel still use. Digital presses are used on shorter runs. They have a different look and feel that gets better all the time, but it’s still not quite the look of the traditional press. However, your setup costs are lower.
For one-off poster printing on inkjet, files are set up the same way as you would for the printing press, digital or traditional. At printed size, say 24″ x 36″ your dpi should be around 150 dpi. Larger means a large file size that may cause problems with an older RIP or underpowered computer, smaller may yield jaggies. Close up, a poster will look rougher, but at its expected viewing distance (a few feet back), it will look normal.
That should give you enough info for your own research. The topic is much bigger than the highlights I’ve provided here.
Thanks for asking.