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Jul

31

Two Francisco V. Coching Books in September

Filed Under Books, Comics Artists, Filipino Artists, Philippine Comics | 26 Comments

“The Life and Art of Francisco Coching“, a profusely illustrated coffee table book on the storied and colorful life of Francisco V. Coching, published by Vibal Publishing, will be launched at the National Museum in September.

My contribution to this book is an essay on Coching and his impact on the current generation of Filipinos, as well as doing restoration/coloring on artwork that was used for this cover.

Restoring the artwork was a genuine challenge which involved several steps. The first step is the digital restoration of the black and white linework. Since the piece was originally in black and white, the next step is trying to decide the correct colors to use. I referred to Coching’s numerous coloring work on the many covers he did, and based my approach on that. All in all the process took around a week.

The other book is the one I’m most excited about.

The “El Indio Restoration Project” began in 2004. I first began talking about it on May of that year. And now, after 5 long years, it’s finally here.

When all this began, I knew nothing about restoring artwork. I did quite a bit of research, including corresponding with a comics restorer who did work on the Bernie Krigstein books for Fantagraphics.

The process involves scanning each page at a very high resolution. Since the original artwork no longer exists, I worked from original komiks pages, conveniently provided by the Coching family in loose, unbound pages. I scanned the complete El Indio pages at no less then 800dpi/RGB. It made working on it slow going. I loved every aspect of this work, except waiting for the computer to process a command.

Restoration involves cleaning out printing dirt, errors, and other artifacts caused by age. The original komiks pages are, after all, almost 50 years old. Even though the original komiks pages are in black and white, I still preferred to scan in RGB just to get that extra detail. It also made cleaning easier, as I can just select various shades of yellow and turn them to white.

Sometimes, printing errors obliterated text all together, and letters from the original lettering had to be imported from other parts of the page that are undamaged.

The challenge was when printing errors obliterated artwork. Thankfully, these instances were few. I made some hopefully educated guesses as to how the artwork originally looked.

The first time out, restoring a page took me an entire day. In a few weeks, I’ve managed to bring that down to around 4 hours.

Doing all this while working on my own comics projects, the progress was slow. I decided to hire Zara Macandili, Komikero Publishing’s sole employee (Executive secretary and Executive assistant) and train her in restoring the artwork.

Being an artist herself, Zara quickly mastered the art of restoring and by the end she was finishing much faster, and doing a better job than I did.

We finished restoration in 2008 and I resolved to publish it myself through Komikero Publishing. Thankfully enough, VIBAL Publishing stepped in and saved me the astronomical cost of having this book printed. Having done so, I’ve had to relinquish a bit of creative control over the packaging. But in the end I didn’t mind because their creative choices were exceptionally good. Gaspar “Gus” Vibal, Executive Director of the Vibal Foundation has an amazingly acute eye for what looks good and what does not.

The cover to this book was taken from a panel within the pages. Since the artwork would be blown up, extra attention was directed towards this particular panel. Much more care was taken towards restoring each individual line. The coloring for it was based on an original EL INDIO cover that Coching colored.

EL INDIO will also be launched at the National Museum in September.

This will coincide with a third book that Vibal is publishing about the Life and Art of Carlos “Botong” Francisco.

Comments

26 Responses to “Two Francisco V. Coching Books in September”

  1. Gerry Alanguilan on July 31st, 2009 2:58 pm

    This is when you know you’re National Artist worthy. It’s when you know, THEY MAKE BOOKS ABOUT YOU.

  2. erwin on July 31st, 2009 4:04 pm

    Hi Gerry, is the “Life and Art of FV Coching” vastly different from “Katha At Guhit..”? Or they just added few illustrations and essay to the original book published in 2001?

    Congrats to all the effort you put in restoration. Ganda rin nitong coloring mo sa cover ng “Limbas at Lawin”

  3. Gerry Alanguilan on July 31st, 2009 4:12 pm

    oh my God, Erwn, this is a completely different book. I saw the layout of many of the pages and it’s going to be a gorgeous book. Lots of many, never before seen Coching photos (scanned from original photographs), artwork (scanned from originals when available) and all new essays. At the very least mine is new. They pulled all the stops to make this a beautiful book that lives up to Coching’s legacy. I can’t wait to see the actual thing.

    Ah, Limbas at Lawin pala yun.

  4. Tin on July 31st, 2009 4:37 pm

    Erwin — Sorry, according to the family, the cover is from Ang Mga Batikan. Is it Limbas at Lawin, after all?

  5. erwin on July 31st, 2009 6:04 pm

    Hi Tin, Yes it’s from “Ang Limbas at ang Lawin” cover from Hiwaga Komiks. It was a wrap-around cover. I’ll check my files and will email it to Gerry.

  6. auggie on July 31st, 2009 7:32 pm

    Gerry,

    Do you have any idea kung magkano ang retail price ng dalawang librong ito para mapag-ipunan na ? please advice, Thanks.

  7. John Michael on July 31st, 2009 9:16 pm

    I can’t wait for these to come out. Will thay be available to Fully Booked or Power Books?

  8. Pinoy Comics USA on July 31st, 2009 9:49 pm

    Gerry,
    Darn, this should have come out before the National Artist awardings. Siguradong panalo si FVC kung nakita ito ng mga nagaward kay CJC. Hindi bale, next year, Mr. Coching, I predict, will win the National Artist Award.
    Rod

  9. Bong Redila on July 31st, 2009 9:51 pm

    Salamat sa update dito sa porject na ito, Gerry. ‘Ganda.

    Naglalaway din ako dito sa “Life and Art of Carlos “Botong” Francisco”.

  10. Jose Mari Lee on August 1st, 2009 12:17 am

    “Hindi bale, next year, Mr. Coching, I predict, will win the National Artist Award.”

    Rod, with the noise happening now and will be happening in a few days, baka tablan na rin at igawad na ito kay FV Coching.

    Kailangan yata maging KAPAMPANGAN muna bago magawaran nito, ano. Ayun, pati si Lito Lapid, nakisiksik para mag-pose kasama si Obama. eh-eh.
    Kulang ng H sa unahan, dahil kung magsalita ito ay tunay na ESPAÑOL. Silent H!

    Ewan ko ba itong mga kalokohan nitong si Gloria. Nang magising ako ay umasim talaga ang sikmura ko nang maalala ko na naman itong sina Caparas at Guidote. Mga walang karapatan. Kagigil.

  11. Ade on August 1st, 2009 12:31 am

    That El Indio cover is gorgeous. Congrats! I will surely get my hands on one of those when it comes out.

  12. Pinoy Comics USA on August 1st, 2009 2:26 am

    JM,
    Magbibig-anghel ka sana.
    Rod

  13. Gohlico on August 1st, 2009 8:03 am

    YAN ang pang-National Artist! Same goes for Larry Alcala and Tony Velasquez!

  14. jayem cinco on August 1st, 2009 8:29 am

    That would be great. Mr Alanguilan perhaps I could help you out with the restoration of other artists’ works? I have complete novels of Alcala, Redondo, Coching, among others. thanks, have a great day..

  15. auggie on August 1st, 2009 12:07 pm

    Mr. Cinco,

    Really ? maybe we should talk. Can you provide me with your email addy ? I’m interested in your complete serialized novels of those KomiksMasters you mentioned.

  16. Gerry Alanguilan on August 1st, 2009 12:26 pm

    ooo I wish I could talk about it, but restoration is currently being done on several classic komiks series. I’m not directly involved other than give some tips on the restoration of artwork.

    As for me, I would love to embark on another restoration project, but I’m afraid it would be too time consuming. Plus I have all these other comics jobs now. If I were to restore anything like I did El Indio, it would take YEARS because I’ll be doing it in between everything else.

    As far as I know, VIBAL is interested in continuing to publish more classic komiks after EL INDIO.

  17. Rafael Kayanan on August 1st, 2009 1:09 pm

    These are books that I’m looking forward to. Thanks for helping to preserve the legacy of one of the greats.

  18. Pinoy Comics USA on August 1st, 2009 1:49 pm

    Gerry,
    Wow, galing nito Gerry, more restorations and Vibal is interested. Hopefully, El Indio will be successful saleswise, para ganahan lalo itong Vibal. In the future not only Coching’s but other golden age komiks too.
    Oh, haven’t you been to Steve Santos’Unang Labas site lately? Mr. Cinco’s collection are being featured there.
    Rod

  19. Gerry Alanguilan on August 1st, 2009 2:34 pm

    To those who asked, I have no info yet about the pricing of the two books. Once I know, I’ll post about it. :)

  20. jayem cinco on August 1st, 2009 2:51 pm

    yes I tried to get in contact with Vibal once. I offered if I could maybe write some synopsis of novels of our great writers/illustrators but they didn’t get back to me, yes mr. auggie you could email me at jm5_1227@yahoo.com. thanks..

  21. Carlo P on August 2nd, 2009 12:05 am

    wow must have!

  22. jim on August 3rd, 2009 7:07 am

    thank you for doing this when nobody else would, sir Gerry.

    I fully appreciate your motive and effort.

    I sincerely hope your efforts here will be acknowledged and well rewarded someday if not sooner.

  23. ron tan on August 3rd, 2009 10:20 am

    wow, thanks for all those who are making these books possible! this is a great way for young and aspiring comic book artists (like me) to learn more about the rich filipino komiks past, as well as admire and study the artworks. no doubt this will be a new experience and inspiration for us all. more projects like these please! :)

  24. Scoop Jamir on August 4th, 2009 7:50 pm

    sir, would you know if this is going to be available in bookstores?

    would also be nice if those other works by the masters from decades ago be restored in the same way.

    really looking forward to this.

  25. FR DOCTOLERO on August 9th, 2009 9:07 pm

    Mabuhay kayong mga komukero lalo na si Francisco Coching!!!

  26. FR DOCTOLERO on August 9th, 2009 9:12 pm

    Sorry sa spelling, mabuhay kayong mga Komikero (ilustrador sa komiks), salamat (Vibal) at gumawa ng kayo ng libro para kay Francisco Coching.