Click above for current installment, or HERE to start from the beginning.

I can go to a cafe once every two days, but there are many things I can’t do, like check my PLDT email account. If anyone sent me email there, just send it again to my yahoo email. It’s just my first and last name (no spaces) at yahoo dot com. I also can’t make any major changes to my site (like update the ORAS MO NA strip) because doing so is complicated in a cafe.

Also, my EBAY account is attached to my PLDT email so it would make communication with potential buyers more difficult. Which is a bummer because I currently have an ebay auction, which I am doing with JONAS DIEGO for the benefit of a friend.

If you wish to bid, we would really appreciate it. At stake are three of Jonas’ original pencil drawings of Blade, Mummy, and Purgatori. On my end, it’s a cover of X-Force 103 pencilled by Whilce Portacio, a splash page from Superman: Birthright, and a page from Silent Dragon, both by Leinil Francis Yu, and all inked by me.

You can check out the auction here:
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZkomikeroQQhtZ-1

Thanks guys! Before I go, I want to tell everyone that my online comic Crest Hut Butt Shop, is still being updated on a daily basis. (I can do this because I can upload several strips at one and just schedule them to appear on certain days.)

By the way, new visitors to this site please click on “Before You Post” above, because it’s very important. Basically, this site does not allow anonymous comments, so if I don’t know you or am familiar with your “handle”, I will not allow your comment to be posted. It’s all about respect really. You don’t come into my house wearing a hood and say all these things, good or bad. It’s just plain rude.

Start from the Beginning HERE.

Finally uploaded is Part 8 of Rudy Florese’s ORAS MO NA! Thanks to Kenny at Forbidden Planet for an article featuring the the story, and the restoration we’ve been doing. Thanks Kenny!

Gerry Alanguilan Restores and Recolours
http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=3946

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It was never in my mind to do a full scale restoration of Rudy Florese’s ORAS MO NA! I just intended to scan the pages, fix the contrast, hue and saturation a bit and then post it. I just wanted to share the story of my father in law’s tragic vigilante online.

And then I saw one of the covers and thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to strip that color off, clean the page and recolor it again?”. And that turned out well. I continued to think, “Wouldn’t it be nice to strip off the color in the first installment (the first 4 pages), clean it, and then recolor it? I think that would be nice.”

And then Ilyn saw how nice it looked and said how nice it would be for all the pages to be so colored. I nearly fell off my seat. That’s more than 120 pages! I didn’t think I had the time to do it. But I too thought how nice it would be. It would do Rudy great honor for one of his favorite works to be restored and represented in a way far better than the original did. Ilyn offered to scan the pages, strip them of color and clean them, so that all I would do would be to color.

If that’s the case, then I think I thought I could pull it off. I’m not always successful, as I’ve already been a week late on one installment. I can’t assure that there won’t be any similar hiccups in the future, but I will try my best to release an installment every Thursday.

The process of cleaning a page is one that I’ve come up with on my own. Take note that there are definitely a lot of ways in which a task can be accomplished in a program like Photoshop. And that’s the great thing about it. The program is flexible enough to allow one to accomplish something without having to follow any particular process strictly.

It starts off with just variations in which levels, curves and sharpness are manipulated. The purpose of this is to strengthen the black lines, and purify the colors to the point that they become more saturated and distinct. This allows you to then pick the color by pixel, and then convert the color to white. This would effectively remove all color from the page.

Due to the printing, and the paper on which the art is printed, one cannot get a 100% faithful reproduction of the original art. There will be damage, fade, distortion, thickening, etc. of the lines which you would need to go in and fix pixel by pixel, either by reconstructing parts of lines that were lost, or erasing dirt, or fixing distortions that were never supposed to be there. I think it’s important that a task like this should be given to an artist, specially one familiar with the style of the artist of the artwork being restored. It will give them an understanding of what goes on in the original artist’s mind and give them an insight on what should be done.

I tried to be subtle in the coloring, with a few highlights here and there. I didn’t want to go all out with the effects and shimmer and light and shade. Given the knowledge that Rudy was unhappy with how his comics were colored, it allowed me to work with a clean slate, ignoring the original colors completely and establishing a palette of my own. Knowing what the story is like, I try to establish a certain kind of tone that reflects the story. Once in a while I’d give a stark red background to a panel when something horrible or shocking is happening. Similarly, I’d give desaturated, dark colors when the mood is somber.

Click Above for Part 6. Click HERE to start from the beginning.

Edgar Tadeo came up with another teaser for his ELMER documentary, which has me scratching my head and thinking, Ed must be out of his mind! But the teaser looks really nice, and very well put together. Thanks Ed!

It’s remarkable seeing scenes like this in a mainstream publication back in 1984, specially in the light of the conservatism of mainstream comics in America. Around the same time, Marvel decided to forgo the Comics Code Authority stamp on an issue of Frank Miller’s Daredevil so that it can be published including the graphic depiction of a hypodermic syringe used for illegal drugs. This, and a lot of other things (as you would observe in the next installment) weren’t such a big deal in Philippine mainstream komiks, where such things were easily acceptable in the context of telling a story.

Click HERE to read from the beginning.

With Ilyn helping, it enables me to be less perfunctory, and be more elaborate with the coloring. I’m really enjoying coloring these, and I always wonder what Rudy would think about what we’re doing.

Click Here to start from the beginning.