I haven't got many more of my old colour work from the Farm left to show and because of my last posts cock-up (cheers Glazy!) as a punishment I set myself the challenge of colouring in one of the original strips. Niel and myself have been toying with the idea of cleaning up the original print run and adding colour to them all so I thought I'd try one out.
Obviously, it was a black and white strip to start with. We'd both write the scripts together, then I'd do all the pencils and Niel would ink them and add the lettering. (A role which was reversed for the 'Flasher Mac' strip) In the glorious days before god's holy gift of Adobe PS we had to rely on pencils, paper, ink and the height of technical achievements...Letratone. This stuff provided all the uniform dots you see to add a subtle tone to a black and white image. At the time it came in two flavours, a sheet of transfers, where you just pressed it directly onto your illustration (this was more expensive and beyond our meagre budget!) and the cheapo version which was basically an A3 sheet of sellotape with dots on. Niel would have to cut out the basic shape he was looking for, stick it onto the strip, then with a scalpel, trim it to fit. I always thought that Niel was an inking god but he pulled off some excellent work on the Farm!
Anyway, back to the colouring, I'd forgotten about the letratone, so now in Photoshop I've had to erase any of the tone work Niel did all those years ago. There was quite a lot of solid blacks as well, so I've removed them to make more room for some colour. I re-did the lettering and balloons, although again I've got to say, that Niels lettering was pretty damned good. I'm quite pleased with the end result but I've got a feeling that Niel will come back with his legendary line when we work together.....'MORE DETAIL!'
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