Over at Broken Frontier, Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Mark Paniccia, Nate Cosby and Khoi Pham pay tribute to colorist Stéphane Peru by discussing five pages of his work from Incredible Hercules #114. It’s noteworthy not only because of the sentiment behind it, but also because it gives insight into the art and technique of the coloring process. I particularly liked this paragraph by Greg Pak:
Stéphane had a great time evoking 1970s comics printing with the Champions flashback on this page. And here’s a great, subtle detail that I’m just now noticing: Stéphane kept Hercules’s silhouette in the first panel a full black — that’s an almost subliminal tip off that that’s the real Herc while the slightly washed out characters in the rest of the image are fantasies. A colorist who delivers beautiful images? Fantastic. A colorist who deeply understands the emotional context and storytelling imperatives of every scene? One of the greats.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
thanks for the link – an excellent tribute.
February 16th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
In this time of garish, terrible colorists, with no real knowledge of the craft and overwhelmed by the digital tools, Pery was rarely gifted.
His being so young only makes it all the more sad.