HERE'S MORE

The small stuff, like I've said before, adds up. Nono's face in the first panel, for instance, was so grossly misshapen in the original that I couldn't believe I'd drawn it in the first place (eyes don't go on peoples' foreheads WHAATTT). Other things, like the white highlights on Kamina's hair/jacket in the original, were touches that I abandoned very quickly in favor of a more high-contrast style, so they needed to be made consistent. Also, these very early pages have a lot of totally unnecessary drop shadows that make things too busy, so I cut down on those, while at the same time accentuating tiny details (look at Simon in the last panel compared to the old one). I went ahead and added some screentone to make sure the girls stood out in the foreground of panel 2, as well as to draw more attention to Kamina's changing expressions in the following panels.


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I'm not too sure why I had such trouble drawing smoke clouds way back when, but that's a moot point now! Dude actually looks like he's melting some serious rubber this time around. Also, corrected another case of FOREHEAD-EYES in the third panel. How I kept letting that slide is beyond me

Also JESUS those action lines in the last panel are miserable in the original. There's like... no contrast between the truck and the rest of the panel. It looks like they're just disappearing into ACTION LINE ETHER. CONTRAST, kids. It is important. Especially when you're working with black and white.

I actually distinctly remember getting disgusted with that exact panel when I was drawing it way back when and saying "well that's good enough". What a wang, hahaha

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This is one of those rare originals where I really liked the original layout, and all the remastering entailed was correcting off-model characters (Simon's super-wonko face on the bottom left, for instance) and providing more contrast between background and foreground via varying line weight (fatso's face in the second panel, for example). Also little touches, like punching up the size of the fatman's yell text in panel 2 (bigger text = louder yell, naturally)

And, of course, thickening/smoothing up the lines so they'd look AND print better, that being the whole point of the remaster and all

WHEEEEEE

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Another page that was pretty ok to begin with! It looked like absolute HELL in print, though. More so than a lot of the other pages, thanks to the huge swaths of non-vector gray tone. Ugh. Thankfully, the remaster allowed for some nice detail work (dig those teensy little lines! SO CLEAN YAAAAAYYYY) and allowed for me to fix the serious case of RETARDO-FACE the fatman had going on in the last panel of the original.


One more to go for tonight!




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The biggest change here is, of course, that first panel. The original totally does not come close to selling the panic I was trying to get across; simply raising his shoulders and spreading his elbow out a little bit completely changes the character of the pose. Plus, now he's sporting that awesome lantern jaw that both he and Kittan rock whenever they're yelling in the later pages. CONSISTENCY

I also removed a lot of unnecessary lines in the 4th panel. The focal point is the car, obviously, and having that extra negative space helps with that focus. Also, that last panel was a mess. I took great pleasure in cleaning that one up and adding some more detail.

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FULLVIEW PLZ

This one isn't changed all that much in terms of layout, but there was definitely work to be done as far as cleaning up/smoothing out the ink work and keeping everything consistent with the look of the later pages. Also, I felt that L'arc (the girl with all the dialogue here, for anyone who doesn't know) didn't look nearly grumpy enough in the original. FIXED THAT RIGHT UP

One thing I noticed going back over these pages is that a heavier line makes little details pop out a bit more. Like I feel that Simon's hairy legs/other zones look grosser with thick lines bordering them, hahaha

Plus the heavy, super-curvy lines on the Jiiha dude's face make it look like his head is melting from PURE HORROR

The wonderful thing about Manga Studio is that you can do all these teensy, thin lines and they reproduce in print just as well as the bold stuff. The original page here looked ESPECIALLY awful when I first got a proof copy; I can't wait to see how nice the new one will be on the printed page



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This one got a pretty big facelift too. I wanted the KAMINA-SHOUT panel to look kinda like a shaky-cam shot, and I think I got pretty close. He definitely looks waaaaay more unbalanced there. Also, a bunch of the other panels were really poorly staged - Kamina landing in the 2nd panel, the panel of him holding the gun - so I started over completely from scratch with those. I'm especially happy with the gun panel; it's a much more interesting angle AND you actually get the whole thing in the frame.

Also something sure seems more prominent in the last panel! WHAT IS IT HMMMMM




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Not as dramatic a change as some of the others, but it really is amazing what cleaner, more varied linework can do to punch up the professional appearance of a page. Plus the little details - like accentuating the seams on his jacket in the first panel - really add up.

Also, Kamina looked like he was sporting SPIRAL EYES in the original and I thought that was kinda misleading, hence the edit in the new page.


OK, A BUNCH MORE OF THESE ARE COMING TOMORROW


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The big change here, kinda like the previous page, is of course the second panel. Kamina's body language in the original felt way too static, his hand motions were kind of unclear, and that goddamned DREAMWORKS FACE of his drove me up the wall. The new one feels a lot more action-y. I like it!




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This is pretty close to my favorite of all the remasters, mostly 'cause of that second panel. It's pretty tough to look at the original now, what with Kamina's WONK-EYES staring me in the face and all




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