Panel Reflection, C2E2 2019, Part 3 — Costumes and Colorists
The Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo, or C2E2, took place this year from March 22 to March 24. I attended as a professional and have decided to share my personal take on some of the panels I attended. This is the third and last of my Panel Reflections.
I’m a big fan of learning how art is created. I used to buy DVDs for the commentary tracks, when that was still a thing, and I love behind-the-scenes documentaries. In my first Panel Reflection, I wrote of how one of the three pieces of advice given at almost every panel about breaking into comics is to practice. I apply that to learning as much as one can about the medium I love.
To that end, two of my favorite panels were about costume design and colorists, both moderated by Eisner-award-winning critic Oliver Sava with humor and focus. “Comic Book Costume Design and Creation” was held on Friday, March 22 from 5:30 to 6:30 pm in Room S405B in McCormick Place. The costume designers on hand were Babs Tarr (Batgirl, Motor Crush), Erica Henderson (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl), Annie Wu (Black Canary, Hawkeye), Russell Dauterman (Thor), and Kenneth Rocafort (Superman, Red Hood and the Outlaws).
Mr. Sava opened the discussion: “When designing characters, what are your top priorities?” Ms. Henderson wants to “make everyone distinct” and “recognizable from a distance.” “Style comes down to personality a lot of the time,” she concluded. Ms. Tarr mentioned the importance of determining factors such as financial background and age. Mr. Dauterman expressed the need for something practical, which Ms. Wu echoed while elaborating on other aspects of a character to take into consideration.
Is this character street-level? Superpowered? If a character can fly, it doesn’t matter if they’re wearing heels. What’s the best way to emphasize action? Capes? Ms. Wu also went beyond the practical applications of the costume itself to the practical consideration of having to draw “page upon page” of whatever costume the artist designs. Mr. Rocafort talked about whether he’d be designing a new character for a new series and the importance of communicating with the writer and editor. “Trendy is easy,” he said, “but follow style and don’t be too lazy.”
“How much have you collaborated on character design?” Mr. Rocafort gave the colorist credit for control of the palate, and that science fiction provides “all the range” for design. Mr. Dauterman explained that editors can “sometimes be too vague,” and that the script is where the character can be found. Ms. Tarr described her process on Batgirl, knowing “where the seams would go” on her costume, giving the character earrings, and cutting her ponytail. Conversely, Ms. Henderson said, “Squirrel Girl wasn’t a done deal.” There were four pages of designs done on spec before Tom Brevoort suggested the “ears and headband” look that has become part of the character’s signature and recommended “more of a pinup” style.
“How do you feel about designs changing over time?” Ms. Wu elaborated on her work for one of the oldest superheroes in comics, Black Canary. Because the character was in a band in the reimagining on which she worked, she didn’t have the option of a single costume. Instead, Ms. Wu reinvented iconic aspects of the character’s Golden Age costume (i.e., fishnet stockings and a choker), and made sure she was “not wearing the same thing every issue.” For Ms. Tarr, the “superpower informs the costume, not the other way around,” and Ms. Henderson campaigned for more changes to costumes. “Who wears the same thing every day?” she asked rhetorically with a laugh.
Mr. Sava followed up with, “What are some of your favorite classic comic designs?” The 90’s were a popular answer to this question (despite that era’s maligned reputation for over-relying on pouches and pirate boots), with Ms. Tarr pointing to Superboy’s belt and jacket from that time as having a “perfect” color scheme and Ms. Henderson and Mr. Dauterman admiring Rogue and Jean Grey, respectively. Mr. Dauterman elaborated on how the original Phoenix/Jean Grey design had “so many lines” but was “not overly sexual.” There’s “something great about classic looks,” according to Ms. Tarr, also applying the word chunky to her favorites. Mr. Rocafort chose Kamandi as an “opportunity to manage expectations.” Ms. Wu “kept trying to pick a Catwoman” before settling on “all of them,” and Mr. Sava interjected that his personal choice was Big Barda, expressing love for “all the New Gods.”
“How do you approach hair design?” Mr. Rocafort expressed admiration for the “shaggy” Superman, but admitted to liking Henry Cavill in the role. Mr. Dauterman “[treats] hair as a character.” Ms. Tarr’s approach is “self-indulgent” according to her, because she asks herself, “What do I want to draw?” She had considered bangs, and loved Sailor Moon, presumably not just for the bangs, but also because the “outfits changed.”
Ms. Henderson goes “more utilitarian with hair,” with a pulled-back, short look similar to what she designed for Squirrel Girl. Ms. Tarr joked, “I give them my dream hair, but too heavy.” Mr. Rocafort warned to “be careful not to stereotype,” citing that hair is “not about taste, only design.” Ms. Wu saves hair for last, after the costume and character, and uses it to “reflect insecurities,” such as envy. She told about one character she designed with long hair so that she could be drawn playing with it or chewing on it as a demonstration of her thought process.
Mr. Sava asked who the panel’s favorite character designers are. Echoing Mr. Sava from earlier, Ms. Wu cited Jack Kirby. “You know where these characters shop,” she exclaimed. Mr. Dauterman named Frank Quitely and Adrian Alphonse for the “personality” that imbued their designs. Ms. Henderson is a fan of the late Darwyn Cooke. He was “great at altering” a design that “still felt perfectly” in line with that character’s. Mr. Rocafort listed European comics, Heavy Metal, and the fashion of the 80’s as his favorite design influences.
“What would you like to see more of?” This produced a lively discussion in its own right. Ms. Tarr advocated for “different styles of the same costume,” which led Ms. Henderson to talk about toys. “You can have five different costumes,” she enthused, citing “Winter Batman” (among others) as an example of how toy lines would create different versions of the same character. Mr. Rocafort had redesigned Batman but “DC doesn’t like it.” Ms. Tarr sympathized, as it is “hard when the people in charge have different tastes.”
Ms. Henderson wants “to see less tactical armor,” which caused Mr. Dauterman to express admiration for Jamie McKelvie’s Captain Marvel design and frustration with the “unnecessary” piping that was added to her costume for the film. Mr. Rocafort quipped, “Every superhero has a different budget for their costume.” Mr. Sava hopes to see a “wider variety of body types” represented. Ms. Wu returned to the X-men, and how their “great” team costumes served a function similar to a team or work uniform. Mr. Rocafort would like more “loyalty to the original creator’s vision.”
As a final question, Mr. Sava put forth, “What are you thinking about with monsters and robots?” Ms. Henderson believes they “don’t work when they don’t follow rules,” such as the laws of physics and biology, and that she “[looks] at weird creatures” that can be found in nature. Mr. Rocafort has different inspiration for such creations, admitting, “I love my nightmares.”
The next day, again from 5:30 to 6:30 pm, this time in Room S405A, I made sure to check out the panel of colorists Mr. Sava moderated, an often overlooked contribution to the artform, at “In Living Color: Comic Colorists on Craft.” Akin to cinematographers in films or editors in prose, colorists are sometimes unheralded; their best work doesn’t always announce itself while enhancing artwork that already exists. Mr. Sava assembled some of the best: Rachelle Rosenberg (Marvel Comics), Matt Wilson (Paper Girls, The Wicked + The Divine), Richard Isanove (Origin, The Dark Tower), Stephanie Hans (Batwoman, Die), and Michael Garland (Leviathan).
Mr. Sava began, “What led to you to becoming a colorist and developing a coloring style?” Ms. Rosenberg started at the Atlanta College of Art and Design and transitioned to digital media. When she was taught to digitally paint, she “found her joy” and “connected with comics artists.” Mr. Wilson asked if she had made comics in art school, to which she replied simply, “No.” Mr. Wilson also went to art school, and afterwards tried getting any artistic work, leading him to “scan pages for a studio” and being a flatter, which is how he got started. Mr. Isanove went to college, and had always loved comics, but got into animation. He knew how to paint, and learned how to do digital painting for Top Cow and freelance comics work, but missed painting, so he incorporated it into his digital work, most notably for Origin.
Ms. Hans attended art school in France, but “didn’t know what to do.” She did illustration work for adults, which “led to comic books” and developing her own style of “one soft tone and one violent tone.” For her, “more colors means more distractions.” She designed covers as a way to distinguish herself from others. “If I don’t have time, I use black, white, and red; it always works,” she observed with humor.
Mr. Garland did not go to art school, but was a writing major in college. A friend there got him interested in comics, and a friend of his sister’s introduced him to digital painting. He started coloring for fun. “Once you get your foot in the door,” the work as a colorist “snowballs.”
“What are your steps for creating a color identity for each book? How do you work with the writer/artist?” Ms. Rosenberg “likes to work with the artist” and any pre-color notes they may have, while also taking into consideration “what kind of book” she’s working on. She singled out Spider-Man as “younger” and requiring brighter colors. Mr. Wilson has a similar process, but also mentioned how a book will sometimes have “an obvious hook,” such as using red “in a specific way” or “rules” for how colors are used to enhance the powers of certain characters. “WicDiv gets notes,” and he prefers input from the artist, especially Cliff Chiang on Paper Girls.
Mr. Wilson shared a story about a note he received from Jamie McKelvie for the Dionysus pages of The Wicked + The Divine #8 that was nothing more than “the music is going faster.” After puzzling over what that could mean and how it could be expressed through colors, he hit upon the innovative notion of using colors with “faster” wavelengths to connote sound and increased speed.
On a personal aside, I help run the Comics Book Club of the Chicago Public Library, and we recently selected the first volume of The Wicked + The Divine for discussion. The majority of the participants have never read comics before, but they all recognized Mr. Wilson’s work on that series for its vibrancy and contributions to the storytelling.
Mr. Isanove admitted that he “rarely [does] more than a book a month.” He reads the script, and thinks of “the colors that will evoke mood.” His process on The Dark Tower is to give “every sequence…a different fog”; he finds “a dark color, gradients, and [works] with light from there [to] create cohesion.” Ms. Hans said there is “logic in colors.” Her series Die is set during World War I and based on “photos of that era.” If a scene has action, “the colors will be limited” to “two or three” to “avoid distraction.” “Each scene has logic,” she explained.
Mr. Garland joked, “The first thing I do is panic.” He looks through all the other books by the artist with whom he’s working, since “most artists fit a specific category” and “each style has different needs.” He likened being a colorist to “half of a job”; namely, “finishing a painting.”
Moving from style to resources, Mr. Sava prompted, “How often do you practice with new digital tools?” Ms. Rosenberg only does commissions at conventions, and has “started oil painting again.” She expressed a desire to “paint more in Photoshop,” but “couldn’t stand” the Lasso tool. Mr. Wilson does “marker commissions at conventions,” and, while he doesn’t “paint traditionally,” he has been dabbling in photography. Mr. Isanove worked on X-Men with Adam Kubert and “studied watercolors for a dream sequence,” which he characterized as “painting without getting my hands dirty.”
Ms. Hans will “once in while…do a traditional comic.” “This way,” she continued, “I won’t get bored.” She confessed to using the Photoshop Gradient Map, which led to a lengthy, entertaining, and overlapping discussion about how digital tools have improved over time, how much more is available now than in previous versions, and the sometimes conflicting tastes on the panel over the helpfulness of certain digital tools. It was hard to take notes, and harder for me to decipher what few notes I took, but it was entertaining to watch professionals excitedly share thoughts on personal preferences when it came to tools of their particular trade. Mr. Garland admitted that he “never [does] anything traditionally anymore,” but draws a lot on his own projects.
Questions were taken from the audience, which led to helpful advice on portfolio curation for burgeoning colorists about making sure to show sequence, textures, different times of day, and different settings to illustrate how one best captures the various nuances that are part of the colorist’s job, which often goes unnoticed and underappreciated.
Attending these panels were two treasured experiences of C2E2 2019 for me, full of insight, enjoyment, and energy. I learned a great deal about aspects that are easy to take for granted of a viable artistic medium, but should be contemplated by anyone thinking of creating for it or who wants to appreciate it to its fullest extent.
