She-Devils Issue #4 – GET IT

Tesla’s Centurions of Science was the highlight of RSA for me, so more can only be a good thing.

I must add that I too have been underwhelmed by the smaller visual footprint in the latest series. Scott mentioned that he is experimenting drawing at 100% scale instead of the traditionally larger size that is reduced later. In my opinion this reduces, not enhances the dramatic visual effect found in the the earlier issues.
There is huge difference in visual excitement between The Ghost of Station X and this latest volume. The story line, however is top-notch

In short, Atomic-Robo seems less than larger than life, and more ordinary in the new illustration format.

I’m looking at both. You sure about that?

I mean, there are more details in parts of Vol 6 because there are more things in the backgrounds of Vol 6 because 50% of the story doesn’t take place in the sky.

I prefer the thinner strokes used in faces in previous issues versus the simplified lines in the facial features of She Devils that seem heavier and bolder.

And yes, I miss Robo’s glowing eyes too.

Before I answer that, I just want to say, yet again, for the record, that I love the work Nick has been doing. Yes, not everything translated from computer to paper the way we expected. But even so, I personally feel that this is the best looking Robo mini-series we have produced yet. Ronda did great work, but I was terrible at expressing my ideas and concepts to her.

I certainly don’t feel that it’s been the end-of-the-world catastrophe that a few fans have made it out to be. Of the artists whose opinions I respect and seek regularly the universal response has been extremely positive. The only non-artist who gets a vote is Brian, and as far as I know he is also very happy with Nick’s work.

Hopefully -and I expect that this is true- people who love Robo and thus have feelings about it trust us enough to stick with us and see where this all goes. We love and appreciate that people are taking this journey into Robo’s world with us, and we only ever have the books best interests in mind.

I think if the two guys who invest every waking hour in making Atomic Robo can take a few printing hiccups in stride and chock it up to experience, its not asking very much at all for the rest of the gang to just relax about it. ;D

To answer your question: Soooort of?

More or less yes. Nick’s been tweeking his monitor settings with each issue so he gets closer and closer to what the pages will actually look like in print. And there’s still a lot of back and forth -”I like this, but not that, so more of the first and less of the second.” That sort of thing. But its still photons from a screen vs color on a page. (And holy hell does this stuff look amazing on my iPad.) So it will never be 100%. It wasn’t with Ronda either.

There are a few things that we did no change in Vol.7, even though we’d figured them out, because it would have actually altered the consistency of the line work in the TPB. We will be getting together once I finish FCBD to mind-meld our computers and tinker with Photoshop settings on my end.

It’s harder to see because there was no earlier work to compare it to, but the colors from Vol.1-Vol.6 also underwent a lot of changes. This sort of thing is constantly happening behind the scenes. Its actually one of the facets of making comics that I find super interesting and engaging.

What made it more spectacular here is that you had a totally new artist, with his own processes, tool sets, and aesthetics jump in with little to no prep-time. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that when Nick said yes to the job and asked when the first issue was due my answer was, “last week.”