papernoise blackbook

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italiano.

No this is not Rome, this is somewhere near Bolzano at 2500m height. The day before we started our trip to Rome, we went up the mountain with the guys from helios, ate a lot of knödels (yummy, good knödels!) walked back, long after dark, got lost in the dark… but this is another story.
The day after we were in Rome!

We saw a book presentation by Luca Russo and Christiano Silvi, but I don’t have a picture of the authors so I’ll post one of the two musicians playing at the presentation.

The day after I was at Odio L’estate, held a little speech about Giètz! and had the pleasure to meet Alessandra Umiliani (daughter of Piero Umiliani, one of the musicians appearing in the book) and Francesco Argento, who manages the official Umiliani website.

A tourist’s round to see some churches and roman ruins, several glasses of wine, a trip to the Tunué headquarters, a Sunday at the lake playing games and watching buffalos ruminate and we were back on out way home!
It’s been an intense but beautiful weekend.

I’ve spent 3 years working on a graphic novel about jazz music, and this made me discover and appreciate many musicians I didn’t know (or didn’t know well) before. Still I can’t say that I’m a Jazz addict, even while drawing Gietz!, most of the time I would listen to completely different music, like The Cure or some chiptunes. At one point I felt the need to find some flavour of contemporary Jazz that was somehow more in line with my taste. I dicovered a whole new world!

There’s this current in Jazz which is called Dark Jazz, or Doom Jazz which is a mix of dark athmospheres, weird soundscapes and e-piano. There’s two great bands I would recomend: Bohren and the Club of Gore and The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble. Check out the videos below:

Another great band I would recommend is Movits! Those Swedish guys created the perfect mix between Django Reinhard, Swing and Hip Hop. I’ve been listening to this a lot while drawing Gietz! It perfectly fitted with the mood of the comic, and was energetic enough to fuel my motivation!

La news non è nuovissima… ma sempre tardi che mai. A proposito della questione iPad, fumetti, libri, gente che legge e che non legge ne avrei un bel po’ da dire, ma sarà per un altra volta, intanto eccovi la news così com’è, senza commento (via tunue.com):

Il numero dei graphic novel che la Tunué sta convertendo in app per iPad diventa sempre più alto, e così anche Giètz! ora può essere scaricato da iTunes App Store a soli 0,79 cent.

Ambientato a La Spezia negli anni della liberazione americana, è una storia di passione, per la musica e la vita: Nico, il protagonista, è un giovane che ama suonare la tromba e a contatto con i soldati americani e afroamericani scoprirà sonorità nuove e realizzerà così il sogno di diventare a tutti gli effetti un vero trombettista, un trombettista giètz.

Un graphic novel completamente incentrato sulla musica e sull’unione che ha provocato in anni di paura e divisione trapersone diverse; una storia avvincente che potrebbe essere, come dice Paolo Fresu, curatore della prefazione “la storia di uno dei tanti trombettisti jazz”.

Per scaricare l’app: 
Giètz!

I don’t know how many times, in my short carreer as a comic artist, I have heard the question: “are you making these yourself, or are you using the computer?”, where using a computer means that the computer does all the work, and I just stand there and watch. I guess the cause of this assumption is to be traced back to the movies of the fifties, where somebody enters random data into a giant metal wardrobe with many buttons, glowing lamps and magnetic tape spools (also called the computer) which, after an incredibly short time returns the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything.

In real life things are bit more complicated.

In my case it all starts with me preparing the pencils for the inking (as we have seen in the previous installment), and continues with the scanning and pre-print process.

Usually I scan the drawings at 1200 dpi, grayscale. The cyan tint of the pencils turns into a pale grey, which is easily eliminated. The end product will be a page with a resolution of 600dpi, the ink drawing should be clear and clean. Scanning it at such a high resolution I can clean it up and then reduce it to 600dpi without causing unwanted artifacts.

Usually after scanning the page I end up with something like this:

As you can see (or not see, depending of your monitor) the inks are greyish and dirty, and you can see the texture of the paper and the pencils underneath. The next step is to use the “levels” function of the image editing software to get rid of all that unwanted stuff, by “cutting” away most of the luminance spectrum.

I use some pretty agressice settings here to reduce everything to just black and white. I don’t care if the lines look jagged at this stage, that’s why I’m working at 1200dpi!

The end result is some clean and sharp inks. The next step is to reduce them to 600dpi, which will soften the edges a bit, but not make them blurred.

Once I have the page at the desired format and resolution, I add some shadows. I draw these directly on the computer using a tablet.

For Giètz! we didn’t print using black ink. Instead we used a brown Pantone ink. The final effect is that the inks are dark brown and the shadows a lighter tint of the same colour.

This was the last episode of this tutorial series. But don’t worry, I have a lot more to tell you about this project!

The presentation I made for Giètz! last friday went smoothly. I talked a bit about how the project was born, and about my workflow. I used pictures from the tutorials I made here on the blog (which you can find here and here), which reminds me that I haven’t done the last one of the series yet, the one about the colouring process. Will try to get that one done as soon as possible. In the meantime, here’s some pictures (thanks to Armin for the pics).

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italiano.

It would be about time for me to write a report on how things went in Bologna. Unfortunately I only made a few lousy pictures, so I’m still trying to get some from other sources. In the meantime here’s a couple of pictures from the exhibition and one from the presentation.