Last year when I reported on the small exhibition of Tintin art held at the Institut Français in London, I mentioned that they had a nice display of the colouring work on
The Shooting Star; these panels, according to the attached legend were coloured by Hergé himself.
However, in looking for information on the revisions to
The Black Island, I noted the following on tintin.com:
Hergé turned out to be very demanding as to how color was added to his stories. He was helped by a young assistant, Alice Devos, who was entrusted with the coloring of L'Étoile Mystérieuse
(The Shooting Star) which had just been released.So I just wondered if anyone knew more accurately what happened? The possibility is of course that Hergé prepared some of the pages himself as examples, or that he split the work with Alice, or that he did certain elements such as the figures, or that the card was wrong, and Alice did it all.
These are the tiny points which niggle at the brain of a Tintinophile...!
Addendum: Again digging around, I came across
a message from edcharlesadams saying that
The Shooting Star was re-coloured in the fifties, because Hergé wasn't happy with the first attempt, although Ed seems to suggest that Hergé did the first version himself (apologies Ed, if I haven't got this right).
The tintin.com article does continue, after the excerpt above:
Owing to this first experience, he had adopted a coherent color system.Does this imply the following: Hergé entrusts the colouring to Alice, who produces a version he doesn't like, which causes him to adopt a better process, and the later version of
The Shooting Star is done in this way;
or
Hergé colours the book, isn't happy with his ability to produce consistent colour for reproduction, and hires Alice who is - and
she does the later version?