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The Broken Ear: Poor quality colouring?

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sondonista
Member
#11 · Posted: 10 Jan 2013 06:12
There's a few mistakes with it as well. I just noticed that the when Tintin is in front of the firing squad one of the members jodhpurs change colour.
Cutts the Butcher
Member
#12 · Posted: 8 Aug 2013 04:20
I think the colouring is pretty weak in many of the earlier efforts. It's only, really, by the Seven Crystal Ball that the colours really become sumptuous and fully-realized, I think. As for recolouring, ABSOLUTELY NOT. These books are not just entertainment, they represent the life work of one of the greatest cartoonists in the history of the medium. Let the work stand (or fall) as he left it.
Pharaoh
Member
#13 · Posted: 27 Mar 2015 13:43
edcharlesadams:
Hergé was unsatisfied enough with the first colour version of "The Shooting Star" to have it redone in the fifties

I've just looked at a 1942 book, and I don't believe I found any difference in colour between it and the most recent version of the book. There is the American flag thing of course, but no difference in colouring. Can someone shed more light on the 1950s recolouring mentioned in the quote above?
mct16
Member
#14 · Posted: 27 Mar 2015 22:31
I think that the differences that Edcharlesadams is talking about pertain to the text rather than the drawing or the colouring: such as the rival expedition coming from Sao Rico as opposed to America, or the villain Blumenstein being renamed to the less Jewish-sounding "Bolhwinkel".
jock123
Moderator
#15 · Posted: 28 Mar 2015 10:53
mct16:
I think that the differences that Edcharlesadams is talking about pertain to the text rather than the drawing or the colouring

No, ed is definitely talking about the colouring - the book was recoloured, as he describes in this associated thread.

Why the differences would not be noticeable, well I don't know; however, it may be that if the second scheme was done more for technical rather than æsthetic reasons it might be that the intention never was for them to look different so much as to remove some issue with reproduction - for example, from working in publishing I am aware that the composition of the colours in ink can, if not specified exactly, lead to dullness or muddying, which can be avoided if you adjust the balance, so for example, taking traces of black out, and leaving the cyan, magenta and yellow. Hergé might have re-worked the existing colour-scheme to make the end results reproduce better.
Nowadays you could adjust it in Photoshop - back then you would maybe have been obliged to re-colour it.
Richard
UK Correspondent
#16 · Posted: 28 Mar 2015 16:16
There's a comparison of the two versions in Benoît Peeters' Tintin and the World of Hergé, showing the sequence where Snowy is almost washed overboard in the storm. I don't have the book to hand but I recall the original colouring as more of a watercolour wash (like Crab), whereas the redone version uses much stronger opaque colours. Of course, as Jock points out above, this variation may simply be due to different sources for reproduction.
jock123
Moderator
#17 · Posted: 29 Mar 2015 00:33
Richard:
There's a comparison of the two versions in Benoît Peeters' Tintin and the World of Hergé

Ah yes! I'd forgotten that - on page 70 there's the sequence you mention, which has a frame from the later edition (showing that the scheme is indeed the same, even down to the placement and shape of white highlights and some reflections - which are part of the colour-work, as opposed to drawn at the line art stage - but that the execution is now solid colour without the varying tones of the water-colour), plus on page 71, side-by-side comparisons of a frame of the rival expedition's boat showing the replacement of the stars-and-stripes with flag of São Rico which also demonstrates the more translucent and muted colour of the original as opposed to the 1954 version.
snowybella
Member
#18 · Posted: 25 Feb 2019 09:49
In my opinion, the colouring in Broken Ear is the best example of colouring in the entire series, with its pretty, soft colours - but then again, this was the book that introduced me to Tintinology and is my second favourite book, so I'm probably biased...

sondonista:
I just noticed that the when Tintin is in front of the firing squad one of the members jodhpurs change colour.

I don't think that that's a mistake - it's suggested that they may either be different soldiers, or the same firing squad, but not cheering (if it's the same scene I'm thinking of) in the same order as the last frame.

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