It is awesome to see Mookie, Hazel, Ruth, and Margaret fully realized and in color! Theresa and I decided to work with a limited color pallette for 2 reasons of equal importance. I'd like to break them down for would be comic book collaborators going forward.
Practical. At the current pace at which Theresa and I are making this comic book series it takes me a little less than a month to write 1 issue, and it takes Theresa 3 months to pencil, ink, and color all by herself. The fact that Theresa is able to put out that much high quality art in that span of time is HUGELY impacted by our decision to not go for full color realism. If making comicbooks was a full time job, then maybe we could do more with less time, but we all gotta pay the bills while we shoot for our dreams.
Artistic. Don't worry, the decision wasn't all about efficiency/penny pinching. I've mentioned before that I view the location of Ithaca almost as a character in its own right, and as integral to the story I want to tell. I suppose maybe the name "Ithaqa" might have tipped you guys off on that one... The setting is crucial to my story and I work hard to weave the history of silent film and the physical beauty of Ithaca into my work as much as possible.
Ithaca is a city that changes drastically over the course of a year. If you brought someone to a gorge in January, and then brought them back in June they'd have a hard time understanding how that the dry bitter cold could transition to such a sweltering humid heat.
Ithaca is a city where you forgot about friends who lived far away during the Winter and then reconnected with them in the Spring because walking uphill in the snow both ways just maybe wasn't worth it. Then there would be an explosion of plant life and heat. You'd find yourself woefully unprepared because a lot of buildings didn't see the need for central air conditioning in a city that stays frozen until May and then freezes again by Halloween.
My point being that the seasons color the city drastically, and I wanted to convey that via our colors. The seasons change, the city changes, and then the mood of the story changes. I wanted this first narrative to take place in the Fall, because it is my favorite time of year in Ithaca. A time of moderate weather, beautiful colors, and bountiful harvests. I wanted Theresa to keep Fall in mind when trying out color palettes, I wanted people to look at a page and feel that it might be pleasantly warm around town, but also that things were drying out. Things are shriveling up and dying.
I have 4 major story arcs planned out for Ithaqa, and though they are over the course of many years, I want them each to take place in a different season. I want the colors to change to match each season, and hopefully with that change the readers will feel the tone shift as well. The narrative of the seasonal cycle works in tandem with what these characters are going through, because after this story "Winter Is Coming" and Winter was very cruel in Ithaca in the 1920's.
Theresa Chiechi's (The Artist) website is here: http://www.theresachiechi.com/
If you want to stay up to date on the project please give me a follow, either here or on facebook or instagram (below).
FB: https://www.facebook.com/pg/IthaqaComic/about/?ref=page_internal
Twitter: @IthaqaComic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ithaqacomic/