On the topic of Artistic Fine-Tuning (...or is it Editorial Meddling?) (Patreon)
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You know, I don't really like to take credit for this, but I feel it's important to address this, since it impacts the release schedule.
For the vast majority of my comics, I take a role of editorial "artistic fine-tuning".
Depending on the artist who's collaborating with me in a given comic, my intervention can range from minimum to drastic, but it's rare that I don't touch a page of art delivered.
(Now, just to make it clear, all artists are always told about this before-hand and shown the final result for consideration, but I reserve the right to have the final word on the final result every time.)
So, in this latest comic, for example...
I've put together the art that was delivered by the artist along with how it was released in the comic.
Thomas' art is nowhere bad itself, quite the opposite. But his deliveries lack a certain punch on the mood and ambiance (and sometimes he misses some details, too.)
That's where I usually come in.
As you can probably notice, most of what I did was adding some lighting and texture effects, to help tightening the atmosphere of the comic, making it a bit more spiderverse-ish.
But there were also some illustration tweaks/additions as well.
Some were narrative corrections (ex: adding the three spider-women coming from a portal in panel 1.1), while others were necessary to make the dialogue bubbles flow better in a panel (ex: panel 3.5 that was mirror-flipped).
There were also some art changes for purposes of dynamic and/or personal taste (ex: 1.4 where Cindy's face was added inside her hazmat suit, and adding a bit of pubic hair to the girls throughout the comic).
Bottomline is, I just felt these changes result in a better comic, and that unfortunately impacts the production time.
However, despite my own personal feelings, I never questioned if it actually makes it worthwhile for you guys. So, here I am. What do YOU think about it?
Should I keep doing it in the future? Or do you feel I taint too much of the artist's craft?
(Also, would you like to see other comparisons from past stories and see how they were before I had my pass on them?)
Please vote on this and share your thoughts by commenting below.