Outlaw

The lines were inked on paper with a brush. The colours are all digital, and believe it or not, that was the tricky part.

The first colour version is all just flat colours. I laid it down in a matter of minutes, and I like it, but I got to thinking that I'd like to really push the retro look by using halftone . Then I decided it'd be fun to see if I could get it to look the way I wanted using only halftone. It's odd that once halftone was used simply because it was the best option at the time, yet now crazy buggers like me go to great lengths trying to replicate the effect. All in the name of nostalgia.

I've added really basic halftone areas to images before, but this was the first time I'd tried to layer it to create the illusion of certain shades and colours. Like I said, the first version took a matter of minutes. The second took hours. Hours of research and experimenting. But I'm thrilled with the result, and if I ever attempt it again (which is more than likely) hopefully I'll have a better idea of how to do it, thus reducing the time factor immensely.

I won't go into the details of how halftone works; I think that link above gives a pretty clear and concise explanation for those interested. Needless to say, there are only four colours used in this: Cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

The animation below (click on the last image) is by no means an indication of the actual progression during the construction of the piece. I was constantly jumping back and forth between layers, adding layers, deleting layers, and moving things around to get the desired effect. It's amazing how little it takes to completely alter the illusion. Even something as simple as switching the order of two colour/halftone layers can change the resulting illusory colour/tone. The way I've structured the animation is simply to give the clearest indication of how all the layers work together.