COLORING HIS WORLD - BRIAN HABERLIN ON HIS CD COLORING TUTORIALS

[MattBrady]

by Aaron Weisbrod

The name “Brian Haberlin” may not be a household name among comic book fans, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a purveyor of this medium who hasn’t been exposed to – or is an unknowing fan of – his work.

Both a driving force behind many of the coloring techniques now taken for granted by current readers as well as the man who helped helm such titles as Witchblade, Aria, Athena Inc., and Area 52, Haberlin has spent his career making comics look better and better with each passing month…

And now he’s willing to pass his secrets on to the public.

With the release of a four CD Tutorial through Image Comics, Haberlin is offering hopefuls and professionals alike a first-hand, step-by-step look at what the revolutionary coloring processes he helped to pioneer in comic book publishing.

However, as Haberlin is quick to point out, his role in the industry is much more than that of a colorist alone, and he recently took some time away from his already sleepless schedule to speak with Newsarama about his start in the industry, the formation of Avalon Studios, the various other hats he wears while on the job, and just what prompted him to begin this tutorial series in the first place…

Newsarama: Start us off with a little background history. We’ll get to your professional achievements in a moment… but who is Brian Haberlin, the person?

Brian Haberlin: A guy who loves creating things and tweaking things. The creating part is when I do my own stuff like Athena Inc., Area 52, and others, whether it be the art or the writing. The tweaking stuff is when I do my color work. I “play” with what I am given and try to complement it as best I can.

NRAMA: Most aspiring comic book artists are interested in becoming illustrators, or once in a great while even specifically inkers, yet you found your niche in coloring. What was it about the prospect of being a colorist that called out to you, and still calls out to you?

BH: You’re kidding me, right? My samples were pencil/ink/color…my color was just obviously much better than the other two. So rather than waiting for someone to notice my other talents I took the job coloring figuring it was an in. Little did I know that it would end up being as important to my professional career as it has become. I was already a professional illustrator doing mostly magazine editorial stuff prior to my break.

NRAMA: You and your studio have colored hundreds of books, including Spawn, X-Men, and Spider-Man, among others. Give us some specific issues that people can check out in order to see some of your most recent – and best – work.

BH: It’s true… and my head still aches just thinking about some of the deadlines!

Let me clarify something, though. There is me as an individual and there’s my studio, Avalon, with a lot of really talented folks. We color around 10 books a month for Marvel, 4 new series for DC, about another 4 for Image…to break it down individually by title would probably be too long a list. I mostly color or digitally paint covers these days and go over books that others have started in my studio…a sort of polishing pass, adding touches here and there.

I also am very hands-on with the other side of my studio that does illustration and design for clients like Dream Works and TV Guide, just to mention a couple. In fact, for Universal on the new Hulk DVD, I colored a sequence that Adam Kubert drew for the “special features.” It’s nice because it shows the line art and colored art separately. You can really see what the color can do for a piece.

My other hat - I think my third - is managing my current properties and creating new ones for the entertainment market. Also, I’m about to have a novel published.

I have no idea when I sleep.

NRAMA: Fair enough. So you’ve been, basically, behind the scenes of the industry and some of its biggest books for years – what are the details about your first “big break” and how did you go about making it happen?

BH: I actually was offered a gig at Marvel to pencil back in 1981 when I was still a teenager, but they wouldn’t guarantee work and insisted on my moving out to NY…and the pay was really bad. So I went to film school instead, and then worked in television -- but I always was drawing and worked as a freelance illustrator on the side of my 9 to 5 gig.

But I still loved comics and quickly realized I didn’t want to be a TV executive. I was experimenting with 3D graphics and paint programs - all pretty new at that time - and seeing what they could lend to the comic creation process.

Then at the 1993 San Diego Comic Con I got a booth with a friend of mine who was a small press publisher at the time. I had a huge inkjet print behind me of a Green Lantern I drew and colored with 3D modeled wings and in front of a huge 3D modeled power battery. On the monitor on my table - and in those days I think I was about the only person with a computer set up at the show, it was running a 3D animation I did of Spawn. People went lollipops and I got a lot of offers for work. I ended up taking the one from Marc Silvestri and I started his computer coloring department at the brand new Top Cow Productions - I think the whole company was 5 people back then. While there I branched out into writing and co-created Witchblade.

I left in 1995 to form my own studio, and I’ve been happily at it ever since -- coloring, writing, drawing and painting.



NRAMA: Your four tutorial CDs cover various aspects and methods of comic book coloring, but, honestly, there are surely other sources of information out there that can instruct people how to color using Photoshop, right?

BH: You know, surprisingly enough there aren’t…and I’ve looked. Furthermore, most of the ones I’ve seen are done by guys I’ve never heard of and who quite frankly show incorrect ways of doing things and not even doing those really well. They really lead people down the wrong paths.

I either created or had a hand in creating most of the modern methods of coloring. With me they are more or less getting it from the horse’s mouth and from a guy who has relied on these skills to put bread on the table for a decade.

As for who should by these CDs, I think anyone who wants to take a piece from beginning to end whether they’re a hobbyist or pro -- and this is definitely not just for comic people, but for illustrators as well.

NRAMA: One of the CDs contains art exclusively from Danger Girl. How did you go about approaching J. Scott Campbell about using some of his artwork in the CD?

BH: I’ve known Jeff since ’93, and my studio has colored and digitally inked most of his work for the last few years. So I asked and he, being a gracious guy, said yes…with very little arm-twisting I might add.

NRAMA: Speaking of creator-owned properties, the fourth CD of the set is specifically devoted to “Comic Coloring the Spawn Way.” There’s a specific way to color Spawn that makes it distinctive?

BH: Well, you have to remember when Image started nobody’s books looked like theirs did, and Spawn was the best-colored book out there - by Steve Oliff at the time. When I came in we took it up a notch from there. I remember when I was back at Top Cow I heard from friends at DC and Marvel telling us how at meetings the head guys would hold up one of the books we’d done and say “how do we get our books to look like this”?

Spawn has been colored beautifully for its whole 131-and-counting issue run…and that is saying something.

NRAMA: Let’s talk specifics – with these tutorials, how much detail do you go into?

BH: The advantage of the CDs is that the purchaser is watching at high resolution everything I do on a piece. All the menus are open, people can see exactly what type of brush I’m picking, what color, what mode the layer is in that I am working on, they’ll have the line art I’m working on… even the palette. It’s the next best thing to being in the studio with me and looking over my shoulder as I work. Even better in fact, since they can pause it, rewind it, etc. and really learn at their own pace.

I plan on getting fairly specific, like doing ones on topics like special effects, digital inking, digital painting, using 3D models, to the more general topic of coloring an entire page. I mean, coloring a good cover or pin-up is easy, but the tricks to making a whole page flow is quite another thing.

I’ll also be pulling in some of my buddies from the industry to show how they do what they do.

NRAMA: So – long story short, this is as good as having you come over and teach?

BH: Almost. You can get practical, specific knowledge from these CDs that really can’t be found anywhere else. They are currently available through Image Comics in Previews, and they’re also available direct from our website with previews of each tutorial at www.digitalarttutorials.com There’s also a message board there where people can ask questions about things they learned on the coloring CDs, or just share info and insights about the creative process.

[cyclopsfan]

Cool! This sounds really interesting! Thanks for the interview!!

[idkidd]

Well, you have to remember when Image started nobody’s books looked like theirs did, and Spawn was the best-colored book out there - by Steve Oliff at the time.

What happened with Steve Oliff? He seemed to come out of nowhere and just outcolor the hell out of every other book out there with his work on Spawn, actually be a colorist and launch his own character (can't remember the name), then vanished only to reappear doing, in my opinion, unreadable color work on 3rd tier Marvel books (Captain Marvel & Black Panther).

BTW, the work of Haberlin's that blew me away was his work over Mark Texeira on the first 6 issues or so of Priest's Black Panther -- WOW!

[Tobey Cook]

I saw the solicits for these in the latest previews, and I've been interested in digital coloring for quite some time now, so they're definitely going on my must-have list.

Haberlin does great work, and it's good to see him finally getting noticed for it.

[marioboon]

I have these cd's for over a month and they taught me some handy pointers
and a nifty colors palette

[protonik]

Oliff was actually a big name in coloring before Spawn, well known for his excellent colors on many Marvel books and for the colorizing of Akira for Epic back in the day... he certainly didn't come out of nowhere, it was just when we started to notice colorists because comics quit using flat colors and could actually imprint themselves on their work...

Jason

[Studio D Comics]

Originally posted by idkidd
What happened with Steve Oliff? He seemed to come out of nowhere and just outcolor the hell out of every other book out there with his work on Spawn, actually be a colorist and launch his own character (can't remember the name)

Armature, I think.


later
don

[FIG]

Time to order

[Mario Gully]

Great Interview! It couldn't happen to a better man and a real pro.
Brian is a wonderful human being that is only outclassed by his talent.
It's cool when good things are said about good people. In a industry full of
a$$ holes, Brian is one of the people I consider a force that is helping to better the industry.

Cool.

[Bloodcat]

Im not really an art type. Can't draw to save my life.

But I kinda want these CDs just to see how the pros do the amazing work they do. It blows my mind.