(Originally published in the March 2007 issue of the Comicshopper) Exclusive Q&A with Steve Hamaker Colourist for Jeff Smith's Bone and Shazam! by Brandon Klassen In 2005, Scholastic, under their new Graphix imprint, released the first Bone volume, Out From Boneville, as a graphic novel brought to full-colour life by the talented Steve Hamaker. Today, Steve talks to us about the art of being a colourist. Q: Though Jeff Smith's original, self-published Bone comics had colour covers, Jeff was initially resistant to the idea of having his carefully composed black and white interior art coloured. How did the whole process of colouring Bone begin, and how were you brought onto the project? A: I was working for Jeff as a toy designer and I literally got bored one day and coloured a few panels from Bone issue 1. He saw what I did and loved it! From those few pieces he let me take over colouring the covers, which started with issue 43. I did the covers from there on, and then we did the 10th anniversary colour issue 1 soon after. When Scholastic began showing interest in publishing the whole story in colour, Jeff was kind enough to actually write me into the deal as the colourist. It's amazing to me even now after years of working on it! He really likes the work I do, plus we work very well together! Q: Colouring an epic such as Bone must certainly have its challenges... and its rewards. Because Jeff's original black and white art relied so much on solid blacks, how did this affect and challenge what you were able to bring to the table as a colourist, as you set out to create a colour scheme that would not only define Bone as a coloured book, but which you would have to abide by, stylistically, for each subsequent book in the 9-book series? A: The fact that the art already works in black and white makes it easier for me for the most part. The challenge has always been to make sure the colour doesn't change how the story flows from panel to panel. For example, if I add details like clouds or trees using colour, that could throw your eye off from where he originally intended it to go. On the other hand, sometimes he leaves areas open, and I get to have fun making vibrant colour additions. My favorite example is the full-page image of Thorn standing on 2 rocks with the sunrise behind her from The Dragonslayer. That drawing is probably my favorite one in the entire story so I didn't want to screw it up. I was able to add clouds and make the sunlight lines into a colour to enhance that page. Each panel, page, scene and book has its own emotion and feelings, so I let the colours flow along and help the story however it seems most natural. The hard part is over... the story is great and now we get to make it come alive in a different way. Q: Just as Jeff's art evolved over the 1300 pages that comprise the complete Bone epic, how have you found your colouring evolving as you're now past the midpoint of working on the coloured editions of Bone? A: I definitely feel myself getting better and having an easier time just as he did writing and drawing it! I love that because like so many cartoon stories, the artist's style always evolves and gets more sophisticated, and the colour seems to mirror that idea. I still love the colour from volume 1, but I would colour it differently now based on what I've learned by this point. Just as Jeff will never go back and re-draw those pages, I would never go back and re-colour it. Q: You've mentioned in your blog that colouring for the sixth volume of Bone, Old Man's Cave, is now complete. What has been your favourite part of colouring Bone so far, and is there anything you're still really looking forward to? Is there any chance that the six-month wait between Bone books will be stepped up? A: I just really love being a part of this book as a whole! I used to be really scared and intimidated by the project, but I feel like I can see the whole thing in focus now and it's amazing! I can't wait to colour the Kingdok/Thorn fight. That scene is an amazing climax, and I love Kingdok... what a tragic character! Everything Thorn does in the last book is super fun too! As far as the release schedule, it's just me doing the colour, so it just takes time. Once Shazam! is finished, I can probably blast out the rest of the Bone books, however, the last 2 volumes are HUGE!! I'm going as fast as I can! Q: Your latest project is colouring Jeff Smith's Shazam! The Monster Society Of Evil for DC Comics. How did you come to be the colourist on this project of Jeff's as well? A: Well, I work for him full-time, so it was an easy decision. Luckily, he doesn't have any other colourists nearby! Again, he really just goes to bat for me with the publishers... in this case, DC Comics. They know we work together, so it was never an issue. Q: Your colouring on Shazam! is quite a different animal from Bone. The dull blues, browns and grays of New York City are wonderfully contrasted by the vibrant primary colours of Billy Batson, Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel's red and yellow-gold outfits (with Billy's t-shirt, noticeable from the third page, standing out more and more as he's empowered throughout the first issue), the greens of the alligator men, the gold-orange of Talky Tawny and the rich blues of the Wizard's realm and his Obi-Wan Kenobi-like ghost. What inspired your vivid style of colouring on this project, and how have these colour choices characterized the book? A: We decided early on that Shazam! was going to be really different from Bone. Jeff is definitely drawing it in a different style. He also knows it will be coloured, so he leaves things open for me, unlike anything in Bone. For example, in the first issue, Shazam flies to the Rock of Eternity and the top of the mountain is where the "Big Bang" exists. It was fun to just play around and make something weird and fun for that. The hyper-space scene later in the book was also just blank for me to add warped space and protons zipping past the characters. The character colours are really fun because they really dominate the pages in colour. Mary, Captain Marvel and Talky just pop off the page! Q: Working with Jeff on both Bone and Shazam!, can you explain how the colouring process works, starting at the point where you receive the inked pages? To what degree does Jeff work with you on the colouring? A: I scan the pages in high-res and format the page sizes so they are all uniform. Then I make the pages into layered Photoshop files where the line-art is the top-most layer. I colour beneath the lines much like an animation cel is coloured. I can also colourize his lines in some cases, like the lightning bolt outlines in Shazam! for example. Everything on the page gets a layer... Captain Marvel, the background, the sidewalk, people in the background, etc. This way we can change the colours for individual areas very easily. Captain Marvel may be the right colour, but if the sky is wrong, we can just click that layer and shift the colour until we like it! Jeff and I usually have meetings before I begin a new book. I find out what time of day each scene is, what colours he thinks of when he draws new characters or settings, and then I just go colour until the pages are done. When they are all coloured and rendered we go through each page together and make final adjustments. Sometimes it takes minutes, and sometimes it takes days. I find colouring Shazam! a lot harder than working on Bone, which is good and bad. It's good to stretch myself creatively, but it takes longer and doesn't always feel natural. Q: The great power of the colourist is the ability to fill a scene with life, mood and emotion. In the fourth Bone volume, The Dragonslayer, there's two panels at the beginning and end of a dream sequence in which Thorn recovers her sword. In black and white, the panels are identical. In colour, however, the panels are completely different, the end panel a breath of fresh air after the dream sequence - and that's just an overt example of the effectiveness of your work on the Bone books. In the first issue of Shazam!, we're scared with the cowering Billy as lightning illuminates LaGreen, we're warmed in the cold city night eating soup with Billy by the fire, and we're filled with wonder in the train enroute to the Wizard's realm. Though vitally important to the final effect that a comic has on the reader, do you think it's fair to say that the work of the colourist isn't recognized as often as that of the writer or the artist, and why do you think this is so? A: Thanks!! I love the Bone dream sequences. I always like to do subtle and weird things in those scenes! I think it's easy to take colour for granted in comics. It's like a musical score to a movie, or really good special effects... if it's done right, then you don't notice it! Personally, I understand that colourists do a lot of work and definitely get less recognition than the writers and artists, but it doesn't bother me. I like to think I'm doing a good enough job so that people aren't pulled out of the comic reading experience and say, "Hey, that's a bad colour for a talking tiger!" Plus, I love collaborating with Jeff on these books... I just hope we can keep going after Bone is finished! Thanks so much for talking with us today, Steve! To read Steve's blog and find out more about his own projects, from his contributions to the Flight graphic novels to his self-published Fish N Chips comic and more, visit www.Steve-Hamaker.com! Sincere thanks to Steve for the great interview and the images. Images (C) Jeff Smith & Steve Hamaker and are not to be reproduced without permission. Interview (C) 2007 Brandon Klassen.