| The cover was the first Pore Lil Mose image I remastered. I knew I had a big learning curve ahead of me so it looked like it was the simplest image and there would be less time lost if I had to scrap my first couple of attempts. The image was more than likely one of the last Pore Lil Mose images Outcault drew. That assumption being based on the fact the book was printed after Outcault began drawing Buster Brown and the image for the book’s cover was drawn exclusively for that purpose. If you look at some of the Buster Brown illustrations you find a lot of similarities between the way Buster is drawn and Mose. A lot of how Buster was drawn Outcault perfected in Mose. They even share the same style clothes.
I had a decent copy of the cover so the actual re-inking went fairly smoothly. When I started to remaster the color, I found the original colorist had some interesting ideas as to the color of monkey and bear fur. Then again it was a hundred years ago and maybe back then monkeys and bears were a little more purple and turquoise.
We ended up printing the image two ways, with and without the red border. With the red border was the way the publisher printed the cover, but just as many people we showed it to liked it without the outline as with it. So we decided to produce both versions of it.
One of our primary rules when we started was we would try to include everything including mistakes in the ink drawing made by Outcault. We were not as rigid with the coloring of the image. Since Outcault was not involved in the coloring we felt that we would allow ourselves to correct any gross coloring mistakes and correct a lot of coloring problems that was due to the limitations of printing techniques in 1900. The one rule we do have for coloring the images is they should mimic the originals as closely as possible. When you set a remastered Mastodon image next to an original print from 1900 the new print must always look like the original only brighter and more pristine.
One of the things that came from doing the cover was everyone in the studio started calling Mose, Billy Bear, the Monkey, Mouse Hound and Pussy, "The Crew" and it just kind of stuck. When you read other artist’s notes you’ll notice we now refer to them as The Crew sometimes.
|
