Koda

Oh boy. I have fallen in absolute head-over-heels love with Copper, a monthly comic by Kazu Kibuishi. It’s gorgeous, artful, interesting, funny, wise, colorful, and ad-free. And it’s two unlikely protagonists will absolutely win you over.

With it’s monthly schedule, Kibuishi clearly takes the time to do things right. Copper has been in the making for 4 years, so there’s a good amount (with a huge amount of effort and art) to read. Be warned though, after reading these fantastic comics, you’ll be left wishing that the next one would come sooner!

Also worth reading is the digital part of Kibuishi’s description of his method. There are many excellent digital coloring techniques and sensibilities that may be gleaned from his tutorial. What I found most interesting was his choice to scan in high resolution and threshold the line art down to aliased black and white values. As primarily a vector artist, I originally bristled at this approach, but the way he utilizes it for convenient selection is very reasonable. And after all, if it’s done in high-res, it can always be sized down to an antialiased finished project afterwards. A fascinating read!