Dave McCaig: Giving Color to the NorthlandBy Martijn Form
 Boy o boy, have I got a great Vertigo column for you today. Recently, I got the opportunity of pulling Dave McCaig away from his favourite paintbrushes and his extremely busy schedule to talk about his craft of coloring a comic book like Northlanders.
Northlanders plays out around 980 A.D. and tells the saga of a great Viking warrior called Sven, who returns to his homeland, only to discover that his parents have been killed by his uncle. If you thought 300 was amazing, Northlanders is even better. This isn't just a Viking story. This is Brian Wood! With a flick of the wrist Wood weaves human drama with gallons of blood on the battlefield. He submerges you into a world of cold steel and fast landscapes, making Lord of the Rings almost obsolete. This is not a saga for the faint hearted, and divides the men from the boys. So without further ado, here's my interview with Dave…
 Martijn Form : So Dave, thanks for doing this interview. In my review of Northlanders #4, I complimented you on your coloring. How did you get the gig for this Vertigo book?
Dave McCaig : Thanks! I had worked with Vertigo editor Will Dennis on The Other Side , and he asked if I'd be interested in the series when TOS was winding down. I jumped at the chance. This book is right up my alley.
Martijn : Northlanders is pretty offbeat even for Vertigo. Were you attracted to doing a Vikings story from the start?
Dave : I was immediately drawn to Northlanders because I’m 1/2 Icelandic, so naturally, any chance to do Vikings and I was hooked. I love Brian Wood's writing, too. And Davide's art. And working with Will Dennis. There was just a lot of love floating around. Gore-filled blood-soaked love.
Martijn : Let's step back a bit. How did you become a comic book colorist?
Dave : After graduating from an advertising art program at college, around half of my class got scooped up by Digital Chameleon, a Winnipeg coloring house that was expanding by leaps and bounds at the time. I started off doing color separations on a computer from hand painted or markered guides, and eventually moved on to painting trading cards and specialty projects before heading off on my own after a couple of years.
Martijn: So did formal training prepare you for coloring comics or is it more an automatic process?
Dave: Well, both honestly. While I do have some formal training, it was mostly related to graphic design and (in university later) set design. Color is rarely covered comprehensively in art school, so I tracked down a pile of books that were very educational over the years by guys like Chevreuil, Itten, Albers, and Parramon. I'm very drawn to books on Film Noir cinematography as well for lighting, and I scope out animation backgrounds as much as possible. I like flipping through Japanese fashion and art books too, to get a broader non-Western sense of color once in a while. At the end of the day though, coloring for 12 hours per day for 12 years seem to have driven lessons home the best.
Martijn: Because writers and artists get most of the attention, maybe not all readers are aware of how important you colorists are in establishing the mood of a particular book. Does that frustrate you sometimes?
 Dave: Not usually. I view comic book colorists as the cinematographers of the comic book world. We do a lot of the work to set mood and pacing, but not many people pay attention to, or care, who the cinematographer in a movie in much the same way. I'm just happy when a project comes together and everyone seems to be effortlessly melding their work together, as Northlanders has been so far. At the end of the day, so far as praise goes, as long as my editors and the rest of the creative team are happy, I'm happy.
Martijn: Well Dave, maybe you are happy, but I'm not! [laughs] I think comic readers and even critics should be made more aware that coloring can make or break a book. If this wasn't the case then all books would be printed in black and white, right?
Your view that comic book colorists are the cinematographers for a comic book is very interesting. I can see clearly what color does to the mood of a comic book, but can you elaborate how coloring can affect the pace of a comic book?
Dave: Often, dull unsaturated colors with little change in hue will slow things down for the reader and let them know a scene is a quiet one. Loud, clashing colors often mean faster pace or action. Bluer tones seem "slower" than yellow or red tones as well. These examples don't apply to every situation, but are generally true.
Martijn: As a colorist, how close do you work with the writer and artist on a book?
Dave: It depends on the project. Sometimes there's a lot of contact with the writer and penciller. I lived in LA for a couple of years, and so was able to go for lunch with Mark Waid when I was coloring Superman: Birthright , and we'd go over upcoming issues in detail. Sometimes I'll get color notes from the penciller or writer. Brian Wood keeps sending me great environmental reference for Northlanders for example. Then again, on some books I'll get my pages and script, color away, and never hear a peep from anybody. That can be scary and fun.
Martijn: Yes, I have seen a lot of photos taken by Brian Wood on his website. It's really amazing to see how you creators translate this into sequential art. Speaking of Brian Wood, how important is the script for you regarding coloring the book? Or are the black and white final inks more important?
 Dave: I'd say they're equally important. Sometimes the script overrides the art, and sometimes the reverse is true. And sometimes (rarely) it's a challenge to get the two to match up. Usually if there are conflicts, you can just fudge things to make a scene look good, and try to get the mood and time of day to match the script, though sometimes you just have to get creative. I almost never use blue skies for that reason. It's much easier to fudge time of day if the sky is some weird 60’s Spider-Man cartoon sky color. Brian makes things pretty clear in his scripts though, and Davide is pretty faithful to Brian's writing, so these generalisms don't apply. In fact, I have broken my rule and used blue skies for this series.
Martijn: Well, I take my hat off to you colorists. Sometimes when I look at a black and white ink page, I cannot make heads or tails of a particular scene. Color also provides clarity for us readers. Wouldn’t you agree?
Dave: Oh, absolutely. Color helps the reader pick out the main characters, figure out locations, and separate visual planes to make things more three dimensional. If all the background stuff is red, and all the foreground green for example, a scene would appear to have a good amount of depth that might not show up as readily in the line art.
Martijn: To illustrate what Dave is talking about, he provided me with some exclusive behind the scene art and script to show what it takes to create a wonderful (colorful) comic page. It shows you what kind of amazing talent is working on Northlanders ! (Special thanks to Vertigo for letting us use this exclusive slice of Northlanders art.)
  
Martijn: Can you tell us a bit more on how you get started on an issue?
Dave: I usually try to start coloring a book after I have at least half of the pages. It's too easy to paint myself into a corner, so to speak, if I jump in too early, because I might use a color for something that creates a conflict in a later scene. When I get started, I'll read the script, look over the pages, and mentally fix mood colors, sky colors, building colors, etc. as much as possible for each scene before diving in, based on how these colors will react to the main characters' costume colors.
Martijn: Do you color one page at a time or do you do more a whole scene that uses the same color palette?
Dave: Usually scene to scene. I find it goes more quickly and keeps things looking consistent.
Martijn: What kind of book works the best for your coloring? I mean, would you color a comic like Marvel Adventures ?
Dave: I tend to like coloring art that is left open (without a ton of crosshatching), and is built on fluid geometric shapes. I think my work on Northlanders and, say, Nextwave , might gel better with the line art than my recent work on Action Comics did, despite how much I enjoyed working on it. I just find that my coloring style works more naturally with that style of art. Sometimes I like working with crosshatchy artists though, like Leinil Yu. I think mostly because of how he structures his figures and blocks out his scenes with lighting and color in his mind in a way that I think I respond to naturally.
I like mixing up the kinds of books I work on to keep things interesting. I'll be coloring (kids friendly) Family Dynamic for DC soon, at the same time as gore-filled Northlanders . As long as my style fits with the artist, a run on Marvel Adventures would be fun too.
Martijn: So what is your approach regarding your coloring technique?
Dave: I try to put the storytelling first, and get what I'm adding to the page across as simply as possible. One reason that I tend to use such a minimalistic style when I color is that I feel that heavily rendered, effect crazy coloring often slows down storytelling too much, and in the end I think that eventually drives readers way. That said, I'm aware that Northlanders has a gritty filter over every panel, and a lot of ragged brush strokes, but I think it helps tell the story without slowing things down, so I opted to use them.
Martijn: You talk about brush strokes, is your coloring done by hand or with the computer?
Dave: All of my coloring is done on my computer. In fact, when I draw covers or pinups, I do the entire process on the computer as well, from initial sketches to final painting. If you care to be tricky about it, computer coloring or painting can be convincingly made to look like traditional media, though I don't usually make an effort to hide the fact that my work is done electronically. For Northlanders , I just like the untamed look of the brushes I'm using for backgrounds and blood splatter. I think the style really pumps up the action scenes.
Martijn: Can you give us a small glimpse what's in store for Northlanders? Will you be using a lot more "blood and gore" coloring? [laughs] It seems it is flowing by the gallon in the most recent issues.
Dave: I've just started coloring issue #6 this weekend, and I can assure you that my blood splatter brushes are going to see plenty of use.
Martijn: Wonderful! The more blood the merrier!
Any advice for artists who want to be a colorist in the comic industry?
Dave: Yes! Come join my forum online at www.gutterzombie.com. Many of the top coloring pros in the industry are members, and are often willing to give advice to newbies. There's a public gallery for peer review, links to line art to practice on, and many tutorials to get you started.
Martijn: And of course, working 12 hours a day will help one become a coloring master just like Dave McCaig is!
Thanks for doing this interview, Dave, and I hope readers will be more aware of you colorists the next time they open up their favourite Vertigo comic.
Dave: My pleasure!
Northlanders #5 arrives in stores this Wednesday, and if you haven't read this series yet, you are missing out a lot. And just because we don't live in a perfect world where everybody is a Vertigo addict (shame on you!), the first Nortlanders trade will be in stores this October.
NORTHLANDERS VOL. 1: SVEN THE RETURNED TP
Writer: Brian Wood
Artist: Davide Gianfelice
Collects: Northlanders #1-8
$9.99 U.S., 200 pages No, your eyes don’t deceive you! That's 200 pages of beautiful sequential art for only ten bucks. So there is no excuse for not picking this up.
See you next week. Same time. Same channel. Different nightmare.
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