Alex Milne updates his DeviantART with Origins #4 line and coloured pages

i agree great colors great work on this issue on page 16 looks like a gundam turned into decepticon i watch alot of anime that could be why.

i_amtrunks wrote:Front Paged and Credited.

Some great work in there, the line art is fantastic, and the colours are suburb Josh, page 16 is some of your best work I have ever seen.

Hell yea, my front page No4!
Thanks

wow, you can really see the gundam influences...

Yes, these look really good.

Please don't think I'm being a douche when I say this, but honestly the one thing that has turned me off in the Origins series has been the coloring. While I think it has a nice ancient "feel" to it, tone wise, the flatness tends to hide a lot of the details, making the characters blend into the backgrounds. I guess I'm just more use to the bright colors that have been the staple in previous books.

I think everyone involved are doing a superb job, of course, it just doesn't mesh with my eye, personally.

You're not the only person who has complained about the colouring in this series. I think the muddy, blurry style is a sound approach to the story, especially given the dirty, almost seedy nature of the Cybertronian society at this point in history. It's a time when it's harder to make the distinctions between good and evil; the roles of both the mistreated 'future-Decepticons' and the rather aggressive, forceful Autobots seem to illustrate this. In that respect, the colouring style almost mimicks the narrative zeitgeist. That said, Milne packs a lot into his panels and draws with much detail, and I feel that the colouring style used in this series is perhaps not the best approach to take as it often compromises the dynamics of the pencils.

Of course, it's not entirely the colourist[s]'s fault; there are some panels where I wonder what impression Milne was trying to give and I can't always see how the panel composition is telling the story. Megatron's first murder of an Autobot, for example, should have had more resonance in the drawing. Overall, though, I feel murky colouring doesn't mesh well with cramped, detailed pencilling. It seems to me to be a case of two considered ideas that would work well independently, yet when applied in tandem don't support one another very well.

There are, as well, some issues with the writing that really should've been tightened.

The biggest mistake they have ever made with this was making it Megatron who founded the Decepticons. They should have had him be one who crushed the previous leader and took over.

I think it would have been a lot more interesting if there were multiple Decepticon leaders in the past.

Leonardo wrote: there are some panels where I wonder what impression Milne was trying to give and I can't always see how the panel composition is telling the story. Megatron's first murder of an Autobot, for example, should have had more resonance in the drawing. Overall, though, I feel murky colouring doesn't mesh well with cramped, detailed pencilling. It seems to me to be a case of two considered ideas that would work well independently, yet when applied in tandem don't support one another very well.

There are, as well, some issues with the writing that really should've been tightened.

I have to agree here, the colours suit the story well, but the art could have been better.
The story and concept were sound, the writing somewhat disappointing.

i_amtrunks wrote:

Leonardo wrote: there are some panels where I wonder what impression Milne was trying to give and I can't always see how the panel composition is telling the story. Megatron's first murder of an Autobot, for example, should have had more resonance in the drawing. Overall, though, I feel murky colouring doesn't mesh well with cramped, detailed pencilling. It seems to me to be a case of two considered ideas that would work well independently, yet when applied in tandem don't support one another very well.

There are, as well, some issues with the writing that really should've been tightened.

I have to agree here, the colours suit the story well, but the art could have been better.
The story and concept were sound, the writing somewhat disappointing.

Yes, the premise was intriguing and the concept, as you say, was good. For me, it was largely the plotting and some of the panel-to-panel writing that were flawed. (I read somewhere that this was cut to four issues from the proposed six that Holmes had pitched to DW, so that might be why.)

And how many times did I feel like using the word 'well' in that quote?

dragons wrote:i agree great colors great work on this issue on page 16 looks like a gundam turned into decepticon i watch alot of anime that could be why.

sorry for the off-topic reply, but, dude, your sig is awesome! where can i get a high-res full picture of that? thanks!