The contribution made to comics by their color artists has never been a lot more crucial or appreciated, as well as her work on four prominent picture books has made Elizabeth Breitweiser the very first champion of the BF award for finest Colorist.

It may have taken a while, however the damaged Frontier awards are delighted to acknowledge the contribution made to a few of our preferred books by their colorists, whose work is being pushed into the foreground by the avalanche of prominent creator-owned jobs as well as the opportunity to appreciate it in spectacular digital quality.

And, for our inaugural award, we’re thrilled to reveal that damaged Frontier’s finest Colorist of 2014 is Elizabeth Breitweiser.

Like a lot of color artists, Breitweiser has a monthly workload that would make the hairs on your pint stand on end. However, the books that grabbed the interest this year were her prominent partnerships for picture Comics: Fatale as well as The fade Out, with Ed Brubaker as well as Sean Phillips; Velvet, with Brubaker as well as Steve Epting; as well as Outcast, with Robert Kirkman as well as Paul Azaceta.

Working in the genres of horror, noir as well as espionage, where characters operate – figuratively as well as actually – in the shadows, produces its own challenges. However, Breitweiser brings subtlety as well as a mastery of tone to the work, highlighting the degree to which a colorist – in a similar method to a director of photography in the cinema – can impact the whole process of storytelling.

Three pages from Velvet

Interestingly, Breitweiser didn’t grow up as a comics fan. She only went into the market (from a occupation as an art instructor as well as fine artist) after satisfying her husband, artist Mitch Breitweiser. However, her expert grasp of color theory, anatomy, style as well as structure soon got her noticed, leading to a series of prominent gigs as well as a Harvey award nomination.

The opening pages of Fatale #23 – the penultimate problem of that extremely acclaimed horror title – demonstrate what a skilled colorist brings to a comic. As hapless protagonist Nicolas Lash yields to Jo’s influence, ending up being “Lost in her fire”, the tone of the panels shifts from chilly nocturnal blue to fiery red, as well as that’s just a prelude to the hallucinatory cosmic extravagance to come.

Three pages from Fatale

In Brubaker as well as Phillips’ follow-up book, The fade Out, coloring once again plays a crucial role, as you’d expect in a book about the world of film, which director John Boorman called “the process of turning money into light as well as light back into money again.” Breitweiser establishes the hazardous noirish world of post-war Hollywood with unsettling eco-friendlies as well as lunar blues, introducing the accents of red that seldom bring great news…

With its backdrop of chilly war betrayal as well as uncertainty, velvet is one more book that utilizes subtle highlighting to guide us with a twilight world, with strong combination modifications highlighting flashbacks into the complex back story.

Meanwhile, Outcast,  a a lot more overtly mainstream horror book than Fatale, strikes a delicate balance between the humdrum daily nature of its setting as well as the unexpected physical as well as spiritual violence that erupts from its story of youth demonic possession.

Three pages from Outcast

And if you believed coloring was just a situation of cracking out the crayons as well as seeing what looks nice, this quote from an interview with the AV Club (prior to the introduce of The fade Out) indicates the depth of Breitweiser’s research study as well as analysis:

The Atomic Age was an ingenious as well as optimistic time in U.S. history. It is interesting to see exactly how the color schemes showed the mood of the post-war recovery. As the country’s mindset shifted away from concern of war, so did the utilize of restrained utilitarian color combinations.

Three major color patterns emerged: pastel (pale pinks, yellows as well as blues, minty eco-friendlies as well as turquoise), contemporary (clean, vibrant, contrasting combinations of white, black, as well as strong electric main color) as well as Scandinavian (minimalistic as well as advanced soothing tones of nature commonly accented with a pop of color like tomato red or charming chartreuse).

And of course, all of this saddled up with glitzy golden age Hollywood glamour. Don’t even get me started on the makeup trends!

In a medium defined by its visual stylistic possibilities, the award-winning contributions of Elizabeth Breitweiser show what a skilled colorist can give the narrative experience.

(Here, it feels proper to pay our aspects to Breitweiser’s long-time ‘flatter’, Eduardo Navarro Lopez, who passed away in November, at the tragically young age of 36. In her tribute to him, Breitweiser composed of thenull

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