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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art

138 statements
26 feature instances
0 referencing feature instances

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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art	comment	Some artists are great at drawing but not so expert at colouring; in Japan, this is largely due to manga being mostly in black and white. The most extreme cases make you facepalm and think "This gorgeous line art deserves sooo much better!" This isn't a trope about bad artists—it's about the ones who can draw but can't colour properly, or at least whose line arts are much better than their colouring. Alternatively, the coloring work can be done by a separate person, who is either totally incompetent or has different ideas to the line artist. This often gives an "off balance" impression. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })Please keep your Complaining About X and justifying edits out of this trope. Part of this trope is subjective and some examples are bound to be controversial. If you think an example really doesn't belong here, please bring it to the discussion page. Also keep in mind that you can genuinely appreciate and respect an author and still think their colouring isn't as good as their drawing style. Of course, the trope title is an allusion to They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_14f9297e	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_14f9297e	comment	One cartoon of The Far Side originally had a penguin bursting into song with the caption "I gotta be me... Oh, I just gotta be me..." while in a crowd of identical black-and-white penguins. when it was reprinted in color, Gary Larson discovered that someone in editing had given the singing penguin a pale yellow color while leaving the other penguins alone, completely missing the punchline.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_1858fe06	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_1858fe06	comment	Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) contains a variety of examples—the comic not being exactly known for tight quality control—but a few do stand out. Any issue where Frank Gagliardo colored Steven Butler's art brings this to the front (especially at the start of the Chaos Knuckles saga, around Issue #90). Between just plain not knowing what color the characters were (the infamous green-clad red Gala-Na, giving Amy purple eyes instead of a shade of green, etc.) and painting the whole landscape of the echidna city of Albion in a dull gray, it just didn't do justice to Butler's tight, flowing art style. A slightly less jarring example would be the whole "Enerjak Reborn" arc—while Jason Jensen is not usually a bad colorist by any means, the bright, vibrant, nigh shadow-less style he was using at the time felt a tad inappropriate for the darker turns of the story, making them feel overly light and cheerful.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_58808436	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_58808436	comment	Re-releases of Higurashi: When They Cry tend to replace the character sprites, which were originally drawn by the writer himself in a charmingly amateurish Puni Plush style, with newer and more refined art by professional artists. Many fans prefer the original artstyle, which is seen as more charming and unique compared to the more generic style of later art.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_5a04b888	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_5a04b888	comment	The iOS game version of gamebook Appointment with F.E.A.R. has digitally-colored versions of the original book's illustrations. Illustrations that were meant to be in black-and-white, in homage to vintage superhero comics. Having smudged, drab digital coloring kinda kills its purpose.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_642fb4e2	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_642fb4e2	comment	Grandville has lovely line art, as the flats are done by a professional...and then Bryan Talbot uses mostly dodge, burn, and eye-searing photoshop brushes to finish them into the looks of a beginner's webcomic.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_6e907c1	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_6e907c1	comment	This trope applies to much of the art from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, but most especially the amazing artwork from "The Season of Mists." Ty Bender's non-fiction "Sandman Companion" featured excepts of the same artwork without the hideous colouring, and the difference is astonishing. Similarly, The Annotated Sandman reprints the entire series in black and white. While the publisher apparently did so for reasons of cost, some readers consider the lack of colour an improvement.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_76c01b30	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_76c01b30	comment	V for Vendetta was originally released in black and white, and then recolored by a different person. With watercolors. In quasi-impressionistic colors. Without paying attention to the lines. The most obvious problem with this being that all the blood had already been done in ink, which suddenly looked a bit strange next to a bunch of colors.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_7e9d1a6c	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_7e9d1a6c	comment	Line art of Frozen (2013) from back when it was going to be a 2D animation film can be found online. It generally looks much better than the actual film itself, being closer to the animation done during the Disney Renaissance.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_8125b468	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_8125b468	comment	The classic Batman story The Killing Joke is an interesting case in that there are two separate colorations that, depending on the person you talk to, may or may not fall under this trope. The original coloring, done by John Higgins, used a bright, garish palette, giving the feeling that the world of the comic was itself as sickening and nightmarish as the themes it dealt with. Some people, including line artist Brian Bolland, were not pleased with how brightly the colors turned out and felt they robbed the book of its darkness, but others praised the demented energy and atmosphere that the coloration gave the book. Then the 20th-anniversary edition was recolored by Bolland in an attempt to fix what he saw as a problem. The results were controversial. The flashback scenes, which had a coloration in line with the rest of the book in the original, are colored black and white with a few colors popping out instead. The book as a whole features a lot more shading, much more toned down colors, and a generally gloomy, dark feel as opposed to the more manic feel of the original. The recolored version also features some disturbing new details, like how when the Joker emerges from the chemical-laced waters, his eyes were supposed to be bleeding. The original version colored the blood white, making it look like tears. Some people praised the change and how chilling it looked, but others found it to be a Narmy attempt to make the book needlessly Darker and Edgier, and that the tears worked far better within the context of the scene. As if to solve this problem, DC released a black and white version of the story. Unfortunately, this removed some of the plot points that could only be told through the coloring, such as Batman seeing stains of white on his glove that are not present in the colorless version.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_8ba4613a	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_8ba4613a	comment	Many people say that Death Note's coloured art looks odd and falls under Uncanny Valley compared to the usual black and white.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_8bf307b3	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_8bf307b3	comment	The vast majority of the Disney Mouse and Duck Comics, at least in the United States. Characters will change the color of their shirts between panels, entire characters will be rendered in one color, gradients are used like they're going out of style, and very little background art is colored with detail. This trope is especially prevalent in Don Rosa comics, where the intricately detailed artwork is half the appeal.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_909b004d	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_909b004d	comment	It happened again with The Transformers (IDW). In Escalation and part of Devastation, EJ Su's lineart was colored by a fairly unimpressive colorist. Later, a much better colorist took over, and the difference is like night and day.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_9ac9d448	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_9ac9d448	comment	Colorist JD Smith's brief stint on Ultimate Spider-Man. He basically ruined Bagley's line art by giving absolutely everything this weird orange tint and by making everything look rather muted and uninteresting. Fortunately, he was replaced.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_b5c5f55e	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_b5c5f55e	comment	A similar point could be made about Mohiro Kitoh (Shadow Star, Bokurano) and Lynn Okamoto (Elfen Lied).
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_b7d8c4e3	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_b7d8c4e3	comment	Katsu Aki (Psychic Academy, The Vision of Escaflowne manga, Futari Ecchi, etc.). His drawings are consistently amazing, but his colour covers tend to look like he just used the very basic functions of Paint Shop Pro and never finished. He got better further on in his career, but the contrast used to be very striking. Examples from Psychic Academy.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_c0a760c6	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_c0a760c6	comment	Quite a bit of Dark Empire is drawn in a rather unusual, stylized way. However, the colorist made some very odd choices, most notably deciding to tint nearly every page in some specific color and being overwhelmingly dark. Sure, a comic where Luke goes to the Dark Side might be expected to have dark colors, but there should be enough light to make things stand out.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_c4282b71	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_c4282b71	comment	As good as the animation of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is, it also unfortunately downplays the talents of the storyboard artists whose individual styles tend to be lost once it's animated using the show's Adobe Flash assets. Thankfully the cast and crew are very open about behind-the-scenes work on the show, and their work can easily be found on Google or Derpibooru.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_c5763157	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_c5763157	comment	While Frank Miller's art for The Dark Knight Strikes Again wasn't exactly gorgeous, the colors were often garish, which is a stark contrast to the muted coloring of the original (which was done by the same colorist).
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_c75ae76b	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_c75ae76b	comment	Dick Tracy started running color editions of the weekday strip in early 2011. Unfortunately, it was obvious that whoever was doing the weekday coloring didn't know anything about the strip's history. Consequently, Sam Catchem's suit spent about a week being sky blue instead of green, while Gravel Gertie, despite her white hair being one of her defining characteristics, temporarily got turned into a redhead.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_ce50887e	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_ce50887e	comment	Averted with the Dragon Ball Full Color books, which deliberately use flat, simple colouring to not distract from Akira Toriyama's lineart, and overall help the panels be even more readable than they already were. That said, the original inked chapters can fall into this due to their frequent use of a limited palette, using only reds, oranges, yellows and greys (which then make the chapters more difficult to parse when printed in the black-and-white Tankbon volumes).
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_d0775329	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_d0775329	comment	When the original seven issues of The Rocketeer by Dave Stevens were collected and reprinted by IDW Publishing, they were completely recolored by Laura Martin at Stevens's own request. While the new coloration has its supporters, the change was controversial and many fans of Stevens feel that it doesn't mesh well with his lineart, fit the period piece style of the book, or communicate the same kind of warmth and energy that the older colors had.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_d890ebc6	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_d890ebc6	comment	Ryu Fujisaki from the Shiki manga. Though this actually works pretty well for the series, given that it's a horror manga.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_ebc25fef	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_ebc25fef	comment	John Ridgway's black and white art in the Transformers Marvel UK comic is very detailed and realistic. About half the pages had colour added in the original release, and they were all completely recoloured for the American re-release; in both cases, the colour took out a lot of what made it impressive. And on the Marvel US side, the colorist for the entire run, Nel Yomtov, is often given flak from Transformers fans who feel he degraded everyone's art, for reasons ranging from frequent and large-scale use of monochrome block coloring to numerous (very blatant) errors. It happened again with The Transformers (IDW). In Escalation and part of Devastation, EJ Su's lineart was colored by a fairly unimpressive colorist. Later, a much better colorist took over, and the difference is like night and day.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_f163bd9f	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_f163bd9f	comment	Happened with ElfQuest not once, but twice. The colourised Marvel Comics reprints were patchy at best, and the later computer-coloured versions are incredibly garish and obscure a lot of the original black and white linework. On the other hand, if you can find copies of the long out-of-print pastel editions of the first four ElfQuest volumes, they're gorgeous.
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They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_f4857d3	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_f4857d3	comment	Koji Inada's artworks for Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai. The colouring isn't bad, but it isn't as good as the drawings to a noticeable degree. A similar point could be made about Mohiro Kitoh (Shadow Star, Bokurano) and Lynn Okamoto (Elfen Lied).
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Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai (Manga)	hasFeature	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_f4857d3
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_fe83990a	type	They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Line Art / int_fe83990a	comment	In Masami Kurumada's original Saint Seiya manga, the characters often ended up in bland colors—the suits of armor always got light coloring, for example, and the characters usually wore white clothing beneath (notably, Seiya and Hyoga could pass for wearing all-white outfits, since the Bronze suits didn't give off shine). Only Gold Cloths escaped this treatment due to them being, well, golden. This is probably the reason why pretty much 90% of the palettes were reworked for the anime.
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