American Four-Colour Comic Book × Cel-Shaded Game Graphics

Add panel insets, sound-effect lettering and halftone to make the 3D frame read as a comic page.

From the research on Cel-Shaded Game Graphics (Toon-Shaded Real-Time 3D)

Mix them and make something American Four-Colour Comic Book Cel-Shaded Game Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Cel-Shaded Game Graphics, their arrangement from American Four-Colour Comic Book, the finish from American Four-Colour Comic Book. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Cel-Shaded Game Graphics (Toon-Shaded Real-Time 3D)

Type from American Four-Colour Comic Book: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Cel-Shaded Game Graphics: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from Cel-Shaded Game Graphics: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from American Four-Colour Comic Book: Framed panels
Sequential narrative
Surface from American Four-Colour Comic Book: Halftone & Ben-Day dots
Misregistration & overprint

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · American Four-Colour Comic Book

Pop

Bangers, standing in for Pen-lettered comic-book capitals (balloons and captions drawn with pen or brush and a lettering guide, traditionally all in upper case: Sam Rosen, Ben Oda, Artie Simek, John Costanza, Gaspar Saladino)

Text · Cel-Shaded Game Graphics

A look for real-time 3D video games in which normally lit models are quantised into two or three hard bands of flat, saturated colour and ringed with ink outlines, so a freely moving 3D world reads as a moving cartoon, anime cel or comic panel. Each game pairs the rendering with one borrowed graphic idiom: graffiti in Jet Set Radio, comic balloons in XIII, sumi-e brush and parchment in Okami, hand-drawn comic textures in Borderlands. It carries into key art, box art and logos.

Zen Maru Gothic; Cel-Shaded Game Graphics used Graffiti handstyles and hand-drawn logo lettering and Comic-book onomatopoeia lettered in bubbles, popping up over the 3D scene

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Cel-Shaded Game Graphics, with a counter-accent from American Four-Colour Comic Book. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Cel-Shaded Game Graphics (Toon-Shaded Real-Time 3D)

#f4e9d0 ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#e8402a accent · 18%
#1e88d8 accent · 14%
#2160ad accent · 10%
#3fae49 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4e9d0;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #e8402a;
  --accent-2: #1e88d8;
  --accent-3: #2160ad;
  --accent-4: #3fae49;
  --font-display: "Bangers", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age): The characters and logos of this tradition (Superman, Batman, Captain America, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four) are still in copyright and trademarked by their publishers: draw your own heroes, logos and seals in the shared idiom, never ask an image model for these characters or for named artists such as Kirby, Ditko or Eisner, and never present a generated picture as a vintage comic. The period also traded in racial caricature, such as Ebony White in Will Eisner's The Spirit, whose blackface features Eisner later admitted were a conscious stereotype, and its wartime issues drew Japanese people as 'powerful monsters or incompetent subhumans' and, at the Writers' War Board's urging late in the war, Germans as a people who embraced aggression and violence. Give every character, enemies and foreigners included, the same anatomy, dignity and drawing care as the hero; never use skin tint, teeth, eyes or dress as ethnic markers, and do not revive the war cover's enemy caricature in a pastiche.

Cel-Shaded Game Graphics (Toon-Shaded Real-Time 3D): The characters, worlds and logos of these games (Link and The Wind Waker, Okami's Amaterasu, Borderlands, Guilty Gear, Eric Haze's Jet Set Radio logo) are owned by their publishers and artists, and Okami's gods and brush art draw on Shinto myth and Japanese ink painting: draw original characters, logos and tags in the shared idiom, never ask an image model for a named game, character or artist, and never present a generated picture as studio key art.

The two styles

A vintage-style comic poster titled “STORMWATCH” shows a red-suited superhero with a blue cape and yellow lightning emblem flying over a waterfront city. Smaller panels show him confronting a giant green rocky monster, ending with a punch that sends fragments flying.

1934–1993 · North America American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) The American newsstand comic book from Famous Funnies (1934) and Action Comics #1 (1938) through the Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages, and past the Bronze Age's end in 1985 until computer colour replaced hand separations in the early 1990s. A black pen-and-brush keyline does the drawing, hand-lettered capitals fill balloons, captions and sound effects, and colourists' guides become flat mechanical tints of yellow, red and blue (popularly called Ben-Day dots), nominally 64 colours, on newsprint. Pages are grids of ruled panels; each cover sells the issue like a poster, with logo and blurbs. 2000–present · East Asia, North America, Western Europe, Global / networked Cel-Shaded Game Graphics (Toon-Shaded Real-Time 3D) A look for real-time 3D video games in which normally lit models are quantised into two or three hard bands of flat, saturated colour and ringed with ink outlines, so a freely moving 3D world reads as a moving cartoon, anime cel or comic panel. Each game pairs the rendering with one borrowed graphic idiom: graffiti in Jet Set Radio, comic balloons in XIII, sumi-e brush and parchment in Okami, hand-drawn comic textures in Borderlands. It carries into key art, box art and logos.