Tandra Page 1072, December 27, 2009

Created on 12/27/2009

by Hanther

When I began the Tandra Weekly Page project back in 2007, I set up a palette of colours from which to select as I added colour to each week’s Tandra Page. As a matter of fact, I have used a standard of colour since Tandra evolved to the Web some ten years ago. However, at that time, I would select a colour by moving the CMYK colour sliders around until I had the colour for the object in mind, and add that colour to my list of active colours. Once the story moved on and the specific object of question was no longer on the pages, I’d remove the colour from my colour list. In the event I needed it again several pages later, I’d go back to the last page wherein the colour was used and lift it for use in the colour list for new the current page. This was for the simple reason that, if I kept all the colours I had created as I went along, the colour list would soon grow so large as to take several forevers to scroll thru the list for the colour needed at the moment.

For those interested, the very first colour I created was the Tandra skin tone, which took a bit of creative experiment to arrive at a hue with which I was happy. Though not consciously thinking of the connection at the time, in retrospect I was likely inspired to the red biased Tandra skin colour I settled on by the colour of the Martian human characters in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ excellent Martian adventures. Also, some version of red seems more appropriate than a version of green or purple.

In any event, that process of creating and selecting colours worked very well until I decided upon beginning the Weekly Posting. Then I decided I needed the restricted palette in the service of getting colours on the page as quickly as possible. I was committed to a weekly schedule with no allowance for missing dates and the arrangement of being able to drag and drop already prepared colours had several advantages.

This was the colouring procedure I used until early in this year. As I decided, with some help from the bipartisan government created economic downturn, to devote full time to Tandra, I was suddenly with more time to invest in colouring the pages and the limited colour palette was abandoned.

Now I use more variety of colour, even in flesh tones which had previously been restricted to pink Earth and the deep red Tandra selection. (Of some interest, I came into a sudden quandary several years past when I made an appearance at a comics shop and decided to randomly select one of the store’s customers for inclusion in a Tandra adventure. As it happened, the selected winner was African American. I had not had occasion to include dark pigmented persons in Tandra previously. I was amused I had not thought of the possibility. No bid deal, however, as Tandra was not produced in colour at the time and I simply did the portrait without the colours. Taking a lesson from that occurrence, I later added an African as one of the Tandra Heroes.) Back to the point at hand, with my more sophisticated approach to colour these days, there is more variety in skin colour in Tandra along with the wider variety in the colours of other objects.

I am discovering colour is a whole new adventure on its own merits!

May the sun always shine on your parade!

Next Week; “Hidden Observers”

Tandra...more than escapist fantasy, it’s a revolution!

Hanther

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