The repro:
Not that it particularly matters, but I'm going to keep saying it.
If you look closely, the majority of the type is too damn close to the
original for it to have been typeset.
Reproduction of original hand lettering from image of original,
cleaned up, filled in, edges smoothed off.
Dracula image, Lugosi, web etc touched up, illustrated over to sort
out reproduction issues.
(As Todd has said, the face is not quite right.)
DRACULA title lettering then manually laid back on.
They positioned the D and final A in the correct positions then filled
in the letters in between, but got the kerning, (letter spacing wrong).
Likewise, the type in the bottom black panel was worked on separately,
inner body of lettering cleaned, edges smoothed, then reapplied.
It has the same characteristic as the original lettering, same
relationship with letter spacing, just slightly fatter and in the
wrong places.
They applied this back on in separate lines, hence the line spacing
issues, and some horizontal line positioning inaccuracy, and the
likely reason for the appearance of a darker black section surrounding
the lower lines of type in this panel.
The MM, this may be typeset, or it may just be unfaithful hand
lettering.
Why when the rest is more faithful? Don't know.
On 26 Sep 2009, at 18:23, Richard Halegua Comic Art wrote:
Paul
S2Art lithos are on a heavy paper more like lobby cards and half
sheets
they also do an offset repro, but that poster is smaller in size 24x36
I believe they make the different sizes to keep their high-quality
product in demand (if you want full size, you have to order their
lithos)
I just spoke to Ed Poole, he told me what I needed to know - that
S2's images for the poster come from the AFI and that art.com also
gets their images from AFI
so what the scenario looks like to me is that AFI sourced the poster
from a transparency of Todd's poster from when it was auctioned, or
from Ron Borst's poster. They then reset the handwritten type of the
original poster with mechanically reset type (or more likely,
digital type) and cleaned up the other type by hand (Dracula, Tod
Browning, Universal and the script type directly under the image) or
totally redrew that type as well, or even had custom fonts designed
these are common practices in printing. The object is to make it
neat and clean, much like airbrushing a Playboy model, so that when
it is printed a buyer cannot walk up to the poster and say "that
hand written type sure looks sloppy". It's like the layboy model,
they're afraid you may see that one stretch mark she has on her
thigh, so they airbrush it & clean it up.
this of course means that for good detective work, we're going to
have to look at other posters aside from Dracula that are sold by S2
and Art.com to determine how much type editing the AFI did to the
entire line of S2art & art.com movie poster editions.
What did they do to the Mummy, and King Kong?? Casablanca? The Flash
Gordon posters?? If they reset the type on one title, they likely
cleaned up as many posters as they felt was necessary to get the
product to market because they make money & want to maximize their
take by making the posters more salable by this technique
Concerning who should be authenticating posters.
I have admiration for Poster Mountain's ability as restorers.
However, the key to why they have the reputation they have in poster
restoration is that they are artists and the quality of their
restoration is not measured by how they put the poster on a sheet of
masa because it is likely that most restorers are equal in masa
mounting. But they are not equal as artists.
Being a great artist may not qualify you as an authenticator because
artistry and forensics are not the same
also, John Davis did not get an unmounted poster. The poster was
previously linenbacked by Diane Jeffrey
Diane says the paper didn't feel right - BEFORE MOUNTING
By the time John has seen the poster it has been soaked in a
solution bath. It has been touched up. Missing paper has been
expertly replaced. Even if he unmounted the poster, it no longer has
it's original characteristics, and therein lay the rub.
The reason I'm going to see Jack at S2 is to examine the paper
again. If I was Profiles I may want to order the full size Art.com
print so that the paper could be sensed and to look for other
anomalies within the image, but what is also important is for
someone to explain what the sources of the image are. Whose poster
was used to get the image that is now used by the AFI. This is a
major question that needs to be answered in order to help get a true
answer
Rich
At 05:38 AM 9/26/2009, Paul Gerrard wrote:
Rich,
This is what I was trying to point out on NSFGE. Looks to me that
art.com is simply a retail outlet sourcing from various suppliers,
and S2 the most probable manufacturer/supplier of their limited
edition lithos at least. Don't know about the other smaller art.com
repro that Rich E mainly used for his comparisons. The selection of
limited edition poster images and sizes they sell is very similar,
even down to an Alien HS!!
Might be a complete red herring of course, as I've never seen an S2
litho in person, and definitely not accusing S2 of any nefarious
deeds, but could someone have doctored one of their posters?
Diane mentioned the unusual paper and some strange backing/residue,
which made me wonder whether the thickness had been altered or
disguised. On NSFGE you said quality of printing might actually be
better than the original, but surely people would be looking for
poor/fuzzy quality when authenticating, if not comparing directly
against another genuine copy. You didn't seem to think it could be
one of their posters tho - so maybe they just started from the same
base image as the Profiles one. Whatever the case, since you're in
the neighbourhood, it certainly seems a good idea of yours to check
whether it is the same image - if only to eliminate it from our
enquiries, as they might say in a bad cop movie. Will be
interesting to see your report. Would love an excuse to go to
Vegas, but unfortunately it's a bit of a long trek for me...
Paul
www.movieposterstudio.com
In a message dated 26/09/2009 04:55:24 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected]
writes:
Also, I'll be going down to S2Art gallery to see Jack Solomon
Tuesday and examine a S2Art Stone Litho reprint of the poster which
also is the same image as the Profiles copy. I wonder if art.com
sourced their poster from S2 ??
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