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Hamaker: 'Bone coloring was laid back'

Bone, Jeff Smith
Steve Hamaker has spoken about the process of coloring Bone, the critically acclaimed black and white series from Jeff Smith.

Originally printed without color, Scholastic began reissuing the series in color in 2004, and called on the talents of award-winning artist Steve Hamaker to add color.

"It works as a black and white book, so you would think that would be harder, it's actually easier," Hamaker explained to Comic Book Resources about the project. "Jeff's stuff does not really need color, so to figure out the right balance of how much or how little to put in was a little challenging."

Speaking about his working relationship with Smith, Hamaker claimed that Smith give him a lot of space to handle the project as he wanted, describing the process as "pretty laid back", saying that Smith "certainly wasn't lording over me and making me color things a certain way".

He also revealed that an upcoming scene in new release Bone: Tall Tales took him more time than any other scene in the whole series.

"There's a food eating contest where Big Johnson goes to a fair to compete," Hamaker revealed. "There's so much food and characters in the background screaming different things and there's so much going on in each panel."

"I told both Jeff and Tom [Sniegoski] that was the hardest thing I ever had to color," he continued.

Bone: Tall Tales was released in color format this August.

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