If you stopped by Lines and Colors yesterday, January 18, you may have noticed that Lines and Colors had gone dark, along with a significant number of other sites, in protest, and to raise awareness of the “anti-piracy” internet censorship bills looming in the U.S. Congress.

If you didn’t happen to stop by yesterday, but would like to know more about why it matters, what I had to say about the issue, and why the continued existence of Lines and Colors and websites like it hinges on the defeat of these bills, here is the page that was up in place of the site yesterday.

The effort to raise awareness of this issue across the web has apparently begun to have an effect, as a number of legislators have withdrawn their support for the bills, at least in their current form. But the fight is far from over; the hugely powerful and influential lobbies that represent the entertainment industry will not slink quietly away and call it a day; they will continue to pressure congress to give them the kind of extraordinary and frightening control over internet content that these bills provide.

Those in other countries may feel this doesn’t affect them (it will if hundreds or thousands of websites go dark at the whim of the big corporations), or you may feel frustrated that you can’t affect it directly. Right now, the spread of information and awareness is important, and those of you in Europe and elsewhere will soon enough have your own fight on your hands over similar legislation that these companies are trying to force into law around the world.

Those in the U.S. can directly affect the immediate danger of these bills passing by calling or writing your U.S. senators and representatives and urging them to reject the bills. Here is a site called Stop American Censorship that has more information on how easy it is to do that.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that if these bills pass, Lines and Colors, and significant other portions of the web, will cease to exist.

-Charley

Kevin Melrose, writing on the excellent comics blog Robot 6, part of the Comic Book Resources site, at the end of the year presents his list of the 50 best comic book covers of the year.

Comic book covers occupy a particularly fascinating niche in publishing, inheriting some of the lurid, lure you in with promised excitement approach from the old pulp detective and science fiction magazines of the mid-20th century, but moving into the 21st century with more sophisticated graphics and a wide range of design and illustration approaches.

Melrose’s list is always interesting, as is his commentary on the covers. The images in his column are linked to larger versions so you can get a good look at them.

For most, you can appreciate them simply for the illustration and/or design. For some, however, it helps to have a little background. In the case of Paolo Rivera’s wonderful cover for Daredevil #1 (images above, top) it helps to understand that Daredevil is a blind superhero who perceives the world through his other, heightened senses.

For more of my thoughts on the interesting role comic book covers have in modern illustration, see my post from last year on The 50 best comic covers of 2010 on Robot 6.

For artist credits on the other covers above, please see the original post on Robot 6.

Boulet (nom de plume of Gilles Roussel) is a French comics artist, largely unknown in the US, but familiar in Europe for his work in the magazine Tchô! and on series like Raghnarok, Miya and Womoks.

Since 2004, Boulet has been one of the premiere comic strip bloggers, telling of his experiences, work and general life situations in short comics pages, done in a variety of styles.

Boulet has in recent years been translating his comic strip blog posts into English, and a selection of them is viewable on the English section of his site.

It’s easiest to simply go to the first strip and click forward, but if you’re inclined to jump around there is a month selection at the top let, and dates arranged as numbers across the top bar; only the yellow highlighted ones are linked to strips. You can also go to the Archives and view the entries as a list.

Be sure to click on the “React” link at the bottom of each strip for additional panels.

The French version of his site is more extensive and up to date.

There is a brief interview with Boulet on Euronews.

[Via MetaFilter]

Comic Crits are book reviews done by artist John Bonner in the form of one page comic strips.

The reviews are often (though certainly not always) of books in the science fiction or fantasy genres, such as Neal Stephenson’s Reamde (above top), and The year’s Best Science Fiction 28, edited by Gardner Dozois (above, bottom).

The reviews can be read either on Bonner’s Comic Crits blog, or on the Tor.com site, which is where I encountered them.

On researching John Bonner, who I had assumed was an illustrator and cartoonist, I learned he is a painter. I’ll make his paintings the subject of a separate post.

Emily Carroll is an illustrator working in the television animation industry who is also a webcomics artist.

You can find galleries of her illustration and webcomics on her website, as well as additional material on her blog, along with some Flickr sets.

Carroll works in an open line and filled color style, accented with textural and watercolor-like effects. She inks her drawings first on smooth bristol, scans them and applies her colors in Photoshop. There is a bit about her process here.

Her webcomics are often closer to illustrated stories, sometimes dark and inspired by mythological or fairy tale like subjects.

The Prince & The Sea: A Romance (images above, bottom) is a short webcomic/illustrated story that Carroll says was inspired by a dream she had, as well as the illustrations of Henry J. Ford.

[Via The Beat]

Sketchtravel is a project started by illustrators Gérald Guerlais and Daisuke (“Dice”) Tsutsumi in 2006 in which a single sketchbook has traveled around the world, being handed from artist to artist between 70 artists in 15 cities, each adding a single page to the whole.

The project, which involves well known illustrators, animators and comics artists, benefits Room to Read, an international non-profit devoted to children’s literacy.

The sketchbook was completed by its final contributor, Hayao Miyazaki, in February. The first print edition has just been released in French and is now available on Amazon.fr. English and Japanese editions are planned, though there are no firm details yet.

The sketchbook itself will be auctioned off in Paris, and online, by Pierre berge & Associes on October 17, 2011. Details for the online auction, as well as other information, will be found on the new Sketchtravel website.

Designed by Seth Van Booven, the website itself it entertaining, with parts of the interface animating as you scroll down the page. There is also an impressive list of the contributors, with links to their websites or blogs.

Unfortunately the virtual version of the sketchbook that used to be available on the old site seems to be gone, but you can see more images of pages from the book on the Sketchtravel blog, along with interviews and additional features.

There is also a video trailer for a planned documentary about the project by Catherine Bonvalot available on Sketchtravel.tv.

For more, see my 2007 post on Sketchtravel.

(Images above: Greg Couch, Terada Katsuya, Sylvain Marc, Peter de Séve, Jerome Opena, Erik Tiemens)

I’ve written before about Flesk Publications, a small specialty art book publisher that concentrates on presenting illustrators and comics artists. Among the artists are many that I’ve featured here on Lines and Colors.

Flesk has published a book called Flesk Prime in which five artists are highlighted in the same volume. Four are artists who have been featured in previous dedicated books: William Stout, Petar Meseldžija, Mark Schultz and Gary Gianni (links to my posts); one, Craig Elliott, is the subject of an upcoming title.

The book serves both as an introduction to those artists and as a kind of sampler and introduction to the Flesk line of books — in that the artists exemplify the kind of terrific and often underappreciated talent Flesk spotlights, and the book’s beautiful production values are consistent with the publisher’s consistently high standards.

Flesk Prime also serves as an art book on its own, a beautiful selection of work from five talented illustrators and comics artists. For those like me who already have many of the books in the Flesk line, the features and images are not redundant, each showcasing work that has not appeared in the publisher’s other volumes on these artists.

Unfortunately, the previews of the book on the Flesk site, while they do give you an idea of the book’s appearance, don’t show the artwork itself to best advantage and don’t do the book justice (though the images certainly look better there than in the limited space I have to show them above). If you’re not familiar with these artists, you would do better to look through the site for the individual volumes on them for better examples of their work.

Flesk Prime is available through the Flesk Publications store.

One of the most renowned and influential French comics artists, Régis Loisel is known in particular for his work in the fantasy genre. Along with Jean Giraud (“Moebius”) and several other pioneers, he helped set the stylistic standards that became the foundation of Franco-Belgian comics (“bandes desinees”) from the mid 20th century to today.

Most comics readers here in the US, despite the fascination with Japanese manga in some circles, aren’t aware of how vibrant (and different) the comics scene is in other parts of the world, like France, Belgium, the UK, Italy and South America.

Loisel is perhaps best known for his work on La Quete de l’Oiseau du Temps (“The Quest for the Time Bird”, published at one point in English as Roxanna and The Quest for the Time Bird), a multi-volume fantasy epic written by Serge Le Tendre.

Loisel worked on numerous short projects, as well as the multi-volume series Le Grand Mort and a striking adaptation of Peter Pan (images above, second from bottom). He also did visual development art for the Disney animated features Mulan (above, bottom) and Atlantis.

His comics pages manage to feel detailed and open at the same time, with passages of intense detail balanced by well spotted blacks and flat areas of color, all used to dramatic effect. He has a wonderful command of the environments in which he places his characters, both natural and architectural.

He uses visual texture to great advantage in creating atmosphere, mood and a sense of scale and distance, as well as controlling how long the reader’s eye lingers on a given panel,

Loisel’s website, though in French, is easy enough for non-French speakers to navigate. The major comics series, Peter Pan, La Quete de l’Oiseau du Temps and Le Grand Mort, each have a drop down menu to pages about each volume in the series. These are usually accompanied by a few sample pages that open in pop-ups.

Some of the volumes, in particular La Quete de l’Oiseau du Temps volumes 7 and 5 have more extensive previews. Volume 5 is supplemented with images of pages in their penciled or inked states in addition to finished art.

I find Loisel’s pencil drawings for comics pages particularly appealing; even though they are intended to be finished in ink and printed in color, they have a wonderful quality just as pencil drawings.

You can sometimes find Loisel’s comics albums on Amazon.com, both in English and in French, as well as through importers like Stuart Ng Books.

You can find larger images of some of Loisel’s pages from Peter Pan, along with samples of his visual development drawings for Mulan on Animation Treasures: One1More2time3′s Weblog, the superb blog of Hans Bacher.

Bacher is the production designer who, while working on Mulan, suggested to producer Pam Coats that he bring Loisel in on the project. Bacher has an excellent series of posts on Loisel and his work.

You can also find some larger images of pages from Le Grand Mort on Vincent Mallié’s site (also here, here, here and here)