I was re-reading the Dundee University review of…

I was re-reading the Dundee University review of Grandville: Noel and got thinking about it: overall it is an excellent review and one that I agree with wholeheartedly....

But I would say that wouldn't I, being Bryan's fanpage webmaster for 19 years now!

However (and you just knew there was a catch coming, didn't you...) there are a couple of mistakes that I feel impelled to point out. For a start, the Hitleresque character isn't a hawk, he's a gryphon, actually based on John Tenniel's gryphon from Alice in Wonderland and, if you look at him closely, he's not the caricature of Nigel Farrage that is hinted at, but of Nick Griffin. In fact, he's named as "Nicholas Gryphon".

The other is the praise of the colour flatters. Colour flatting is a boring mechanical procedure that choses different areas of the artwork - a coat, for example, or a table - and simply drops a flat colour in the space, leaving it up to Bryan to adjust the colour to his liking and render the texture, light and shade and effects to produced the finished art, which is basically a digital painting under linework.

Who should have been praised are illustrators Angus McKie, Alwyn Talbot and Jordan Smith (who also did some flats) who helped out with the actual painted colouring on some 27 pages, Bryan only finishing them off to keep a consistency of style with his own pages.