Tracing the image
THE MAKING OF A REPLICA
After I started the ERB Dust Jacket Reconstruction Project in 1999, I was asked over and over when I was going to produce a facsimile of the first edition dust jacket for TARZAN OF THE APES. Frankly, I held off for a couple of reasons.
First, unlike all the other dust jackets, which were printed in four-color process on a coated paper, the original jacket was printed on an uncoated stock of a particular gray-green color difficult to obtain among current paper manufacturer's options.
Second, though the ink jet printer does a great job with four-color halftone and photo reproduction, it was not good at laying solid color in large areas on uncoated paper. The print heads tended to leave lines, and the softness of an uncoated paper made the image spread and become fuzzy at the edges.
Finally I came to the conclusion that the only way to produce a worthy facsimile of this important dust jacket was to print it the same way the original had been: with metal plates on a printing press.
PREPARING THE ART
For the art, I worked with three different scans. The first scan was of an incomplete jacket with some of the spine missing. I planned to use my own original A.L. Burt jacket to fill in what was missing. Then George McWhorter let me make a scan of a complete jacket from the Burroughs Memorial Collection in Louisville, Kentucky. This was very exciting because I was able to actually measure the weight of the paper, AND to match the color of the stock — using the inside of one of the jacket flaps — to color references. When I had almost finished cleaning up the scan I was contacted by Danton Burroughs, grandson of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Director of ERB, Inc..
Danton was glad to hear that I was finally going to produce this jacket, but he wanted to make sure that I had the cleanest copy available. He sent me a 600dpi scan of his own personal copy. Clearly, this was the best scan and, for the third time, I began to clean and separate the art.
Let me explain a little of what had to go into this reproduction. The Fred J. Arting illustration is not a painting. We know this because the jacket is printed with the application of three flat areas of color. There are no halftone dots as would be found on a reproduction of a painting or a photograph. The art was probably done as a line drawing, very likely the same drawing that is used as a title page in the book. Except for the tip of Tarzan's nose, two small lines seen through the foliage to the left of his knee, and two small variations in the application of the screens, that drawing and the jacket art are identical. The complete drawing for the jacket was probably done first and the title page was created from that. The gray tones of the foliage and the moon on the title page were applied with Ben Day screens — patterns rubbed onto the drawing, the negative, or the plate before it was etched. Since the original art was a line drawing, there was no need to produce a photomechanical separation for the printing. The negatives for each plate could be made from separate pieces of line art.
Another reason we can deduce that the separations were made by hand is that the "traps" are uneven. Because I was able to work with such high resolution scans of the printed jacket, I was able to actually see the traps (areas of the art that overlapped) on each color. On line art, traps are necessary so colors print without gaps between them — an effect seen when the printing is "off-register" because of paper shift. When hand separations are made as overlays from original art, the edges of the color area are drawn so that the areas overlap to create these traps. The jacket's traps are clearly visible when enlarged.
To create clean separations from the scan, I had to first delete the gray background without disturbing any of the color area edges. To ensure the greatest accuracy, I erased around each shape with a stylus, then I duplicated and traced each color area separately to make sure that I included the traps. A test negative revealed that the edges were not smooth enough, because of the rasterized art, making it necessary to trace all the art with control points and Bezier paths to get a sharp edge. Each leaf, curve and indentation was traced by hand.
While tracing the art I took the opportunity to add the extra portions of the drawing, at top and bottom, which are part of the frontispiece. This is primarily for the benefit of those who are ordering this piece as a print to be framed. The addition to the art make this the most complete version of the Arting image ever produced.
The bottom half of the jacket has a stipple pattern known as a Ben Day screen. When First Edition Library created their version of this jacket, they didn't bother to put the screen in at all. In fact, it is an important element of the art. This is the area of the jacket that is most likely to rub off or wear out. On the Burroughs, Inc. jacket the stipple is still very visible, except along the folds and the bottom edge. Still, it would have been very difficult to reproduce without making a small circle path and then duplicating and placing each dot by hand. I managed to find a copy of the same stipple pattern and, by scanning it at 1200dpi, was able to trace it in Photoshop with the "make paths" command. I then combined it with the rest of the art for the yellow plate. After making all the paths in Photoshop, I copied them into Adobe Illustrator to make the final art file.
That was 57 hours on this version, not counting the 60 or so hours on the other two versions. I'd say that I got to know this particular piece of art pretty well.
Whether you are a collector
of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first editions, or of fine press printing, this
limited edition print will be an exciting addition to your library or gallery.
Each edition includes a Certificate of Authenticity dated June, 2004, the
month of production.
REGULAR
EDITION.
Limited to 300 copies (200 remain).
Unnumbered edition.
$65.00 plus $6.00 p&h.
SPECIAL
SIGNATURE EDITION.
Limited to 90 copies (80 remain). Stamped with Edgar Rice Burroughs’
personal signature endorsement stamp at ERB, Inc., Tarzana, California.
Numbered and dated edition.
$100.00 plus $6.00 p&h.
PRINT
EDITION. Limited
to 100 copies (90 remain). Full, untrimmed image. Suitable for framing.
Includes portions of the drawing which are only visible in the frontispiece.
Numbered and dated edition.
$150.00 plus $6.00 p&h.
