Well this is my 2nd post of the day which is highly unusual, but I had to make the post while I still had interest in the subject. I got another batch of pages in today. Unsurprisingly, there was a "LARGE ART" page in the pile. I don't mind the large art, but scanning on the other hand is one of my nightmares. I no longer have the wide format scanner so I have to use a piddly 12x17 scanner. This particular page was a little closer the 13x22. I usually scan half at a time and then do my best to stitch and match up with Adobe Illustrator. It never quite lines up perfect though and it just buggs the piss out of me.
So, as I struggled to stitch this image together, and continuted to hit the same roadblocks, I decied to let Chat GPT have a shot at it. The 1st attempt was pretty close, but, just about as good as I could have done. I chastised GPT for it's poor performance and told it to try again. The 2nd effort was pretty damny good.
This page had a stat at one poiint on Bugs' face, so there was some nasty glue stains on it. For shits and giggles, I asked Chat GPT if it could remove the stains from around the face. I was majorly impressed by the result.
I have attached the original two part scan as well as the original stitched image before the stain removal. I scanned the rest of what appear to be hand drawn stats.
The last oddball in the batch is a page with a couple of Bugs images labeled “Wally’s Sketches.” I’m not sure yet whether that means Wally was the artist, an editor, a production guy, or just the person whose file these came from. My best lead so far is Wally Green, who was connected with Western Publishing/Gold Key, but I haven’t nailed that down yet.
So now the mystery is: who the fuck is Wally?
I asked GPT how the hell they did evertyhing. Here is the response.
Here is what had to be done in plain terms.
1. The two photos were not identical scans
The first image showed the lower/complete part of the artwork, including the wagon, carrots, ground area, bottom writing, and registration marks.
The second image showed more of the upper portion, including the rabbit’s ears and more blank paper above the characters, but it was cropped differently and shifted compared to the first image.
So it was not just a matter of placing one image above the other. The two scans had slightly different:
- Positioning
- Cropping
- Scale
- Rotation/skew
- Exposure/brightness
- Paper tone
- Overlapping artwork area
2. I used the overlapping artwork to line them up
The key was using the parts that appeared in both images, especially:
- Elmer’s head and hat area
- Bugs Bunny’s face and ears
- The hill/ground line
- The wagon handle area
- The blue crop/registration lines
Those matching details gave reference points. I aligned the second image over the first so that the repeated line art matched as closely as possible.
The first version was close, but the line art was slightly off. For the corrected version, I adjusted the position more carefully so the shared drawing lines lined up better.
3. I treated one scan as the base page
The lower image was used as the main base because it had the best full-page structure and bottom information:
- “Bugs Bunny #210”
- “May 1979”
- Production notes
- Bottom crop marks
- Page width notes
Then the upper image was used to supply the missing top portion, especially the rabbit’s ears and the additional blank art board above the drawing.
4. I blended the seam between the images
Once the two images were aligned, the next issue was the seam where the two scans overlapped.
Instead of making a hard cut, I blended the transition so it looked like one continuous page. That required balancing:
- Paper color
- Brightness
- Contrast
- The aging/yellowing of the board
- The blue production/crop lines
- The black ink lines
The goal was to keep the original production-art look, not make it look artificially restored or freshly redrawn.
5. I preserved the original line art
When cleaning or blending, the most important thing was not damaging the ink drawing.
The black lines around Bugs, Elmer, the wagon, carrots, and bushes had to remain sharp. So the cleanup had to avoid smearing or weakening:
- Bugs’ facial outline
- Whiskers
- Eye lines
- Ear lines
- Carrot and hand outlines
- Blue crop marks
- Original notes and production markings
6. Removing the stain around
