Pulp Noir color comps

Here is a crit I got from one of the ADs at Hardcase Crime and thought it may interest some of you.

"The sketch and comps look nice. Good composition -- not a lot of action to it, but some tension. I tend to favor golds and browns and ambers and reds rather than blues, greens, and purples, personally, but there are plenty of examples of both in the pulp tradition. (Back in the day, the pulp publishers discovered that bright yellows and reds sold particularly well -- but that doesn't mean they always used them.) I like the line of the woman's arm; on the other hand, there might be a bit more drama if she were pointing the gun at the man. I could also imagine rotating the woman clockwise a bit on the pivot of her waist so that she was at more of an oblique angle to the viewer. If it were me I might also make her bustier and her blouse lower-cut...but I'm just a lech, what can I say."

"I mean away from the viewer, so we see more of her left side and less of her right. I'm imagining that her extended left arm might then almost or actually be aiming at the man (a good thing in terms of the story content of the image), and meanwhile you'll have moved her out of being in a parallel plane to the man's, which would automatically make the image more dynamic. (Right now you've got four rigidly parallel planes: desk, man, woman, wall-with-window, plus a lot of explicit straight lines emphasizing how orderly everything is. I'd be inclined to rupture that order in some way -- and the woman holding a gun would be a natural agent of disorder.)"
Charles Ardai

I found this very helpful, and thought you might as well