Saturday, February 28, 2009

SWEENEY TODD PAGE 50 PENCILS
























Here's the pencils to page 50 of Sweeney Todd. I posted the layouts to this page earlier in the week as well as a detail from one of the panels. You can see that i stuck extremely close to the composition of the layout. I realised in panel 2 however, the the width of the street was a little too narrow (i remember really wanting to have a solid black on the right of the panel to help separate it from the rather large first panel), so i widened it a bit. Because i did so, it was pointed out to me by fellow comics artist Stephen Thompson, that it looked like the barbers pole was coming out of one of the characters' head. In trying to fix one problem, i had created another, so i would have to fix that in the inks. I also had stubble on the wrong character, so that had to be fixed. There was a couple of things my editor suggested i fix up too, so it was no big deal. I'll post the inks pretty soon. Tomorrow maybe. Or later, i dunno, i can't see into the future now, can i?

Dec.

8 comments:

luke f said...

Loving the perspective in the last panel.

so you`re 50 pages in,already?
sweet JESUS!

Declan Shalvey said...

Thanks man.

I'm on page 58 now actually, but to be honest, i'm really not working that fast. Mooney, Roche and Sliney do 22 page monthly books, so comparatively i'm working at a snail's pace. Still though, i prefer spending a while on pages rather than knocking them out asap.


Dec.

Rich said...

Dec, I loved your work on Frankenstien, but I gotta say each page you show of Sweeney just keeps getting better and better.

The attention to detail is great, every background character has their own distinct look. Nice one.
Look forward to picking this up next year.

Salvo said...

Superb drawing. Crowds are always tricky but you've absolutely nailed it here. Keep it up!

Leigh G said...

Fantastic stuff Shalvey! Nice to see you're not remotely lazy with the crowd scenes. Thanks god you're not attractive, otherwise I'd be in REAL trouble...

Stephen Mooney said...

I'm in real trouble so, cos I think Dec's rather handsome.
One of my favourite pages from the book so far, excellent composition. Yer man does have a serious case of pole-head though.

Declan Shalvey said...

Well, >ahem< i AM rather handsome, but i'm no Leigh Gallagher by any means. Thanks Leigh!

Moondog, yeah, he's got 'poleheaditis' alright. Good thing Thompson pointed it out, or i never would have spotted it. Glad you like; i definitely reckon it's lookin' like one of the better pages. Funny, as it was one of the toughest to lay out.

Cheers Rich. Yeah, i'm happy with Frankenstein, but i'm certain Sweeney Todd has been a big step-up for me art-wise. I feel like i've really upped my game on this book. I'm also looking forward to when it's out ......next year....

Thanks Salvo. Yeah, crowds are tough. There's always the temptation to wuss out or cut corners when there's something tough to draw. Nothing wrong with doing that sometimes, but every now and then you have to sack-up and put the work in. You'll never improve otherwise.

Dec.

Stephen Thompson said...

I totally saved this page.