Digital Pencils

Now the comic Earp is done and gone ...I thought I would share some of the pencils with you. I know I put up a few pages previously, but here it is again- all in one big batch!

As you progress through them you will see variations in the rendering style. This was mainly down to the fact that as I had decided to work digitally I still wanted to attain something resembling a traditional penciled page. I feel I was successful to some extent, and well...you can decide for yourself.

I was brought on to the project towards the end of issue 1...Page 50 to be exact and below is that very first page.



I penciled the page up in Photoshop and then added a texture layer - lowered the opacity on the eraser and removed some of the texture, adding some highlights and depth.



With issue two. I decided to just keep it as line-work. This was not the best idea as every little detail then had to be rendered.




I was quite happy with how this page turned out. However when sending it to the editor, she quite rightly asked where the light source would be coming from...so I went back in and added some chandeliers- but in doing so, it pushed the scale of the characters off. So with the magic of Photoshop- I quite simply reduced them down a notch and fiddled a little with the bg until I arrived at this:





The style of Earp was quite realistic...so I had to ref a lot of photos for the female characters to made sure I didn't exaggerate their form too much and get too stylized. Researching the female form was tough- My poor eyes were faced with so much nakedness...



Product placement: UXB hat!



My son posed A LOT for this project...at least 4 of the 5 panels above feature him. Thanks little man! He even had a little Earp jacket that he wore ...awwwwwww!!!!!



With issue 3 I decided to add some gray scale to help add some depth and also to avoid unnecessary detail- especially when viewing the final painted pages and finding that a lot of the detail was being lost anyway...




Quite liked this one...nice angle. However Flynn's chin is literally sitting on the line of the bottom panel- not good! I also, for the first time, added some photographic elements into this one - such as the records on the wall and the casino floor in the BG.





In the second panel of the above page, Flynn is showing Rodney a doodle of his cock and balls! Third panel he is saying: "You like?!" Oh wait - that's my version of the script...getting a bit off topic there.



Have to say, I wasn't too sorry about whiny Morgan getting the rope!
Kyushik- when painting, seemingly tortured poor Morgan with his paintbrush- burned him up and everything - some really sick shit! So it looks like I wasn't the only one.



With issue 4 I opted to add in more photographic elements- usually something I would never do- but for this project in particular it made sense to do so- not just from a production point of view but it also helped to achieve the final art style that the project required.








The final page.

There are a lot of photo elements in that page and you would think it would have actually saved time...but it didn't... as everything had to be manipulated and drawn over and reworked to fit with the composition.



So there you go - a small sampling of the Earp digital pencils. I have to say that I had never had my work literally painted over before and being a bit of a control freak it did take a little time to get use to...but as collaborations go...I think it went pretty well. I met up with Kyushik Shin(the colourist/painter) at SDCC and it was great to finally sit down and have a chat. Great guy and very talented to boot. His website is here: www.shinybrush.com Check it out!

I also finally met with my editor Renae Geerlings. The best looking editor in comics perhaps!? (I may expect a cyber-slap for that comment...) She was fantastic to work with - and did you know that she was married to Eric Bana? He played the part of Hector in that Troy movie - the one that kicked the ass of Tyler Mane...

You can check out Renae at: OMFGeek.com interviewing none other than Paul Dini.

OK I'm done.



Earp Saint for Sinners is © Radical Publishing