12 May, 2009

Colouring n' Stuff


A comic artist I met whilst he was chained in a cellar in Aberdeen, is doing lots of work at the moment. Not only is he working on the graphic novel of Sweeny Todd (from the book not the musical Tim Burton destroyed) but he is providing wonderful covers and drawn thingies for lots of other publications.

Declan Shalvey is the chap.

A cover he's produced for the Boom Studio's new Poe, mini series intrigued me. So for some retarded reason known not even to my good self, I said I'd have a go at colouring it. It has already been done for the comic so my attempt can only be for fun - or an exercise into why I shouldn't.

Mr Shalvey is a traditional ink and pen artist, so I thought I'd go all photoshoppy on it to see the difference, lots of gradated tones and photo highlighting. Total pants as it turned out. Declan's art rejects Buffy style colouring so I went the other way and used mostly flat colour with grungy splats. In the end I have a dark looking thing that may have been coloured with inks.

That'll learn me. It did however give me a break from doing film work, which I can't show here at the moment. Don't worry, it will all be up here soon.

12 comments:

allen etter said...

Film Work? Something new? Looking forward to it.

BTW, our movie is premiering on a local cable station. Kinda exciting. Also, we are remastering the movie at a higher resolution...or some such thing...it has to do with interlacing. I'll send you a copy when it's done.

And, just so ya know, several people thought that the opening fly-over scene you did for us was actually shot from a plane.

NICE!

allen etter said...

...oh, and I agree. Burton killed the musical. I preferred the version in Kevin Smith's movie "Jersey Girl".

Michael Grant Clark said...

Hi Allan, I'm doing production artwork for a new project we're trying to get off the ground. While still trying to sell one day removals.

Well done on getting Darkness onto the station. Interlacing shouldn't be a problem with them as the signal will be interlaced at the same frame rate, I think.

Thanks for passing on the comment. I'm still playing about with Vue, the software it was done on, thinking an external render package may smooth out the flicker in animation.

Burton, only thing of his I liked was Ed Wood, which was very good. The rest are beyond gay.

allen etter said...

I agree with the Burton assessment. Hated Scissorhands, Nightmare, Mars Attacks...all recycled crap from Beetlejuice (which was okay at best...)

allen etter said...

HEy, if you need any work from me, concept art, storyboards, photos of Tarina...let me know. I'll have some time this summer to concentrate on art stuff.

Michael Grant Clark said...

Thanks Allen, I'm having to re-teach myself how to draw at the moment so I should do the work myself - using pencils etc! Then I'll finish off on the computer.

I'm becoming too reliant on plug-ins instead of actual hard work.

Andrew Glazebrook said...

A new film, is it the one about the island of Anna Friel clones that I suggested ?
Cool work on the picture !!

allen etter said...

What's a pencil?

Michael Grant Clark said...

I really don't know :(

allen etter said...

I found one...seems to make marks on a wierd thing called paper...

Anonymous said...

I can't draw for toffee.

Smeg.

allen etter said...

posted some storyboards on the new blog...let me know what you think.