For Mike, this will be old news, but I pencil sort of loosely to start with. Lots of vague shapes, balloons for heads, a few scratchy lines for posture. And I build up from there, almost like I was making a sculpture on a chickenwire armature. It's a slow process. I use a pretty light pencil for this, because I have to erase so frequently. These pencils are not all the way to being inkable -- and in fact I will probably work on them some more tomorrow.
But I figured since Saturday is the day when Mike has a holliday, and since we're both pretty busy this week, I'd better post these in-process pencils and let him offer suggestions.
Click to embiggen, for legibilitude:
There's a babe in arms (being held by an elf) in the second panel. Sorry for the weird "scan" -- my scanner doesn't pick up pencil very well, so I had to use a digital photo. I think I did manage to get the seven ages of man pretty well suggested.
3 comments:
Hey, Isaac--
This page looks really good to me so far. It actually is quite legible visually, rough-sketched though it be, and you've worked in a lot of great fantasy tropes more clearly. I like the imp and the cynocephalus especially.
Arntham's new design is strong and clear, and a bit counterintuitive: I think he looked more like a blind old mapmaker in the thumbnail. That's not a bad thing, however.
One thing you might consider changing, though, is the expression in / appearance of his eyes; he could look blinder, maybe (I know that not all blind eyes look sightless, but it might make Arntham seem less promising a prospect to Stepan if he really looks visually impaired).
Also, I like the white, open space you've left at the top of panel 7, even if the Pantaloon no longer looks like such a caricature of, well, somebody I know...
I'm not sure what I was thinking when I drew Arntham's hand in that last panel. I've redrawn it. Also, I'm going to try to tweak his eyes to look a little more "wandering."
Any story suggestions to make the last panel a little more "cliff-hangery"? Maybe I should add another speech balloon there on the right. There's room.
Things are going smoothly in the inking now. I should have the finished (black and white) page ready to post some time earlyish tomorrow.
The only significant script change is a sppech balloon I added at the end, where Arntham is saying, "What do you want?"
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