Utah Overload

[Jel]

Hey PJ!

Here are a few things I've done for Dave Chisholm's Let's Go To Utah comic, that you should really be aware of by now. If not, shame on you, but you can still catch up at http://www.letsgotoutah.com or http://davechisholm.deviantart.com or of course here on Penciljack.

Anyway, first here is a warm-up sketch I did to get a feel of the character:



And the pencils and inks for the final illustration:


I'm not sure which version I like best, my inked lines lack the control found in the pencils I think, but I really like the composition a lot more on the inked version.

Thoughts?

[krikkit13]

Nice work Jel - I think Dave will be psyched!

Personally, the pencilled lines are awesome, as are those great Lief portraits at the top. The problem with the inks is that the background hatching isn't delicate or fine enough to compliment the piece - I also think you should ditch the halos around the figures - they aren't really needed here.

Check out this Mignola cover with inks by Kevin Nowlan (coincidentally, it's really similar in concept to yours!), but I think that Nowlan was able to accomplish the hatching that you're attempting. Maybe it will help: http://www.darkhorse.com/profile/profile.php?sku=15-301

Great looking pencilled piece though!

[Caimano]

Ehi Jel, you did an amazing job on Dave's characters!

I like the Lief studies and the composition of the final pic.

Inks are not bad there, but the thing I suggest to change is the white area at Lief left (our righ side)...it should be a rock mountain or similar. I don't like it, I suggest to put black spot area instead, try to do it on a photocopy.

The ink you did is aligned with the inking approach the book has and I find it effective

[Karim]

nice work, like the biggest head sketch a lot

[vfiks]

I would have to agree, the pencil version seems a lot stronger to me. The inks just don't have the subtlety to capture all the rendering you have in the pencils. Great stuff though.

Vlad

[jojomonster]

ooo I certianly do love the warm up sketches of Leif!

[Keith]

Love it, like the pencils better, but the inks are good too. They'll probably need decent color to flesh them out.

[Spidey]

Nice. I really like the expression in the faces.

[Jel]

Thanks a lot for the replies

Well, even if some find the inks ok, you all seem to prefer vastly the pencils over the inks... which is pretty disappointing for me (I've spent a few hours on the inking), but not surprising I guess, I still need to practice a lot before getting where I should be...


>krikkit13: Thanks a lot, and indeed this cover is disturbingly close to the mood I was trying to conjure up. I wish Nowlan would ink my pics hehe.
It's a cool basis I'll see what I can do to get closer to this result (without starting over).

>Caimano: Thank you! I will try blackening the right side, but I'm afraid the composition will look unbalanced afterwards... We'll see.

>Vfiks: I struggled in some places with the inks, and it shows I guess... My biggest difficulty was to reproduce the smoothness of the pencilled curbs with the brush. Practice practice I guess

>Jojomonster: glad you like!

>Keith: thanks a lot man! The thing is, this is a B&W pic, and staying that way :/ I might just go back to my pencils, and modify them to mach my inks (the eyes especially), and darken the whole in PS... but that might not look so good.

>Spidey: Thanks. Expression is one of the things I pay the most attention to and have the most fun with.


Thank you all again!

[krikkit13]

Hey Jel, I thought of a few more things... Maybe you could remove the rocks behind Leif and put in another lightning bolt there to mirror the one next to Dave?

I really like the inks on the eyes at the top of the page - they're a lot closer in feel to Dave's work than the pencilled eyes. I really think that just losing the halos, getting rid of the rock pile, and cleaning up the feathering around the lightning would help this piece exponentially.

One thing that I always try to remember about inking is that you aren't defining the black areas - you're using the black areas to define the white areas. I hope some of this helps!

[davechisholm]

they look awesome, jel. thanks so much.

[bindlestitch]

Amazingly cool, Jel.

[dfbovey]

I love the pencil version and think that with some rendering on the eyes (similar to what you did with the inks there in the background, but lighter), it would be the way to go. The inks look like it flattened the image out a bit... and the dark and chaotic background is fighting for attention over the characters in the foreground.

[Jel]

Thanks everybody!
I've listened to your advice, and redone the inks a bit (yeah I can be tenacious like the D), what do you guys think? it seems a lot better to me.

dfbovey I know you're right, and I'm also going to redo some of the pencils, to compare, but I didn't want to stay on a disappointing inking, so I tried to improve it.

[Jel]

And finally, the modified pencilled version...



What do you guys think? How does it compare to the recent inked version?