Aug 14, 2012

shalvey's venom 22 art

Declan Shalvey's & Venom 22
This past weekend, Venom artist Declan Shalvey spoke to Newsarama about his work on Venom #22 and the upcoming Minimum Carnage arc. I retweeted this information on Twitter and posted the pics on tumblr (both of which you should be following if you aren't already) rather than creating a post because there wasn't any real 'news.'  However, today Shalvey also added some layout work he did for the issue.  Since I love seeing the process of how comics are made, I thought I would share the layouts as well as part of the interview (you can read the entire interview here):
Nrama: As a one-time artist myself, it seems like it’d be fun to draw the symbiote with his gooey mess of a body. What’s that like for you to be able to draw moments where the symbiote takes charge? Shalvey: Heh, we must have similar tastes as that was exactly my first thought. I guess you don't want to have the symbiote take over in every issue, or else it just becomes a cliché, but where it does happen, I really like drawing those moments. Because the suit is a living thing, you can convey the characters emotion visually in a way that you couldn't do with, say, Spider-man. When Venom is angry, or surprised, I can actually twist the eyes on the mask, as the suit is alive. I do really like when he loses control though, as you can take more liberties and really cut loose, like Venom is doing so himself. It's very liberating as an artist.
His first attempt at drawing Carnage (I'd say he nailed it!):
And the layout process for Venom 22 (He is also taking questions on his blog about the layouts - go hit him up and report back in the comments with any cool news):

Are you a fan of Shalvey's art?