Declan Shalvey – OFFSET 2015

Declan gave an insight into his career illustrating comics and graphic novels in a personal and subtly comical style. Comics are an industry I completely alien to. They’re not really an interest of mine, but I am fully aware of the huge audiences that exist for them.

Comics and graphic novels are industries I know little about, but I have huge respect for the illustrators creating them.

Without being over the top, Declan was able to express his very geeky personality and be proud of it! I love it when you can tell that someone is clearly very passionate about their work and not ashamed to show it. His passions shone through and kept me engaged throughout. One aspect of his talk that I picked up on, was how he had previously been to OFFSET in 2012 (the same year I first attended) and took inspiration from Jessica Hische’s talk. More specifically he picked up on her style of “Procrastiworking”.

The idea behind procrastiworking is to work on personal projects that help stimulate your creativity and keep things ticking over whilst working on client briefs.

This is the directional style to Declan’s illustrations that make it easier for the reader to follow.

Some examples of character development from initial sketching to final renderings.

The level of detail in Declan’s illustrations was incredible.

Declan showed some processes his illustrations go through from initial sketching to final rendering and colouring. Again, these were processes that I have very little knowledge in, but loved seeing them! He also showed how he often implements his own personal elements within his work even if no one else would notice them such as stylised barcodes on the back of his comics.

Declan produces small sketches of page layouts before exploring them in detail.

An example of an initial layout sketch, blown up large.

The first large scale draft of the layout before final rendering.

The final illustration rendering before colour is applied.

The final coloured illustration ready for print.

Check out some more of Declans work over on his blog which he updates frequently  dshalv.tumblr.com

Declan's Books on Amazon

Declan has illustrated quite a few books for many comic publishers. Take a look at some of them available such as Moon Knight from Marvel.

More from OFFSET 2015

Check out some other speakers from OFFSET 2015 with my roundup post that has links to all other OFFSET related things and keep checking back for more posts!

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