In image one there is a blurring error near the top. This is not normally seen due to a dialogue balloon covering up that part.
A fun page overall. I have some killer character images to work with since character art is always on a separate layer.
More panel previews.
A couple of hi-res panel crops from the page I just finished, which also served as a tutorial.
Now with color and stuff.
Furghar, you are my favorite character right now.
Round 2 of the gallery series for the recently completed second episode.
I take color very seriously. One thing I feel I do very well is choose colors for my characters and the backgrounds. Each concept phase for a story has me play around with color and find “themes”. The first image in this batch is the palette for the entire episode. Green’s the thing, clearly.
The Darkholme concept art was also more about color. How would this little town feel from a color-sense?
Also included is a panel showing how the town looked in the final comic.
Next we have a cover idea I had for the issue with two different versions for some reason. This was originally done by a friend of mine, but I ultimately dropped this idea in favor of…
The last piece here is a guest cover drawn by my good friend Reed Hawker of the wonderful webcomic Culture Shock. I knew I had succeeded with Orthos’s design when I saw him draw the character for the cover. I loved his take on Orthos so much that I asked him to illustrate a short story, which he agreed to do. It should run between this story I just finished, and the next big issue. This is all subject to change, of course.
Reed also helped develop the idea of Nestren. I asked him for possible thug design which he delivered. I then went and modified it with my own concepts.
And with that… I guess the gallery is completed.
Now I am about to start this whole process again while I work on some short stories to run until the next episode. Such is the life as a cartoonist.
With episode 2 finished, ready for posting, and shipped off to the printers, I figured I could dive a bit into the genesis of the story through a concept art gallery.
This stuff would normally be reserved for some bonus pages in the issue, but I hit 32 pages for the comic, and wanted the comic to remain affordable, so I couldn’t really go over.
Oh well though. Here is a big gallery for stuff. You’ll see some things in it that I’ll talk a little bit about.
The first three sketches include my first concepts for the Cyclopasians. I wanted them to be super-creepy. I toned them down a bit in the final comic, but I will probably bring that back again as the cult grows more fevered. It should be a lot of fun. I recall the original plan was to have the delivery go to the Cyclopasian capital world, but I ultimately opted for a colony. If I am going to visit their capital, I want to do it BIG.
Oh yeah, and the little bat-leeches were and idea I ultimately didn’t implement for who knows whatever reason. It’s a shame. I’ll definitely use them again sometime in the future.
Image four was a first concept of Orthos. I didn’t stick with that take for very long.
Images five through eight pretty much show how Orthos’s final design came about. I wanted to give him a lanky, yet heroic profile. Originally his outfit was a little bare-bones, but I quickly changed that up. The facial hair was a pretty key addition, I think. It’s definitely unique and stylish.
As you can see, I spent a lot of time trying to find a decent color scheme for him. I ultimately opted for what you see in image eight.
Next we have a concept doodle of Kelaak, who is going to be very important, and who shares a past with Orthos. Nestren, who appears later in the issue was actually a last minute addition to a sequence. I tend to make a lot of last-minute changes.
Then we have some HORRIBLY OFF MODEL takes on some characters. Designs changed quite a bit from the concept phase to the actual finished pages. I’ve been working on this story for a while, so my style changed up quite a bit between then and recently. However the color-keys the characters provided remained quite valuable. Speaking of color, however…
Guess you’ll need to wait for the next post!
Last panel of the current storyline.
Bros for life.
It’ll be up next week.
Humans in Cosmic Dash are always the most challenging characters to design.
This is Maxine.
Bored parrack waiting to use the Tanxau jumpgate.
