As I mentioned in a previous post, with Bocce, I wanted his snow outfit to be very similar in style to his regular clothing. So it sticks to the same black and white palette, with the three wraparound bands at the abdomen. I thought the alternating clasps was an interesting look to go with those three bands.

Bocce’s coat collar is a nod to Star Trek, specifically Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I love the uniform designs in that movie and really love the jackets/coats that Kirk, McCoy, and Saavik wear when investigating the space station Regula I. The collar here is directly inspired by the collars on those Regula I jackets.

For the most part, I try to portray characters realistically as far as gun holsters and belts go. Generally, when they’re lounging around the ship, they aren’t armed, since I figure a gun belt has to be a bit clunky to wear all the time. Only when they’re headed for a potentially dangerous situation do they get strapped up with weapons. So a lot of the scenes in The Big Snow Job don’t actually show Bocce fully decked out with his gun belt, as shown here.

For Sky, the outfit is probably reminiscent of Princess Leia’s Hoth outfit. I can’t say I deliberately intended it to be, but that’s sometimes the problem with people like me who grew up on Star Wars. The images become so iconic over time, that you actually start to lose track of what’s “normal” and what’s been burned into your brain by repeated viewings. For instance, when I think “female snow outfit,” I think “quilted pattern.” But I have no idea if that’s actually a common look for real-world snow parkas or if I just think it is because of Leia’s Hoth outfit. The white color is most definitely not inspired by Leia though since I had already decided long ago that all of Sky’s outfits would be predominantly white since I really like that white-on-blue look.

I deliberately wanted the types of fur to be a bit different between characters. So while Roka has a bit longer fur in his hat and collar, Sky has much shorter-hair, fuzzier fur on her outfit. It just seemed like a softer, more feminine look. Of course, Cember has that same soft, fuzzy fur on his outfit as well. Masculine? No. And yet, very Cember.

For the next batch of Bonus Content, I thought it would be fun to show my art process. I’ll probably do this every now and then and have each installment run over several posts, with each post showing one step of the process. I figured the cover to “The Big Snow Job” #1 would make a good page for the inaugural Process content…

Here we have the thumbnails that I did for the cover. As far as thumbnails go, these are MUCH more polished than what I usually do. My typical thumbnails are really loose scribbles that only I can decipher. And I kinda have to get them into pencils within a few days or so. Anything longer than that and even I have a hard time remembering what was what. Anyway, these thumbnails are a bit more legible.

The main thing I wanted to do was showcase the cast in their snow outfits. I wanted the characters to be a bit static and very prominent since I knew I’d be using the image as a costume reference guide for myself in drawing the story arc. Plus, I figured the other covers could deal with the action. I thought a solid group shot would be a nice way to showcase the characters again after a bit of a long hiatus.

The bulk of the concepts just revolve around different angles and standing order. I briefly toyed with the idea of working in the frozen goat alien to add a little drama to the scene, but ultimately, I decided that since that was going to be the opening image of the issue itself, I didn’t want to duplicate it right on the cover.

I ended up going with a mix of #3 (upper right) and #5 (lower middle), with the characters standing by a rock wall, but without Sky standing apart from the others. I kinda felt like Roka should be the clear focus of the cover since he’s the leader. The prominence of Sky in #3 felt like it was splitting the focus a bit, so I worked her in with the rest of the crew.

Next up, the inking stage…

Sadly, I don’t have the page in its pencil stage. At the time, I had no idea I’d be doing a Process feature, so I had no reason to scan my pencils. The same goes for all the pages I did for “Snow Job” issues #1-3. By the time I started working on issue #4 though, I knew I’d be doing this, so with those pages, I started scanning in the penciled pages. So for a future Process feature, I’ll do a page that I can show the pencil stage as well.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I wanted the characters to be a bit static so I could use the image for reference myself in drawing the various snow outfits. Mission accomplished! I’m pretty happy with how it turned out since it clearly shows all the characters and their outfits, but the composition and arrangement of characters is still interesting enough that it’s not a totally boring cover.

You can probably tell from this page that I don’t really throw down a lot of black areas in my pages. It’s something I struggle with and feel like I should be doing more. At times, I think it makes my inked pages look a bit unfinished or at least unfocused. But I always know that everything will come together in the coloring stage. I guess in that way, I expect the coloring to do a lot of the heavy lifting as far as finished artwork goes.

Next up, the colors…