With this Bonus Feature, I’ll be returning to my Sketchbook concept designs for a bit, this time focusing on all of the snow outfits for the main cast.

In the Commentary for The Big Snow Job #2, Page 7 I mention the thought process behind the ponchos. Basically, I wanted all the individual snow outfits to be colorful, but some of the crew would also wear white ponchos or cloaks for part of the story since they would want to blend in with the snowy environment while following the rustlers.

I thought it would be fun to do a camouflage pattern on Roka and Ril’s ponchos, but ultimately, it made more sense to just keep them plain white. I always meant for Cember’s to be a bit different, since I figured he’d have his own, more stylish cloak, complete with puffballs!

I actually really like the bottom design quite a bit. I imagined it as a solid piece down the front and back, about shoulder width. A connected piece on top would then form flaps over the arms. It seems pretty practical to me in that in most normal body positions, the arm flaps are down, giving the wearer the same coverage as a standard poncho. But it allows for a greater degree of arm mobility since it’s not all one single piece that would keep the arms “trapped” underneath since the arm flaps could move independently of the main body covering. And that seemed like something that would come in handy for an action-prone crew.

Not sure why I didn’t go with that design in the end. Maybe I just wanted something a little simpler since (a) it’d be easier to draw, and (b) because I could also see Roka just having the most basic snow ponchos lying around. Nothing fancy. But I like the design enough that I might use it at some point.

So here we have the costume designs I did for Roka as he appears on The Big Snow Job #1, Page 4 at the Arqq-Olem port. Basically, I just wanted to continue the long sleeve shirt and vest look that was established in the first story arc, since that seems to be his signature style.

Roka’s gun satchel was something I thought up for the first arc, although I never ended up drawing it. So I figured the opening port scene in Snow Job would be a good place to introduce it. I like that it’s something he can easily put on when he needs to be armed, but he can just as easily take it off if he’s on the ship and doesn’t need it. Since it’s the biggest gun of the entire crew, it would probably be a bit clunkier to sit around in than, say, Cember’s pistols.

Bocce’s outfit is the same from Bad Goods, but I needed to concept his energy cast and crutch, not that you end up seeing the crutch all that much in the actual story. I wanted to keep the crutch fairly simple and not over-design it. So it’s basically just a cool sci-fi crutch that can telescope to varying lengths or retract completely into a more compact shape.

Additional commentary about the outfits can be found in the posting for The Big Snow Job #1, Page 14.

For Roka’s snow outfit, I wanted to stick with his established style of elongated vertical shapes, so I gave him a long coat with vertical banding to accentuate the length. The pouches on his belt also have long flaps to continue the motif. I threw in the horizontal bands on the sleeves to break up the verticals a little and also because I just thought it might be an interesting look to have these slight bulges of fabric between each band on the arms.