Yay, snow outfits! Fun! The snow outfits were a lot of fun to design as I tried to make each one fairly different, style-wise, while also being true to each character’s personal tastes.
Roka stays with earthy tones and elongated vertical forms, with the long coat and thin vertical striping. Ril keeps with the cross-over look for the jacket. If his hat looks familiar, it may be because he wears a very similar one in the flashback scene from Bad Goods. I figured I already established a hat style for him with that scene, so I decided to stick with that. The banding texture of the hat then informed the detail on the jacket, and the rest of the outfit developed from there.
More comments on the other characters’ outfits in the next few posts…
Sky looks really hot – errr, cool, while remaining intelligently dressed. But then, she makes almost anything look good.
Those bare tentacles are going to get awfully cold in the snow.
By far Benne has the best snow attire. lol 😛
ok.. pick a nit time… I’ve seen this in lots of places, so it’s not just our illustrious… illustrator I’m prodding.
Notice that big honking metal thing next to them in the snow? The vehicle in which they arrived? what’s it called? Oh yes, a SPACE SHIP! The environment in space is MUCH worse than any snow storm. The distances the ship needs to cover (even “close” distances) require engines with significant thrust and response.
Now, if they were going to the bottom of an ocean – even a shallow one – I’d not have a quibble. But a snow/sand/booger storm?
Please!
As a plot device, well.. the termites have pretty much eaten it away.
it’s still a rockin’ cool comic!
@Lurch, doesn’t the atmospheric density (and resulting potential for turbulence) present significantly different obstacles than space?
I do confess, though, to being curious what the bottom of Cember’s tentacles is. From researching barefoot hiking and hikers’ cold acclimation efforts, I’ve been told the difference between cold and frozen is way more than one degree on the thermometer. Frostbite is not funny. Now you can run around on dog paw material on freezing terrain for hours, but one doesn’t usually expect tentacles to be that. Slimy is more expected, and I’m curious how that might be made to work. Or if those tentacles are in fact dog paw like or… spray on foam rubber for the occasion… or?
I don’t remember if Cember’s tentacles have been shown and I missed it or what, but they are awesome. Joining in the general “that looks cold” chorus, but… can you *imagine* how long it would take putting your socks and shoes on otherwise?
(I would imagine they’re a bit more like snakes’ bodies or crocodile bellies than slimy tentacles. Of course, neither species is known for cold tolerance — but that’s to do with being cold-blooded, not with their body design….)
Oh, and Lurch — I can think of several problems with snow that might still effect a space-going vessel. For one thing it’s damp — not something one deals with in outer space — and damp is a problem for anything with metal/electronics. The deeper the snow and the harder it’s falling, the more likely it is to get in all sorts of nooks and shafts that you don’t want it to. Then there’s visibility: the ship’s sensors are likely meant for the relative emptiness of space, not the up-close-and-constantness of a snowstorm, and once again frozen water is remarkable stuff for clogging, blinding, and being basically a pain to see through.
Of course, given then look of that setting, this could just be the only nearby and semi-solid flat spot big enough for Roka to park….
ok..you got me on the sensors. And I shoulda thunk of it, given the amount of time I’ve spent watching a radar screen. On the other hand, given that the vessel is obviously intended for both space and atmosphere use, I’d think that *probably* sensors would have advanced to the point where weather is transparent. After all, nothing SAYS they have to use radar that just happens to see water really well.
I still don’t buy off on the idea that the ship itself would be detrimentally affected by the weather, tho. Any (sensibly) designed multi-environment vessel should be able to deal with at least the habitable extremes.
As for Cember’s tentacles.. why would they be slimey? Slime is typically found only on creatures who spend a significant bit of time in the water. Fish and amphibians, most notably. Snakes, on the other hand, are quite dry.
So, to me, the question would really be are the tentacles ONLY for locomotion, or do they have a grasping/manipulating function? If locomotion only, then the undersides would most likely be thick, relatively insensitive, and rather rough. If there is some grasping / manipulating going on.. then you get to play the “how much” game.
I’m a pretty big nit-picker myself, so I fully understand how something like this can be distracting!
I actually had Roka opt for foot travel for several reasons, a couple of which Kat touches upon above. It’s not really that snow itself would be hard to fly through, which would be pretty silly. I think most good pilots prefer to fly by visual cues, not just off of sensor readings, so Roka wouldn’t want to fly through heavy snow that would impair his visibility. The terrain is also a bit varied, so he’d opt to land somewhere clear and stable rather than chance not finding something suitable elsewhere. They’re also on a stealth mission, so he’s going to want to keep the ship a safe distance away and not fly too close to where their actual targets are, so as to not announce their presence. Basically, Roka has a number of reasons, but I didn’t want him to bother listing them all.
One thing that’s not terribly clear from the art is the visibility factor. I originally planned to have the falling snow much heavier in a lot of pages to convey that, but I found that really heavy snow blocking a lot of the art for many pages at a time would get annoying and frustrating to read. So in some cases, the snow is a bit lighter in the artwork so that the actual characters and action can be more legible.
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I think most good pilots prefer to fly by visual cues, not just off of sensor readings, so Roka wouldn’t want to fly through heavy snow that would impair his visibility. The terrain is also a bit varied, so he’d opt to land somewhere clear and stable rather than chance not finding something suitable elsewhere. They’re also on a stealth mission, so he’s going to want to keep the ship a safe distance away and not fly too close to where their actual targets are, so as to not announce their presence.
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now that is an EXCELLENT point. Why the hell else would a space ship have a windscreen? Sure, you COULD navigate by instruments (you can *technically* do that with an airplane or ship even today – right down to landing / mooring) but I agree: Any pilot worth more than sour beans will want to SEE what he’s doing.
If you don’t mind, though, I’m still gonna stick with the rest of my stance. I WAS gonna go on about how sensors on the ground (or in orbit) would have no problem detecting the ship – but I then realized that the “bad guys” with the critters may not have access to that data feed. I also wonder if the operation needs to be covert.. but I’d say the skipper is in a better position to judge that than I am. So… I be quiet on this now.
It’s what I get for shooting my mouth off. And now, my mouth is hiding under the house and won’t come out.
Also; spaceships in space don’t have to deal with much chance of *ice* forming on their outside, which potentially could cause a lot of problems.
As for Cember’s tentacles, you do see the undersides every now and then. They have pads on the bottom as opposed to suckers or soft flesh. As to the actual hardness of those pads, I haven’t really decided yet. I imagine them as having a rubbery texture, so that they have a bit of cushion and give, while still being durable, tough, and gripping. As for the cold ground, I figure Cember is an alien so his tentacles aren’t necessarily like the tentacles that we know of and are familiar with. Maybe the tentacles are very well insulated. Maybe as a species, his race is very acclimated to cold. Or maybe he’s just a freak who likes frostbite. 🙂
lol. yeah. I can empathize. I was out earlier today shoveling the snow… as usual, I was barefoot.
Completely freaks the neighbors, and annoys my wife to no end, because my kids try to emulate me. Muahahahahahah!
Have you done any tutorials?
Good question! I’ve been meaning to do a tutorial for a while, or at least show what my process consists of. The key for me is actually remembering to scan in some penciled pages before inking them. I always forget to do that, so right there, my process would be missing its first major step. Anyway, I’ll try to remember to do that with the next batch of pages so that I can finally get a tutorial together at some point.
a tutorial would rock.
With that, I’d just need a story to tell.
oh.. and some drawing talent.
Dear Santa…