The Kaagan-Vas outfits were a bit difficult to design, and I’m not 100% sure I’m happy with them. Who knows? Maybe they’ll grow on me, and maybe I’ll tweak the designs a bit for their next appearance. Basically, I wanted them to look a bit pirate-y and ragtag. But not TOO ragtag. After all, they are pretty successful at what they do, so they aren’t just scraping by. I wanted the outfits to have a similar theme since, shape-wise, they’d be all over the place, having to fit over all sorts of different alien bodies and all. I also wanted them to be instantly recognizable, so that you could always pick out a KV in a crowd.
In the end, I opted for a reddish color and some common shapes as the unifying elements (to be further explained in an upcoming Bonus Feature sketch). The original plan was to make it more red and black, drawing inspiration from Sauron’s orc army color scheme in the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King movie. In my case, I wanted the red to be reminiscent of the red KV symbols on the backs of their heads, and I wanted the black to be reminiscent of the black metal of their ships. But here, they’re all a bit too red, which certainly gives them a distinctive look, but I’m not entirely sure I won’t go back to something with more black in it.
Speaking of the Bonus Feature, I timed it a bit off with my recent Display Banner Art Process segment, but going forward, I will try to pair up new story pages with relevant Bonus Content sketches each week. I had picked out a few flashback/KV-related sketch pages to pair up with this flashback sequence, but realized half of the sequence was already paired up with the Art Process content. Oh well…
Sorry to come off negative now, but it can’t all be good. This sequence is a bit emotional, so let’s talk about something completely different – but touching – colors.
The color scheme of the memory sequence is so subdued to make me queasy in general, but the brown blood especially. The aesthetic of blood is covering up the pain and angst (and punctured guts!) of hurt and harm after all. Nope, didn’t like the associations at all.
Btw, this isn’t the first time that I’ve seen references to “reddish” were it actually is rather acutely “brownish”. Maybe it’s red in the computer table, but… Brown is a brain construct color, after all, it’s not a primary color blend but darker points against lighter background if memory serves. (And I still see red on this screen. It’s a conundrum if it’s on this end.)
And just to make it clear, there are minute areas of the “reddish color” outfits and blood where the layering shows red. (Mostly when a lighter “light reflex” (say) layer is on top.) So I assume that the underlying table color _is_ red. The result, in my eyes: no.
Rest in peace Pahjan. The scene is emotional and violent, but not too graphic (which is a good thing). Coincidentally I had re-read Roka’s dream/flashback last Saturday and I thought that was executed just as well as this one.
Perhaps you can save the black attire elements for the KV’s that are higher in rank?
I wonder if it would have been been wiser to choose a tattoo color that would be in contrast with the color of their outfits. The difference would allow each element to stand out more. But I’ll reserve a final opinion until I actually see it.
I’m no stabby expert but that is one squirty stab. Musta snagged an artery with the jaggies to gush up like dropping a stone in hot caramel
Everyone was tougher back then. Space rake to the face (that’s got to be something akin to 28D Death Star scale damage) and Pahjan takes 3 blasts through the chest and still tries to get up.
Though I am not concerned with the blood color, the gush seems off somehow. Since the blade does not have blood on it and tracing the flow down seems to point to a much larger aperture, I don’t know what to make of it. Perhaps one of those rounds through his lungs is spurting up some gore too?
As for the KV outfits, if you ever decided you liked the style, but not the color, and did not want to alter this flashback, you could always say that the KV have different color uniforms within different parts of the operation. The red and brown motif is used my the Kaagan-Vas Cabbage Farmer Harassment and Narcotics Transport Brigade. Black and gold is used by the Kaagan-Vas Corporate Crime Unit.
Pink and purple is used by the Kaagan-Vas Scouts.
They have a merit badge for everything. In fact, the guy with a vertebra for a head got his “Burn down a farm building badge” just now – albeit 33 years too late. He’ll be sewing that on his sash in bed later.
@ Torbjorn: Very true. I refer to the costumes being red, but I guess they do appear more brown in the actual art. Basically, my comment is in reference to the original artwork. For all these pages, I colored them normally as I would any other page, but then ran the pages through various effects and filters to get the desaturated, diffuse glow look of the flashback sequence. So in the original art, the outfits are pretty red, but through all the filters and effects, they ended up more on the brown side.
@ Q and Exxos: Yeah, now that I look at it again, that is quite a spurt. 🙂 We’ll chalk it up to crazy alien physiology.
@ Exxos: Awesome take on the KV. Do they also sell cookies as part of their annual fundraiser? Perhaps that’s what their argument with Pahjan was about. They came to sell cookies. He didn’t want any. Burn down the farm.
“I guess … my comment is in reference to the original artwork” Ah, now *that* was a tint of “brain construct” I didn’t consider! “-Very well, carry on.” (O.o)
“He didn’t want any. Burn down the farm.” That’s sad, since Pahjan owns the place – he bought the farm.
Nah, that’s the girl scouts we have here in real life that burn down farms. 😀
And I came up with another theory for the huge amount of blood from the stab. The rounds those guns fire are explosive with a depleting element delay. Much as how as they are impacting the building, it seems to be exploding more than it should. So they are perhaps a pellet of nastiness that is stored in a liquid form, encapsulated into having a hardened skin through the force of ejection, that then reacts with the material it hits and causes a delayed explosion. In stonework, it makes for concussive explosions, but in flesh it tends to liquify portions of the body. So instead of just stabbing, that bayonet is puncturing a spreading zone of Pahjan chowder.
At least it sounds a whole lot better than ‘It’s magic, we don’t need to explain it’.