BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Flashback Farm

by on June 23, 2011 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Blog Entries

The next several sketchbook pages will focus on the farm from the Bocce Flashback sequence. I was at a real loss with this one when starting out as I had no idea what I wanted. Usually I have something in mind that gives me a nice starting point, but here I had a crippling blank canvas. The only thing I knew was to rule out a whitewashed adobe look since that would be too much like the Lars homestead from Star Wars.

On this page, I was just spitting out building shapes to see if anything grabbed me. Not much did. They all seemed a bit too busy, especially for simple farmers, and none of the shapes were terribly distinctive or memorable. I did like the U-shaped buildings at the bottom, which were based on the U-shaped cuts in Bocce’s shirt collar. I thought that one design element would be a nice way to tie back to the cultural look of the clothing, and it ended up being a nice starting point for the basis of their architecture.

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BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Flashback Bocce

by on June 16, 2011 at 12:01 am
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With the more recent sketchbook Bonus pages, I tried to pair them up with the actual story pages for that week, but the next several don’t really fit the bill. They deal with the Bocce flashback scene and are showing up now since I didn’t have the space for them earlier. Anyway…

With Bocce’s flashback design, I knew his outfit would be based on the one he wears in the present. Since his present-day black outfit is a cultural thing, I figured his flashback outfit would only make sense to have a similar look. The only thing I tried to do with it was to make it a little more rural in feel to go with the farm setting.

And the hand-towel around the waist. Because who couldn’t use a hand towel every now and then. Especially on sloppy joe day.

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BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Kaagan-Vas Tattoo

by on June 9, 2011 at 12:01 am
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This page shows the various concepts I did to come up with the Kaagan-Vas tattoo. I pretty much covered the thought process back on The Big Snow Job #3, Page 9. Basically, I wanted something that would be easy to draw, fairly aggressive and tribal looking, and something evocative of a pirate ship Jolly Roger skull and crossbones. I have to say I’m very happy with the design I came up with, and if anyone out there is in the market for a nice back-of-the-head tattoo, I’d highly recommend going with a Kaagan-Vas mark. 🙂

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BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Kaagan-Vas Rustlers

by on June 2, 2011 at 12:01 am
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And here we have the final versions of all three Kaagan-Vas rustlers. I wanted to give Baso a hat to make him stand out from other Ulon Dosi and to also match the other rustlers. Obviously, his doesn’t have any  neck covering though since he doesn’t have a KV tattoo that needed to be concealed.

With Warsaw, I finalized the look of his hat and also added some pattern detailing to his outfit to match Baso’s poncho pattern. With Uskulon, I ditched the lower body coverings and changed his hat. Ultimately, when I got around to actually drawing the story pages, I changed his hat one last time on the fly. I decided that this one was a bit too similar to Warsaw’s and I wanted them to be a little more different. So I went back to the rice paddy look.

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BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Baso

by on May 26, 2011 at 12:01 am
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With this page, I finally settled on Uskulon’s hat, which I based very loosely on an asian rice paddy hat. I thought that would make for a fairly simple, wide-brim hat, and unlike all the previous hat concepts, it actually seemed to work with his poncho look. I then added the straps to the back since I figured those would be nice neck protection from the elements. But the real reason for the straps is that I needed to make sure both Warsaw and Uskulon always had their necks and the backs of their heads completely covered so you wouldn’t see the Kaagan-Vas tattoos.

One last note on Uskulon: you’ll notice in all these sketches that I originally had footwear for his tentacle feet. As with Cember, I did give some thought to whether walking on snow directly would be a bit harsh or if they should have foot coverings. In the end, I decided that the foot coverings just looked a bit too silly. And I also figure with different aliens, maybe they have different physiologies, so they aren’t affected by extreme conditions the same way we would be. There are seals and walruses and penguins after all, who walk around naked all the time on snow. But then if someone gave them foot coverings, maybe they’d be grateful.

Moving on to Baso, with my first design, I gave him a duster similar in style to Warsaw’s. But then I realized that he needed something bigger and looser to hide the big gun he’s be carrying during the story. So I added a poncho similar in style to Uskulon’s. I also gave him a nose ring to (a) differentiate him facially from other Ulon Dosi characters, and (b) to give him some sort of accessory that shows his cultural break from Ulon Dosi tradition.

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