BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Ulon Dosi Village

by on February 10, 2011 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Blog Entries

At this point, I decided to play around with the general layout of the village on a larger scale than just individual huts to see if that might provide me with a little more direction in the design of the huts themselves. I really needed the village to look a bit dilapidated and run-down, so I decided to sprinkle the village with various crude shacks and shanty huts.

I toyed with the idea of a village center or plaza, since I knew the final shootout would take place in a semi-open space. But ultimately, I thought a plaza would make the village a bit bigger and more refined than I wanted it to be.

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BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Ulon Dosi Village

by on February 3, 2011 at 12:01 am
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The next several Sketchbook entries will focus on the Ulon Dosi village, expanding a little on the Commentary I did back on The Big Snow Job #3, Page 21. This page shows the very first sketches I did to kick around some ideas for the look of the huts. I knew from the start that I wanted the huts to be low-tech, round in shape, and made up of some combination of stone, wood, and leather hides. Fairly early on, I settled on the mushroom-shaped overhanging roof, which got me around 80% there for the design. But it was missing that little bit of visual “oomf” so I kept playing with it here and there…

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BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Keyla

by on January 27, 2011 at 12:01 am
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I talked a little bit about designing the Ulon Dosi females in the Commentary for The Big Snow Job #4, Page 6. Here we have the sketches I did to flesh out Keyla, especially her outfit. Obviously I wanted to make her clothing similar in “language” to the other Ulon Dosi, but it needed to be a slightly more feminine version of the standard hide tunics. And as I mentioned in the other Commentary, the yellow color of her outfit was to make it a bit “softer” visually than the tan and natural tones of the other Ulon Dosi.

Keyla’s cloak also needed to stand out, since in many of her earlier panels, only a small portion of her would be showing and I needed the look to be, more or less, instantly and easily recognizable. I liked the patchwork enough that it eventually made it into Clem’s outfit as well. As for the white fuzzy fur, I also incorporated that into Goshen’s look to visually connect them since they’re related as father and daughter.

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BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Ulon Dosi Clothes

by on January 20, 2011 at 12:01 am
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A few more Ulon Dosi clothing concepts, including the rifle bandoliers that the village warriors would wear. With this, I had enough samples done that I could just mix and match different elements once I got to the actual drawing stage. The only Ulon Dosi characters that got specific outfit designs were Keyla, Clem, and Goshen. I’ll go into Keyla’s design in the next post, and the Goshen and Clem sketches will be popping up in the Bonus Features for The Big Snow Job #5.

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BONUS CONTENT: Sketchbook: Ulon Dosi Clothes

by on January 13, 2011 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Blog Entries

The Ulon Dosi clothes were a fun design challenge since I had to work with the constraints of the fur capes and try to make clothing that would believably work with those bodies. I always planned for the race to be fairly low tech, so early on I settled on pretty basic leather hide tunics and wraps. I did try a couple other looks in the first few sketches but they definitely looked a bit too fancy for me, so they were quickly abandoned. I think the rough edges and visible stitching really pulled together the hand-made, frontier look I was going for.

In the cases of the body-crossing wraps, the idea is that the clothing wraps around the neck and down the chest, continues around the back of the waist (underneath the fur cape), and then ties in the front. Basically, I wanted the clothing to fit the body while still leaving the fur cape clear to hang in the back.

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