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As I mentioned in the Commentary for The Big Snow Job #4, Page 11, the Kaagan-Vas outfits were a bit of a challenge since I wanted a somewhat unified look while still having the flexibility to fit over various alien body shapes. In my head, I was picturing something reminiscent of the Uruk Hai and Sauron’s orc army from The Lord of the Rings movies, which explains the first sketch, which is VERY Uruk Hai-ish. I’ll often do that sort of thing: if I know what the starting point is, I’ll usually draw that first just to get it out of my system and have it on the page so that I can start to veer AWAY from it and not make it too similar.

With the later versions, I started liking the idea of having the outfits themselves cut like very stylized versions of the KV symbol, where the areas of red would mirror the different shapes of the symbol. I worry that it straddles that Project Runway line of being interesting and showy without being too “costume-y,” but ultimately, I think it’s subtle enough as to not be too hokey. But as I said in the other Commentary, it does add a bit more red to the outfits than I originally envisioned.

However, I do like that it solves the problem of giving them a unified and instantly recognizable look from the front, especially since the telltale KV symbol itself (and their chief means of recognition) is only visible from the back, a design problem I only realized waaayyy too late!

Anyway, like I said, I’m not 100% sold on this design due to the amount of red. I think in a large group, it will start to look too uniform-y. So I might tweak it a bit in the future, but for the most part, I do like the concept enough to keep the gist of it.

Back to sketches!

Going forward, I’ll try to pair up Bonus Content sketches with the actual story page that’s posting that week. It won’t always fit exactly, and there is a bit of catch-up to do, but I think it’ll be better and less jarring than it has been to date.

Here we have some alien concepts for the flashback Kaagan-Vas. These scenes are always fun since I get to just come up with a bunch of new and different creatures, but it’s also a bit taxing creatively. When I’m in the groove, I feel like I can come up with some very cool designs, but when I’m not feeling it, it’s very hard to tap into that part of the brain that lets me come up with something new and different.

With this batch, I was feeling pretty under the gun and behind in schedule, so I didn’t get to put as much time into the concepting as I would have liked. But then I figure, for a short flashback sequence, I could probably get away with a little less development time since I’m not sure how much these particular characters will show up again.