Category: BLOG

The shape of your average boy

Posted on June 10, 2022 by Cal

i said earlier that i was trying to be more intentional about body shapes in ch4.

there are a few reasons for this. first off, it helps differentiate the characters better. that has always been a challenge with any non-human character, and other facets like the tattoos (and of course, page-to-page context) are designed to help assist the reader in telling characters apart. i’m not really sure why i was so reserved with body exaggeration in the past, especially when i really go ham when I doodle and make some really crazy looking figures. since i value the characters’ silhouettes so much, exaggeration of the body will also be a huge boon to being able to tell who a character is just from an outline.

on a similar note, exaggerating the bodies also helps from a storytelling perspective because the shape of the character can better integrate with their personality. would a big beefy built boy be a grizzled bruiser? he sure would look it. or you could subvert expectations and make him a big teddy bear. stuff like that.

Of course, it’s not that I never thought about these factors until now, it’s just that now I have decided to be more intentional about it. which leads to the best part: it’s a lot of fun for me to play with body shapes. 🙂 and it’s always great to enjoy your work! God designed me to care about stuff like this, so I better invest in what I’ve been given.

First stretch on ch4!

Posted on June 7, 2022 by Cal

chapter 3 is on the home stretch. which means chapter 4 is not only in the works, but has been for a little while now 🙂
heres some concept tidbits for little ol you. because i like ye a lot

i am actively trying to play with body shapes more this chapter because 1) it’s fun and 2) it helps differentiate characters better. I’m kind of confused why i held back somewhat on the exaggerations until now since i draw wacky body shapes all the time when i doodle. who knows.

the body shapes are especially important with this chapter because it is about a family and lineages and I want to highlight the different generations and sides of the family. the wife’s side has a inverted triangle motif and the husband i was playing with a wide shoulder shape that wasn’t ‘built’. no real reason i picked either, i just thought they would be fun to draw and sort of fit their personalities. i am trying to even have the faces have a clear continuation from one generation to the next, time will tell how successful I am. I will leave it up to your imagination for now which character is what 🙂

this chapter is also going to have a lot of kids running around. more to come later on them (hopefully).

Relative practicality

Posted on March 14, 2022 by Cal

when you are not bound by the practical considerations of manual labor and movement, things get weird pretty fast.

I find that in history the choices of the wealthy or powerful pretty much revolve around “what is impossible for the poor” to do. For example, in many times and cultures, being overweight was/is a sign of wealth and status because you can afford to eat well. In today’s western world, cheap unhealthy food is so readily available that many poor people are actually overweight. It actually takes more time and effort to avoid poor eating habits and physical lethargy. Working Joe may not have time to go to the gym. The amount of sun tan one has is a similar situation, where in ancient days you were wealthy if you could afford to sit inside and have your peons farm for you (or whatever) in order to flaunt your paleness. Today since so many work indoors at office jobs or what have you, it almost is the opposite situation where you are only tan if you specifically have the time to go outside. Of course these are generalizations, but I think there is still truth to them. In my experience it is consistent with human nature.

And as most people do not prefer hard manual labor, those undesirable jobs are often the jobs that the undesirables get. The point being, the wealthy are not subject to as many limitations as the poor. Since human nature says that the grass is always greener and that value is determined by circumstance, sometimes the only factor in what the wealthy do is what the poor cannot.

point in case: you would not want to wear any of these if you are feeding the pigs or have to chop a tree. Even apart from the expense of their materials, the sheer range of movement that is limited would be a deal breaker if your priority is to do your job. still fun to draw nonetheless.

but, since the grass is still always greener, the poor often try to emulate what the wealthy do, causing a silly cycle. People are people wherever you go.

Earnets

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Cal

sometimes it’s the little things.

so say you got these big ol antelope ears that probably help you hear pretty good but also would get in the way with a lot of day to day activities. you don’t want any exposed skin in the rain or snow or when beekeeping or whatever. or heaven forbid, having a vulnerable and necessary piece of your physiology exposed during combat. I’m almost kinda surprised the death toll from tripping and falling while wearing some of those medieval helmets weren’t higher for how much they blocked your vision and hearing, but people must have thought the protection was worth it to have done it for so long. To some degree I’m a bit of a hypocrite on this as some designs of armor I’ve already shown in the comic exposes the ears and their frills. There isn’t necessarily a correct answer to this. for me it’s mainly striking a balance between being practical for their world without having it look too silly for our notions. in-universe the explanation is probably they value using their senses more than the extra edge of protection. that said, they would still likely protect their appendages more than I’ve shown if it was real but I haven’t quite come up with a middle ground that I am happy with between ‘efficient’ and ‘cool’. I guess that’s part of the challenge.

that said, enjoy some earnets. they come in many shapes and degrees of the in-vogue just like people would wear in real life. i’m sure men and women would have different styles and there is probably endless controversy about the minutia of design and exposure that doesn’t really matter in the end.
do they have a name? probably.

image

We can take it further

Posted on February 27, 2022 by Cal

some of these had specific design goals in mind, but most are just experimentation to see what I like and what I could potentially use. the colors are interesting, but I need to constantly keep in mind what they will look like in monochrome. silhouette and shape tend to play more to not only my strengths but the comic’s strengths more than patterns and colors. patterns especially can get really tedious for me (learn from toriyama and his regrets with those spots on cell’s design! goodness, what a pain). part of me is interested to see some real wild colors and patterns in scifi work, for the sake of having some design notions that are more alien to our current sensibilities. not everything should be ‘cool’. it’s the same principle why marketing is hesitant to be authentic to, say, some historical hairstyles. I say go for it. depending on your design goals, it is often more prudent to make something strange or alien than something cool. i think that is a huge reason why a lot of scifi design also feels so neutered and tame, because many products catering to those sensibilities often ends up forcing a homogeneous result (not to mention that it is difficult to inspire wonder with the familiar).

a few of these designs will most likely show up again in some form in the future. I won’t elaborate, but I am looking forward to what it entails. I still think i can take them much further 😉

Leveraging an idea

Posted on January 20, 2022 by Cal

I was always fascinated by atlatls. I’m not sure how much they would overlap with a society that uses bows, but whatever. they seem more like a javelin-throwing tool than one that launches arrows.

like bows, the design of atlatls are pretty clever when you think about it. a simple lever provides so much efficiency. I would hazard a guess that whoever invented the atlatl probably had to put up with a lot of naysayers complaining that he was wasting his time playing around with his invention when he could be just learning “how to throw better”. I still think people generally fall into the camps of being learners or innovators, but I will talk about that another time.

An organ excerpt

Posted on January 13, 2022 by Cal

might as well play with some scifi weirdness occasionally. hadn’t really done a dedicated internal anatomy reference, and I would still say this isn’t an official one. 🙂 just playing with some ideas. trying to make them just a bit different from humans to continue the ‘slightly alien’ motif that i’ve gone for.

what is each organ supposed to be? good question. in particular i like the skeleton ideas i came up with, in my mind they are less bones and more spliced stalk-type things. they would be of similar durability to bones but with a different makeup and layout.

when you think about it, there is no real reason that the brain needs to be in the head. maybe theirs isn’t. who knows.

question: do they have a nose?