Category: BLOG

Character concepts 2 – helmets

Posted on June 9, 2018 by Cal

this is close enough to a character concept in my opinion.

it can be pretty tough sometimes but it’s always fun to have to design clothes and armor and such with non-human parameters. Of course the motherlanders aren’t that different from humans but it’s enough. One of my mains goals with this story and setting is to create things that are realistically exotic but could still conceivably exist within the setting. it’s not high fantasy, so I’m really trying to make designs and such that would believably be created by the people there with their resources and technology.

For instance, very little wood or metal is used in the Motherland world. it’s too rare or hard to shape with their resources. Much of the armor used by soldiers and such is a type of molded resin, along with kevlar-like hauberks made out of durable fibers from the local ecosystem. A wide variety of construction methods and designs exist in this era, influenced by cost and efficiency, and of course, looks. Rich people can afford more expensive and efficient protection than your average town guard. armor evolved in real life to counter the weapons of the day and vice versa, and here is no different. That said, the evolution of their technology can be anachronistic at times compared to our own history.

I really want to try to make things that are realistic-looking while still looking cool or at least interesting. A helmet in real life is designed to protect your face first and foremost above looks (with some less than “cool” results for the sake of efficiency), and boy do these characters have a lot of face to protect. a mask that totally covered their entire snout and ears would be very protective and practical, but looks real goofy as a result. It’s a challenge to find designs that do enough of both practicality and aesthetics, but that’s the fun in it.

Character concepts 1 – Lain

Posted on June 9, 2018 by Cal

I’ll probably end up posting quite a few of the character concepts I do on the site. I think it’s interesting to show, honestly I enjoy inventing new characters and scenarios more than drawing old ones over and over.

This is Lain, a character I’ve had since the very early stages of this comic back in 2010. Her basic design and personality has remained fairly unchanged since then, which is a far cry from most of the other characters that will appear in the comic. she’s around 17 or so. I’m looking forward to writing and drawing her cause I think her circumstances and personality will make for interesting stories. I don’t plan in detail too far ahead, I find it more fun to have some rough ideas of who she is and where her story goes and basically fill it in and wing it from there. planning too much makes it turn out really stale when I do it.

Main things I’m trying to figure out are minor cosmetic choices. Mainly the exact cut of her tunic, collar, and what kind of circlet she’s going to wear. I want something that doesn’t cover her eyebrows, I’m leaning towards either a thin band tiara kinda thing or a thicker band that goes around behind her head, over her frills, and doesn’t connect on the forehead. she’s come of age but is unmarried, and therefore doesn’t have the family crest facial tattoos like Sago or Jos, but has her own family mark on her tail or back or something. if she got married she would have the husband’s crest tattooed on her face as a symbol of the family unity, like Ausrea. If it was real, likely her current tattoo would be somewhere visible like her neck or arms, but in comic visibility I don’t think it looks all that great to have every single woman’s arm or neck tattooed and confusing the body language.

She started out pretty tall for a her gender, but I feel I’ve been steadily decreasing her height the more I sketch her. I don’t know, I kinda think it feels right if she’s just average or slightly below average. her slender build combined with her pretty long (and kinda goofy) frills and tendency to wear baggier clothes has a good look to it I think.

Stay tuned to see her coming up in the story!

Does showing an action condone it?

Posted on April 26, 2018 by Cal

Something I’ve been thinking about lately when it comes to stories is the current temptation of creators to only show things they condone.

for example. personally, I don’t swear. however if I made an historical film about the mafia I’m not going to have Scarface or whoever running around saying “those darn cops”. he’d say something like “those fuckin’ pigs”. Now from my personal views I object to what mr. Scarface says, I don’t think it compromises my views to show his, even if I may heavily disagree with it.

I feel like in this time and place in the world there is almost an assumption that any point of view shown, if not explicitly for the sake of vilifying it, must necessarily be agreeing or promoting it. I don’t think this is true at all. For example, I find no joy whatsoever in inflicting pain on others in my life, but in this comic a lot of people will die- and not in tasteful ways. guilty people and innocent people. this happening has been the case since the dawn of humanity and it will continue to be so until the end. Generally when I show violence in Motherland it is for a reason other than violence for violence’s sake. does showing violence mean I agree with it? I don’t think so. I’m showing something that is, you choose what to make of it.

of course it can be very hard to show events, actions, or what have you in your work without trying to provoke an emotional response one way or another, let alone to help a reader try and empathize with ‘the enemy’. with today’s ease of communication, everybody is [able to be] a critic and often feel an obligation to vehemently agree or disagree. it’s so easy now. being offended is addicting. being offended makes me feel powerful, as it requires you to change. I think the fact it’s so easy to spread your views (via social media especially) without any real consequence is a big reason why so many controversies get so blown out of control now. while I also don’t subscribe to the current notion that “everybody is correct, truth is relative to you”, I don’t believe that every minute controversy one is exposed to needs to elicit an immediate choice, especially one of extreme rejection or acceptance. true beliefs are much more than knee-jerk reactions. sometimes it takes a topic without a clear answer to come to your own conclusions. I just wish more people would do it, and more people would be open to it in return.

that said, of course not every creator will agree with my position, I can only point out trends I see and pressures I myself feel. And of course there is a time and place for the author to condemn or condone whatever trend or action or philosophy he or she feels passionate about – just as there is a time to present it but not necessarily comment on it.

i’ll have to give it some more thought. will probably talk more about it in a post later.

cal

 

Page 31 process

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Cal

(click for full-size)

quick gif of my current process. right now I use photoshop CS2 cause it was free legally. I make a loose sketch “guide” layer first and get the panel layout how I like it before I add the main lines. some panels I do things in different orders but generally I add the lines first and then any background blocks of black or yellow as I need it before adding yellow shading if I need that too. the yellow is there to do whatever i need it to do. sometimes i use it for ‘normal’ shading, sometimes to highlight objects or backgrounds, sometimes both. basically whatever looks best on a case by case basis. I like B&W a lot but I think the yellow is good to help things stand out and makes a very recognizable color palette at a glance. my goal is to have some joe see a page at a distance and go like “yellow and black? must be song of the motherland”. hopefully.

it can be a bit difficult to strike a balance between detail and speed. making it up as i go honestly which is half the fun to me. my drawing style is very loose in the first place so I’m trying to find ways to capitalize on my strengths. too bad i shot myself in the foot on this chapter having to draw tons of buildings and crowds ughhhh

cal

 

Rene text

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Cal

This comic is going to show a lot of different languages and accents. I never was too big a fan of the star trek-like tendency of making characters who are from very different regions speak the same language, especially in eras before mass communication or quick travel. back in ancient times it was common to develop extreme dialect differences even in fairly close areas just do to the difficulty of traveling to other regions. i want to try and show that here.

When a character speaks a language that’s foreign to the other characters, I’m generally going to leave it ‘untranslated’, and will avoid subtitles for the most part. generally the reader will be as in the dark as the characters are. i like this. it makes it seem more real. google translate didn’t exist in ancient times. it also kind of adds to the mystery and sense of wonder by experiencing different cultures, at least i hope.

 

the Rene text above is Gujarati script, a language and alphabet from western India. the font is courtesy of Google Noto, which is a pretty neat project that I would highly recommend checking out if you are also interested in different alphabets and languages. I wanted something foreign (to most americans) but still a believable-looking script. didn’t want something made-up like vulcan or whatever. I browsed through many different ones before deciding on Gujarati because it is pretty unknown in my region and looks very elegant while also simple. fitting for the Renes in the context of the story.

Different languages will be represented by different scripts, but I haven’t finalized most of them yet. I also need to figure out a way to convey accents of languages as well, which is a pretty interesting challenge. will try to avoid spelling out the words (ie texan: “‘ah love ya’ too”) so i’m coming up with other solutions. it’s annoying to read anyway and doesn’t really convey it the way i want.

cal

Malwan, facial recognition, and tattoos

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Cal

Hey all. just wanted to share a couple of things.

 

  

This is the character Malwan that was introduced a few pages ago. He is a city guard, and I imagine is in his late 30s or so. He just has the kind of face that looks like he’s constantly ticked off, but he really isn’t.

When I started solidifying ideas with this comic, I ran into some issues with the character design, which I’ll go more in depth at a later date. However, one of the main problems I kept coming across was how difficult it could be for the casual reader to tell certain characters apart. I find that usually the more alien a character looks, the harder it is to not only relate to them, but it is to tell different members apart. The human brain is incredible at recognizing humans, and we practice at it every day. But, say, try to tell the difference between two iguanas.

 

(credit to the owners for the photographs)

From a logical standpoint, they have just as many differences in their faces as humans do. The second has a much larger jaw, shorter snout, and protruding lower lip compared to the first. It would be easy to recognize a human with these features compared to one without. But from a ‘human’ standpoint, there’s just something alien about these iguanas. Try to pick one of them out from a crowd of iguanas. I doubt anyone could.  Unfortunately this is also a problem with the species for this story, and one I see many people with non-human characters run into as well.

There are several solutions I can think of. Color is easy to do. Bill and Bob are both crocodiles, but Bill is orange and Bob is purple. Simple. Unfortunately, color also takes much longer than B+W, and I just don’t feel like at this moment in time I have the resources to do it.

Specific clothing to a character also helps a lot, helping the reader to associate a color or pattern or a clothing design to a character instead of a face. Unfortunately, without color this is much more limited.

Stylizing or exaggerating features of a non-human character can help, but I find only if you do this to an extreme degree. For this comic, I’d rather not.

What is my solution? Tattoos.

In Song of the Motherland, characters in many of the countries show their family lineage by tattoos on their faces (occasionally, arms or tails). It’s basically like having an ever-present coat of arms. Every family’s mark is unique in designs and colors. Men and women get theirs when they come of age, with men receiving theirs on their face, and women on… anywhere but their face. Later on if they get married, they will get their husband’s mark on their face as well, a symbol of uniting the two families.

I admit this solution may be a bit cheap, but I think it also provides some interesting opportunities to explore cultural depth and stuff. It may not help tell apart a character in a crowd, but between only two people talking or whatever it might just be the push that is needed to help the reader. That being said, I still try to make faces as unique as I can get away with, but this is more for the reader’s convenience than my own.

cal

 

Blog Archive

Posted on November 25, 2016 by Cal