some more body shape doodles. just seeing what works and what doesn’t for the story.
trying to design the clothes hand in hand with body shapes, which i haven’t done as much in the past as i probably should. the clothes and silhouette are basically the characters’ “brand”, i think it helps for them to build off each other. it makes the impact more distinct at least.
panel borders always kick my butt. it’s still easier for me to draw characters without worrying about panels even after all this time. a lot of times i like how a character silhouette looks in a vacuum but when it’s on the panel it clashes with other elements. oh well. still learning
there are times when I need to think about mechanisms that may exist in the background of the comic, but are not focused on heavily.
I admit that prisons and legal systems are not a topic that I know a ton about, especially in regards to cultures or times of which I have limited understanding. for most cases like these, I tend to just gloss over them in the story. work to your strengths. and the anthology nature of the stories mean I can flit between different tales without having to commit too much to areas outside of my ‘expertise’. That said, it’s still a fun thought exercise to play with relatively unknown topics (for me) to see if I can figure out how things would work. I try to look at history to see what people actually did, and I try to use common sense. How successful will I be? I guess we’ll see!
though i doubt prisons in motherland are anywhere close to the industry that they are in many places in real life, i also doubt they are rare. probably still rarer, because in most places in the gulf they would just make prisoners into slaves or execute them instead. that way they would either be free labor or permanently out of your hair, a much more pragmatic solution. an exception would be political prisoners, who you could use for leverage or ransom (in the case of a powerful individual, a hefty sum). of course i’m sure the law isn’t going to be just executing any joe schmoe who commits a petty misdemeanor but I doubt prisoners in this world have a lot of rights. if you owe someone, they are gonna try to get their payment – likely often seizure of property or person (indentured servitude, which has been very common throughout history). if by necessity the debt necessitates prison, so be it. or so I would assume.
I’ve heard things about ancient roman prisons like they more or less only existed to hold people for trial. I’ve heard that some of the prisons were in absolute darkness and many who were kept there indefinitely went blind. is any of this true? It is hard to say, no one alive today was there. it is difficult to trust scholarly analysis at face value because humans make mistakes and often manufacture facts from theories. human nature doesn’t change however, and there are constants that I think can be gleaned from any subject.
like anything, I’ll have to learn more about it. or just see how well I can skirt around the issue in the comic
I find silhouettes and shapes just as important as detail. Silhouettes can be tough for me to integrate into the background and still make it look good. always learning.
I find a lot of these have interesting shapes which can help differentiate characters. the types of clothes a character wears is just as important as their body shape and body language, since it helps the audience recognize them. it is their ‘brand’, if you will. it also makes certain poses more or less difficult to draw.
what are half of these outfits? i have no idea. the story of my life: we can take it further.
I really do like drawing and designing clothes. which is kind of odd since I don’t care at all how I dress in real life.
playing with shapes, playing with ideas, the norm. trying to make believable designs that I could see someone wearing in real life, even if they are not necessarily practical. these are intended for the renes, though I may end up stealing elements to use for other nations. the renes in particular do not like showing skin. part of that is their colder environment, but i would hazard a guess that their climate and their particulars of modesty play into each other over time. I think that tended to happen in real life.
patterns add some flavor, but they can be a little difficult and tedious to do in B&W without breaking silhouettes or muddying the body language. if I ever use designs in the comic I have to do B&W versions to make sure they work. but right now the shapes and the silhouette are more important.
i always thought it was odd that in fantasy or scifi it is a lot more common to see “ancient clothes + modern setting” than “modern clothes + ancient setting”. i get that they wouldn’t necessarily have modern materials, but design trends seem pretty arbitrary to time.
i’m sure having logos and stuff is a lot harder without screen printing, but you never know. they might have found a workaround with the tools they had. patterns definitely have existed since the earliest days of humanity. peasants flinging mud and dressed in brown is probably more true to monty python than real life, though some colors of fabric and the details of some patterns would undoubtedly make things more expensive.
shoutout to my man alec for letting me unapologetically steal the design of his duds. like I’ve said before, it’s not about coming up with some original idea out of the blue, it is putting your own spin on it in a way that is creative. doing iterations often helps to weed things out and narrow things down.
playing with some more ideas. can you guess which parts are ripoffs?
played around with him for a bit but just wasn’t feeling where it was going. so I decided I’m gonna make him a dwarf. why not. it’ll add some interest. it’s always fun to do a new spin on something.
he is specifically of the achondroplasia variety, which I believe is the most common type. meaning he has an average sized head and torso with shorter limbs. I tried to give him the forehead and posture that I notice many dwarfs have. I might play around a bit more, but he’s getting there.
Stories existed long before writing. Some of the most ancient texts we know of likely had a long existence as oral accounts way before they were first penned. Oral traditions do rely on the faultiness of memory, yes, but I think they are much more accurate than many give them credit for. Especially if your society is organized around these histories, they would take every precaution possible to prohibit the corruption of information. Many probably trained their whole life to be oral tellers. One particularly interesting technique I discovered recently is that storytellers often skipped a generation (so a grandparent would tell their tale to their grandchild, skipping their child), which I think is really smart. You would have half as many steps for something to go wrong.
Many cultures far removed from the west still have strong oral traditions. It is fascinating how many cultures who had no contact with each other have shockingly similar stories about a global flood.
Anyway, here is some insight to the design process of a major player in ch4, of which storytelling plays a large role. He likely has been a teller for most of his life, and is respected by his people as such. He is their library. They would trust him much more than some joe schmoe telling the same story.
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.
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).
