based off a bit of maori stuff. more or less. i imagine if these people were real they would tattoo themselves all over the place and try to show them off (like we do), but for reader clarity it can muddy the silhouettes a bit if you aren’t careful. can take a long time to draw too.
also i mentioned this a while ago but it might be a little hard to see for the casual reader. above is the tattoo design for the main characters of chapter 2, more or less in the colors it would actually be. the dad has the ‘father mark’, basically the full tattoo for the family crest. lain has the ‘daughter mark’, a partial version that would be blended with that of her husband’s family mark if she got married. it’s seen as poor form to have the daughter mark take up too much of the face since it’s basically insulting the husband’s family if they got no space to put their bling on there. men and women both get their designs when the come of age, so little kids don’t have them.
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
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.
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.
