GLADIATORS!! more or less.
not sure they’ll actually be called gladiators, but that’s basically what they are. I have some fun ideas and some unique (?) twists I’m looking forward to whenever I show them.
GLADIATORS!! more or less.
not sure they’ll actually be called gladiators, but that’s basically what they are. I have some fun ideas and some unique (?) twists I’m looking forward to whenever I show them.
the wife helps with color schemes a lot lmao. color helps but it’s not really my thing. doesn’t really excite me and i don’t think in color. kinda sucks cause I think it would help differentiating the characters but B&W lets you do things color can’t too. color can get a bit messy and miss the silhouettes and body language if you’re not careful. which I am not.
sometimes I just play around with doodles and color those though. but most of what i do is doodles anyway I guess. do what you like i suppose 🙂
As mentioned previously, I spent a couple weeks before ch3 doodling the characters and trying to streamline them more before I had to draw them in motion. In hindsight I wish I did that more for ch2, but hopefully I learned my lesson.
Silne was based off of a sketch i did a couple years ago, and was originally going to be a specific different character. I ended up splitting Silne and this other character who I will still likely use. It wasn’t the right time yet. Though I don’t mention verbally it in the story, you can tell by the two sets of tattoos that she has that she was once married.
The story itself was one of the earlier ones I came up with and remained mostly unchanged, though of course I tweaked some details as I went. It was originally going to have much less of Arbo, the old man, but previous chapters focused quite heavily on two characters and I wanted to branch out just a little bit. I still think I enjoy working with few characters rather than a gigantic cast, at least in a per-chapter basis.
The armor of the rene took a little bit to get down too, since I wanted to show similarities with the armor in ch1 (for both Allano and Rene) without making them identical. they likely wouldn’t have much standardization between troops if this was real life, but you also want to make it recognizable to the reader. The allanos have armors similar to malwan’s outfit from ch1, but the militia organized halfway through the chapter is more rag-tag since they are not professionals. I ended up with the rene’s “shark tooth” helm because I thought it was cool and unique. All of these designs will likely show up in the future to some capacity.
sharp-eyed viewers of a previous post may be able to infer some interesting tidbits about the rene.
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!