Tag: silne

Setting the setting

Posted on September 30, 2021 by Cal

As some may have noticed, I don’t like drawing backgrounds. They drive me nuts and bore me to tears. it’s not so much that I can’t, I just don’t care. In particular, I hate interiors.

But I knew that the next chapter would take place primarily indoors. So I did some thinking and came up with a house based on a kiva that meant I wouldn’t have to draw as many angles and could go with my trademark vague background swooshes. Much less painful.

I actually did come up with a floor plan, which I actually more or less stuck to for once. but like wiser artists than me say, don’t let reference get in the way of what works in the panel. I need to follow my own advice.

the pit in the middle is built over a geothermal vent, which can be covered up if needed. I think that the vent also goes to the (unseen) outhouse to make for some less chilly dumps. The entire region has an abundance of these vents and they will show up again. Silne and her husband probably made it themselves years ago. I think you could make it with two people without too much difficulty since you’re basically just digging a pit.

Many people lived/live in these types of dwellings. They are pretty common in motherland along with tents.

Words about words

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Cal

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.

Old lady sneak peek

Posted on November 10, 2020 by Cal

since chapter 2 is wrapping up fairly soon, I thought I should show some of the character design i’ve been working on for the next. starring: OLD LADY

image

geezer represent

mainly working on face stuff and tattoo designs. simplifying things. trying to get rid of tedious-to-draw stuff now so i dont have to deal with it when i’m actually working on the pages. this is more preliminary stuff, i will refine it as i doodle more.

for the tattoos, it can be tough finding a balance between a lore-friendly, interesting design and one that doesn’t muddy the body language or expression. in the real world, if they were this crazy about their tats they would probably cover up a lot more of their bodies that I’ve shown. but like i’ve said before that can really muddy the silhouette and body language for the reader so even if it’s ‘lore accurate’ it’s not always ‘the thing that should be done’.
so anyway i’m currently leaning to the tat design on the lower left. the design on her arms is the one she got as a teenager, the design of her family. inspired by some polynesian designs. the one on her torso (the grey part) and head is the design she inherited from her husband’s line.