Chabal

Chabal is the villain of HILT. A hard and loyal lieutenant of his master, he values the rule of the King over all else. I redesigned a couple of areas of the armour to that seen in the previous post. His face also has a different feel. While doing the layouts for the comic I came across this heavy eye browed look which gives him a certain level of intensity and sternness.

Knights Sketches

When it came to designing the knights, I already had a good idea for how I wanted the villains of the piece to look, particularly the skull motif on the front. I wanted the overall aesthetic of the characters to have rough, wrought look, a hard cold feel to contrast with the more earthy, curvy feel of the clansmen and women.

Fiona

Here is the final design for the lead character of Hilt. I've given her the name Fiona, a name of Irish origin which mens fair, white and beautiful.

She has remained fairly faithful to the original design that can be see a few posts ago, the only changes being those that cleaned up her design, such as removing the straps that zig-zagged across her, as well as removing a layer from her upper body.

The main change is that of her head and face. I never really clicked with the old face, and resolved to overhaul her to give her more intensity. With her close cropped hair, a theme in this comic by the looks of things, and more angular face I think I have achieved this.

Stay tuned for further updates, including that of the villains of the piece. Head over to artnuggets.net to see more of my work.

Horse Concepts

It's been a while since I posted anything, having been working full time. I have started doing the final artwork for the panels, and I'm really excited to see it come together. Still a long way to go, but I intend to post some samples soon.

In the meantime, here are some development sketches for the lead character and her horse. I was keen to get quite a fluid look into the horses hair and looked to the work of the french artist Claire Wendling for inspiration.

Female Warrior Development Drawings

It's been a while since my last update to this blog, but work continues apace on the comic itself. I am about 3/4 the way through the first pass of layouts. Now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, or at least the first tunnel, I'm finding I'm giving each page less consideration as I just want to get to the end. As such, I've resolved to tackle a couple of pages as a time, which is helping me to focus. As it stands the comic is going to be closer to forty pages as opposed to the intended 22-25 length. I expect to trim it down during editing after I have the first pass complete.

Onto the drawings features on this page, then. Having decided on the sort of look I was after I did a whole bunch of thumbnail sketches in which I played around with different costume elements, clothing and equipment. This sketching process helped me get to know the character a bit better, but I was still unsure and not totally pleased with her. I resolved to get inspiration from one of my favourite illustrators, namely Adam Hughes. I used one of his poses as a base for the top image and this allowed me to concern myself less with getting the anatomy right and focus on the costume. It was upon finishing this pic that I really got attached to the character and sold myself on her aesthetic.

At a later stage I did the page of poses as I was closer to drawing the comic itself. With these images I am again playing around with subtleties in her costume, her cloak in particular. Initially I was going to have her remove it mid-chase and use it as a defensive weapon, but I have decided that it really helps create a sense of motion as well as making her silhouette distinct to that of the knights.

Warrior - Initial Sketches

The warrior character for HILT started off as a man. As with most of my own concept art, it's a case of having a vague idea of what I am looking for and sketching until I uncover the exact look that fits my preconceptions, that matches the feel I am after. The male version just wasn't hitting the mark and so I experimented with a female version.

 I was attempting to make the character look quite formidable and capable while still retaining some sexiness and it wasn't until the sixth sketch that I hit upon a design that I thought had some potential. What I liked about this design was the fluid curves of her hips and legs against the sharp angles of the fur cloak.

HILT Cover Art

This is the cover for Hilt. I spent quite a bit of time getting the composition right. I had initially intended for a more straight on composition with the warrior at the bottom of the piece looking back at the avalanche of knights chasing her, but decided against this because you wouldn't be able to see her face. As such I went for this more kinetic image.

Having settled on a composition the next step was to do the pencilling. I spent a lot of time on this step with the intention of skipping the inking stage and using the pencil scan as the inks. Unfortunately the scan I got was not suitable straight up for the final art and so a fair bit of tidying up was required.

Once the 'inks' were done it was on to the colour and background. This part of the process is great fun as the image comes together. The final act was to increase the size of the warrior herself. This really helped make the image more immersing by exaggerating the depth. Finally, the arrow was added and puts the icing on the action.

Prints of this cover will be available from my table in Artist's Alley at the Brisbane Supanova this weekend. I will be at Pete & Nick's Art Nuggets booth (booth L2) in Artist's Alley.

Check out my parent blog ArtNugget.Net for more artwork...