TeChameleon has lost his mind! Webcomic Time!

So, as the title implies, I have taken leave of my senses sufficiently to try and start a webcomic. Any feedback on the designs and whatnot would be appreciated; I'm rather new to this section of the boards, so I'm a bit unsure as to protocol.

Designs as they stand now can be found here.

The comic is planned to be (as is probably obvious from the handful of character designs thus far) epic fantasy, or maybe more properly hard fantasy. At the moment, I'm in the middle of the development cycle- I'm hoping to have gotten the design work, the plotting, and at least somewhat of a buffer built by January.

Planning on putting up another thread (in either Writer's Block or World Building, whichever is apropos... or maybe both >.O) for the actual writing end of things, so on to the art (such as it is).

Khan Glaive, the Undying: I'll be adding (Nordic) runes to the... scrip-ish thing he's wearing (does that actually have a proper name?), but the overall feel I was trying to evoke was the stereotypical Wizard's Wizard, something deliberately invoked in-universe (albeit the stereotype as imagined by a slightly idiosyncratic imagination). Tall, thin, with bushy eyebrows, a piercing stare, and a beard you could hide a chicken in. Or at least a partridge. Most likely, he'll have a dusty-blue colour scheme for his robes and hat, and a fairly deep scarlet on his cloak, with the trims being silver or gold.

King Verrore the Handsome: An antagonistic Well-Intentioned Extremist, he was designed to be good-looking (well, hopefully >.<), slender, and I made him black, more or less on a whim. Not sure how well it turned out- my Kenyan former roommate told me that the ears needed to stick out further and to thicken the neck *shrug*. He's going to have a fondness for harshly geometric patterns (in his throneroom as well as his wardrobe), and stark contrasts between black and white in said patterns, with gold accents. Also a recurring 'wing' motif, albeit blurred slightly through his fondness for the aforementioned geometric patterns.

Leertod: Shadow-dragon-things. Mostly intended to look intimidating and nasty. And somewhat emaciated. Not much else to say about them- they're actually recycled from an older project that got dropped. I may rework the rear legs, though, there's something about them that bugs me...

Melancton "Mel" Eli: The Winged Humanoid protagonist. The large eyes with huge pupils are deliberate- they're supposed to evoke a raptor's eye (er, 'raptor' as in a bird of prey, not a (feathered?) dinosaur). He's supposed to be short-ish, with a stocky, fairly heavily muscular build, and while it's not obvious in the pencil sketch, is supposed to be wearing a smooth breastplate (with a wing design, like his boots and sash-pin-thing) under the shoulder cape. His left-handedness is quite deliberate, and is actually a plot point. The lack of detailing on the feathers is also deliberate, and also a plot point, or at least a worldbuilding one, since my version of Winged Humanoids don't have proper feathered wings- they fly using using magic (longer explanation in the other thread, if anyone cares). I may add runes to the axe- I don't want it looking too exotic, since the character is supposed to be practically-minded, and wouldn't see the point in a lot of extraneous decoration that would only lower the weapon's efficiency- but I want the axe to be clearly magical, since it is, and assuming I can work things out, the runes will a) make sense if translated, and b) are part of the magic system anyway.

Did a few expression tests with him; while I've been drawing for a long time, doing it this systematically isn't coming easily.

Portal Mage: No name yet, obviously- actually loosely based on myself, visually, and recycled from the same project that I salvaged the Leertod from. He's wearing the tech gear because (shock and horror) this is going to be a time travel story, the protagonist is jumping into the past (thus the vaguely medieval outfit, although the axe is... eh, go read the other thread if you care). Not much to say about him- he mostly has to stay in the background and look cool, although I do have some ideas for a possible character arc. Oh, and the cargo pants and the vest? To paraphrase Aaron Williams, "If you're time travelling, you need lots of pockets." Ditto learning to teleport, heh...

Sanctum Aerie: Homeland, in a rather roundabout way, of the Winged Humanoid race that Mel is a member of. Goes 'boom' on page two. Tempted to also make this drawing go 'boom' out of frustration at my inability to draw landscapes or landscape features. Supposed to be similar to the 'dome' variation of the Crystal Spires and Togas backdrops you see sometimes, with heavy jungle around all the domes. Actual picture? Eesh.

The Steel Queen: King Verrore's grandmother. Very old (mid-eighties at the youngest), although she still wears her iconic breastplate (claims it's good for her back). Was much more hastily sketched than the others, but it seems to work more-or-less alright, at least insofar as establishing the character. Comfortable shoes, just enough 'regal' bits to satisfy protocol, and a few bits of armour. Also arm torcs, although I don't know if I'll keep those (and you can't see them very well in this picture anyway).

Mau: Rodent Illuminati gypsy ninjas who think they're a sort of Medieval James Bond. An antagonistic (but not villainous) force for much of the series. The outfit is going to be brilliantly colourful, and all the little dangly bits are going to be metallic. They're supposed to be a just a little rotund- like a mouse walking upright, but that's kind of been hidden by the layers of clothing. Also, the tuft of fur on the head is the same colour as the rest of their fur... and I just noticed now that I completely forgot to draw the skirt in on this sketch >.<

S'Thiss Tor: Four-armed snake people with a certain amount of degenerate dragon in them. The bonespur-ish Wolverine Claws are actually inspired by an interview I saw many years ago- guy who played the Power Rangers villain Ivan Ooze in one of the movies (no idea which one) commented that one of his favourite bits of the role was one that most people probably didn't notice- he had extra fingernails on his knuckles that looked a lot like the ones on my snakepeople. There won't be much clothing on any of them- their build simply doesn't make it practical- and there won't be any Non-Mammalian Mammaries, either. Females will be slightly larger and slimmer, and that'll be about it. As an aside, I'm rather proud of how the intertwined-snakes club turned out- the wrapping around the lower-left arm on the picture of the charging snake is actually a strap for the club. And these guys were created for a different project, but ultimately never used.

Vincent Nahkelye: Also wearing more modern attire- I'm going to design 'past' and 'present' ('downtime' and 'uptime'?) outfits for both him and Mel, since they're the ones doing the time travel. Mel's squire (basically. Again, other thread for details), about fourteen. I may shorten the big poof of hair a bit, since I don't really want him looking ridiculous (or maybe emo). Mel is wearing the same sort of boots in his (almost) full-body shot- Vince's, you can see the bottom, Mel's you can see the top. The little talon-things fold into the sole for actual walking. Need to re-draw this one, I think, now that I look at it a little more closely- it's also an earlier, originally-unrelated picture, although it was just a doodle. Neck's a bit funny-looking, the breastplate under his shirt is either thinner than tissue paper or else he's really skinny, and there are a few details missing. Oh well. One more project :/

So... yeah. I really hope that's enough to give you all a general idea of what I'm trying to do with these character designs; next step is to find out how badly I'm failing at it >.<

edited 4th Oct '11 4:05:28 AM by TeChameleon

Just looking at some of them, they see a tad complicated to draw. You might want to find a more simplistic way to draw them, so you can draw them over and over again with ease.

Hmm... well, the Steel Queen isn't finalized, nor is Vincent (and, at least at first, that's not the outfit he'll be wearing anyway). The Portal Mage could maybe use some toning down- I don't think his overall look will change much, but I may ditch some of the techno-widgetry on his bracers, since, as I said, it was for a different series entirely, and doesn't serve any real function in this one.

As for the others, well, we'll see. I'm not getting any alarm bells as of yet- they fit my style comfortably enough that drawing them in a more simplistic fashion might actually be slower, since I'd have to stop and think about things every time >.O

Those lines look nice; have you drawn any whole pages?

So, up from the depths. I haven't abandoned the project, although it's moving at a fraction of a percentage point of the speed I'd like it to (every time I think I'm getting somewhere, I find something else I've forgotten or don't know how to do >.<).

However, things are still proceeding- images are here now.

Lesse, new stuff:

Jon (the) Tomlong: Flamboyant leader of a legendary mercenary band, Jon Tomlong is a master tactician loosely in the mold of Grand Admiral Thrawn- his tactics tend to be based more on reading people and predicting how they'll react than studying supply lines and identifying weak points in fortifications, basically. This is largely because of his past- he was a brilliant con artist for most of his youth and early adulthood. Some of the skills translated surprisingly well to tactical thinking, and he is now quite literally a legend in his own time- while he rarely actively lies, he makes a special point of spreading as much misinformation about himself as he can, cheerfully encouraging rumours of all sorts and playing up his Shrouded in Myth aspects as much as humanly possible. Just as one example, the vest he's wearing in the picture has a (rather badly) mended hole on the lower-right; he claims that someone tried to gut him, but that the thrust was turned aside by 'a lady's favour'- which, in context, was usually a handkerchief or something equally gauzy. What he doesn't mention is that the lady in question was the Steel Queen, and the 'favour' was actually a sturdy breastplate. Oh- some other details- the ugly crosshatching coming out of his sleeves may or may not eventually become lace, depending on how masochistic I'm feeling- that's mostly just a placeholder. The markings on his sleeves are mana channels- anybody who knows a bit about artifact-crafting in that world would immediately recognize them as... well, basically Force Push and an aeromanipulation-based forcefield. He also has a heavily armoured glove on his left hand. Not entirely sure I got the neckerchief... ascot... thingies... right, but they don't look too bad and they're not horrible to draw, so unless they're wildly wrong, I'll probably keep 'em.

Dr. Galen Asa: Going for a magical-doctor feel here. Not entirely sure about the boots; I want fashion to be subtly different in the 'present day' of this world; likely there will be far more long coats (I want to see if I can design a tuxedo with one ) and boots, and zippered shirts have largely replaced button-up ones, that kind of thing, but I don't know if I'm completely sold on how they look with this outfit- looks vaguely like he should be out ranching someplace :/ Assuming I can master the runic script thing without it making me want to kill myself, the scroll he's spinning out will also have glowing runes projecting above it. Not much else to say about this one. Aside from the fact that I can't quite shake the feeling that he looks like a hybrid of Colonel Sanders and Albert Einstein >.>

Vincent Nahkelye Action Test: Vince more-or-less as he's going to appear in the comic. I decided that the original version looked a bit older than I wanted him to- the kid is supposed to just barely be hitting puberty (late bloomer), so I rounded his features some and made him shorter. And not so lanky. I do rather like those boots, even if I know perfectly well that the soles are too thin to tuck the claw-blade things away properly (and the grooves are probably too short anyhow). Yeah, yeah, it's a 'cheat'. His blades are loosely based on the Indian dand patta, although his are much shorter, rigid, and the handle part can separate from the wristlet (there are locking clips inside the grip that latch onto the wristlet) for greater flexibility. Other than that, pretty bog-standard tunic/tabard/tights combo.

Mel Eli Emotion Test 1: Just experimenting- hopefully it's obvious that he's basically throwing his hands up in disgust and walking away. From what, I'm not sure, but it was probably fairly irritating, given that he's usually pretty calm, at least for a Hageli (the particular species of Winged Humanoid that he is a member of). Yes, his axe is supposed to be attached to his bracer-winch-thing. Plot point, once more . Not totally sure that's how the wing fake-feather-things overlap is supposed to work, but that's my best guess, given that these aren't as flexible as real feathers.

Mel Eli Action Test 1: *headtilt* Ergh. Now that I've uploaded this, something looks... off. Aside from the fact that I gave him fingernails on one hand and not the other -_-; The spinny thing is actually supposed to be his axe... well, his axe spinning at blurring speeds, anyways. I'm not sure I scaled it correctly, it looks a little too small. Oh, and it's supposed to be spinning with the end of the wire that connects it to his bracer as the central axis (well, the ball joint connecting the axe to the wire, but eh. Details). And ergh again; now that I've noticed the claw-blade-grooves-being-too-shallow thing, I'm going to have to fix it. It's really starting to bug me.

Page 3: Also going to be the title page- pages one and two will be kind of 'prequel' pages, assuming that I can actually draw the stained-glass effect that I want to. If (and this is a fairly major 'if') I can make my colouring and inking attempts not completely suck, then this page is going to be fairly atmospheric- a nighttime forest, with most of the light coming from the fire that Mel is staring moodily into. The title/logo will be in the blackness above him, outside of the firelight. For the curious, the way he's sitting, his axe is behind the log.

Page 4, Panel 1: I just realized that I completely forgot my planned 'insert' panel. It'll be a closeup of his eyes shifting sharply to the left, with a sound effect crossing from that panel into the main one. He's supposed to have just whirled to his left and thrown his axe in basically the same motion. As you can probably tell from the horrific mass of half-erased sketch squiggles, I am currently cursing myself for designing his axe that way, despite it being the simplest way I could think of for how I wanted it to work. I apparently like punishing myself with dramatic poses from strange angles, so I have no idea how well this turned out. I don't think I screwed up too badly, but, well, letting the world see my baby and all that >.< Oh, and the missing top bit of his left wing will be added in when I digitally ink the page.

Page 4, Panel 2: I'm not sure what's going on here is clear without the motion lines and minor special effects I'm planning on adding. Tempted to just leave it and see if anyone can figure it out without me saying >.>

And for what it's worth, thus far I'm having a hundred times more difficulty with the poses and anatomy (and strictly geometric bits, like the weapons) than I am with the costumes- once I've finally got the figure drawing done, the rest is just details, and finished in a fraction of the time. Granted, once I get myself back up to speed on that, I'll have the dubious joy of revealing to the world how much I suck at backgrounding. It's almost enough to make me give up >.<