[Art/Comic] Smoke and Mirrors (2013-09-21: Fang Character Design)

[Tezkat]

Ruthless Demon pirates...
Racketeering Mer royalty...
Devious Angel watchers...
Shadowy Cubi conspirators...
Slumbering Ancient evils...
...and a boy caught between them all.

Smoke and Mirrors is an antivillain's coming of age story set against the backdrop of a shadow war between the lords of Furrae's underworld.


I started writing Smoke and Mirrors back in 2005 as the backstory for the eponymous Cubi character I played in RPs here (well, The Nice, actually, as that was waaaaay back before we moved). Orginally conceived as a six novella series, it's something I've gone back to update and rewrite regularly over the years. Although some of the folks I've RPed with here and elsewhere have seen parts of it, it's never been refined to the point that I felt comfortable publishing it for the world to see. However, I've had the urge to try my hand at a proper comic ever since my last Comic Con, and trying to reboot a rich, preexisting story in graphic format struck me as an good way to start honing my craft.


The story is nominally set in the same universe as DMFA (about 150 years before the comic). I actually feel a bit weird about that now, as it's a potentially large investment in creating what's essentially an unlicensed fancomic. On the other hand, it's a poor noob artist's hook to borrow a community for feedback, and I even though I've been gradually revising the story as Amber reveals more lore, I do enough of my own worldbuilding that the two settings won't really share much more than a demonology and ancient history.


I do have a lot of the comic already scripted and storyboarded, but there's still tons of prep work I want to do before I start churning out pages. I'm still working on a lot of the character designs and trying to settle on a comfortable art style that can stand up to such high volume work.

[Tezkat]

Here's the first of the fully painted character designs for the comic:

Meet Fang, a fifteen-year-old Demon pirate and our main character. Well... I suppose you already know he's not really a Demon, but he looks like a Demon and acts like a Demon, so... anyways...




I still suck at clothing, unfortunately, though I like to think I'm improving a little. Expect to see a lot of guys running around shirtless in the comic, though, because I'd much rather draw muscles than jackets.

I've been torturing myself for years trying to find good ways to colour black fur. I repainted  the whole thing like four times until I found a style that I liked. I'll probably be using something like this for the comic itself. It's not really more time consuming than inking and soft shading, and I rather like the textured, painted look. I'll have to see how well it works for the other characters and with backgrounds.

I'm curious to know if anyone has significant difficulty making out details on this image. Colouring with blacks like this sometimes looks bad on certain monitors, and these tests will help me determine how aggressive I need to be with the lighting and contrast.