Saturday, February 13, 2010

Starkweather character sketches

It's time for a little bit more about my process on Starkweather: Immortal, the graphic novel!

Originally, we were going to print an issue 3 and 4, but as I mentioned in my previous Starkweather post, those plans were changed so we'd just fold that all into the hardback GN collection. And for issue 3, we were starting with a scene that introduces several new characters at a mysterious meeting place.

New characters means "new character designs" of course. My partner-in-infamy Dave Rodriguez is very good about writing vague descriptions of characters and letting me design them visually pretty much as I like, so this is always a fun part of the process. I don't spend a lot of time making the pictures look 'great', per se (or even 'good'!), since they are just for me and Dave. However they do have to serve as a model for future drawings. Here are some of the new characters that are introduced in the first few pages of the former "issue 3"...


Barak


Decarte


Mr. Nyps


Persephone (She's sort of based visually on a movie star from the 1920's & '30's, Brigitte Helm).

I usually fill up a few pages with ideas before I get to this point, and then do a page like this with some front and side views and a bit of distinctive emotion or action the character might display. With that done, I am able to work going forward with a good idea of how these characters look and feel. I did a couple more pages of sketches of each before starting the final drawings, just so I was comfortable with them.

And here is where we first meet Mr. Nyps and his boss, Persephone. This is the first page of chapter 3!




As before, I'd appreciate any feedback you might have, questions, comments, etc. Thanks for stopping by.

6 comments:

sam said...

Now that our interest is peaked, you mentioned on the podcast that it won't be ready for Wondercon?
hope you will have samples or something. The book looks amazing!

Patrick McEvoy said...

Thanks Sam!
Well, in addition to having more here on my blog between now and the actual release, we WILL HAVE SINGLE-ISSUES at Wondercon. We'll have issues 0, 1 and 2 to whet your appetite, as well as more previews of upcoming pages from the hardback.

So I still hope to see you there! :)

And thanks again..!

Spooky Chan said...

J'adore that page! The colors are just beautiful. And i love Persephone's character design. :3

Do like much. More of these inside looks please~!

Patrick McEvoy said...

Thanks so much, Chandra (a.k.a. awesome artist of The God Machine)! If I keep getting nice comments such as yours I will be very happy to do many more. :D

Unknown said...

its very cool

Patrick McEvoy said...

Thank you, Pia! I'm very glad you commented. :) I hope you enjoy the rest of the book too!