Reindeer Games

Merry Christmas, everyone! 

 This was loads of fun to work on. Characters and story are © The Rudolph Company, L.P. 

The Avalanche Callers

When I was a kid, we got to spend one week a year up a canyon near my house with a ski resort nearby. If it snowed, and you woke up very early, you could hear cannons going off. The cannons are intended to remove the threat of an impending avalanche while no one is out and in danger of being caught in it. The least dangerous type of avalanche is one that's already happened.

(From the sketchbook section of my website)

I've had the idea for a sort of alpine character who rides a big saber-toothed cat for a while, but never knew what to do with him. Then a few weeks ago I needed to make a painting. Nothing specific, just a cool, fantasy theme painting. I decided that that might be a pretty cool job for him: go ahead of trade routes in the winter, and clear the way.  I finally got to use my lion rider, and he finally got a purpose.

Lineart

Coat colors

Initially, I felt like I wanted a pretty blown out image--dazzlingly bright snow, a clean white coat, and gold accents. Then I flatted it, and hated it. I decided on either ochre or blue, then asked a few friends which they preferred. The unanimous vote was for blue.  My friend Laura helped me name them, at this point, so meet Nils and his ice lion, Leaper. 

Shaded, mostly done.

I knew things still needed to be done, but by now, I had been looking at it for too long, so I went to a couple of trusted friends, and deviantART for critique and feedback. After a few days of fiddling, I decided it was finally done. 

Voila!

Prints are available at my Etsy shop. 

Fullfiling the Oath WIP's

The latest to finally wade its way out of my personal projects into the finished category. (It's a long and treacherous journey that few survive)

I managed to save work in progress shots on a fairly regular basis, so I thought I'd share.

Critiques implemented.

At this point I put it up for public critique.

I decided I wanted lines after all. Some giant photocopies and makeshift-light-table later, and voila! Lines.

Refining background sludge into actual trees and refining the color scheme a bit more.

Changing my mind a bit.

A very rough lay in of what I thought I wanted.

And before that was a sketch done during break on the back of a calendar. I'll see if I can dig that up and add it...not sure where it is right at the moment.

Quickpaw Progress

Quickpaw is officially storyboarded! Of course, it's just for me, so they're a lot smaller and messier than usual, and the pages get gradually more covered in chicken scratch the further in you go, but it looks like the finished endeavor will be between 130-140 pages. I don't plan on doing the typical webcomic model of releasing pages, then having a book come out at the end. I'm shooting to have the whole thing done before I start uploading. Which means, no missed upload days (which, I know I would as soon as a more important deadline came up) and if you're just dying to know where things go, you can get the book, and well...know the end! So, wait and read for free, or get yourself a hardcopy and some complimentary instant gratification.

Speaking of instant gratification, this plan does mean a later release date, my current goal is to have it done by next year. So, to justify posting about a project that won't come out for a year, here is the first of (probably many) in progress shots.

First, one of my cleaner thumbnail pages, from the beginning of the story.

Next are two of my practice pages, done as exploration, with no reference, trying to 'find' Quickpaw's facial personality. I'd pretty much settled on his markings and general face shape by this page. I knew I wanted him more or less realistic, he's got kind of an overbite, and was experimenting with a few physical details of the Sense, which plays a crucial role in the story and deserves its own post later.

After getting acquainted a bit with Quickpaw, I tried to solidify and refine that information by drawing gestures from photographs, with my mental character filter turned on. The drawings got much more fluid and confident in these pages, but having already done many (many) drawings without it helped me keep drawing QP himself, while looking at photos of very different wolves, coyotes, and dogs.

Happy Halloween!

So here's a sketch of this ghoul...satyr thing. He's got quills on him for defense, which means whatever forest you're in, he's not your biggest problem...

But...who builds all of this?

I got back from a revision retreat through the SCBWI last week. That's Society of Children's book Writers (and Illutrators). (Parenthesis are a personal observation ;) )

The first question out of anyone's mouth after either reading the story or looking at the illustrations from my BFA project is always So...how do animals make all this?

The short answer is: Griffins do.

It's one of those questions that hits at the sweet spot between fantasy, science, art, and writing that is World Building. So you've got an awesome concept: how does it work?

If you're a super geek, and want everything in your world to really work, you need more than the short answer. Sorrek here has the beginnings of my solution: I'd already branched out from the classical eagle-lion hybrid by making him more the size of a large lynx, and giving him the 'flying squirrel' flaps along his sides to help hold up that heavy cat part of him while flying. I'd decided years earlier that Dumarian griffins were smaller (about the size of a large lynx) and more omnivore than eagles or hawks. In keeping with the omnivore diet, I could swing the design toward less 'talon' and more 'finger' than your average eagle, and a semi-opposable hunting talon/thumb. But would this really work?

(Sorrek, 2010)

(Detail)

As time went on, I thought: would eagle hands really have that kind of dexterity? I wanted a solution that would be a little more unique to Dumaria, and to make them more of a cohesive creature instead of just a mashup. During a visit to the natural history museum in late 2011 with a good friend, I found something that perked my interest.

(Image from This Post)

Iguanodons had quasi-opposable pinkies! Of course, the artist in me really wanted to let my griffins keep their hunting talon, so they got both.

The new solution, doodled out.

Of course, now, the question was: how would having 2 thumbs work? Since I wasn't aware of any natural parallel to this new solution, I did what any sensible geek would do: I tried it out. For a whole week, I tried grabbing things as if my pinky went the other way. Uncomfortable at times, but under the excuse that their pinky would be built to do opposable digit things, unlike my human pinky (which is not built to do opposable-digit things) I could now confidently say that this hand model would work fairly similar to ours.

And let them build all manner of cool things for me to draw and write about.

Have you ever faced a similar challenge? I'd be interested to hear how you solved it! Feel free to post to relevant articles on similar issues in the comments.

Wolf pack

Character designs from last year. Just went digging though my old sketchbooks and I still liked them, so I thought they deserved some color.

I like silhouette to show the personality of the character--while there have been some cool designs that come from just 'pushing shapes' around, I prefer to push my shapes a little more consciously.

With the alpha, I figured he'd be a harsh enforcer of rules, and he gravitated toward a strong, axe-like shape, he's probably got pretty good intuition though, as he doesn't seem to trust mr orange eyes there, who I wanted to look fun but maybe not totally trustworthy, or a little flaky. Jack Wickham from Pride and Prejudice comes to mind for him.

The mother wolf originally looked a lot older in the drawing, she lost a few years in the digital transition, but her soft shapes and relatively even silhouette still suggest the reliable, grounded sort of matron that I had in mind to temper mr. Axe-alpha.

The omega's design is all bandy, as if he's going to flop over anything, but I think he'd be the most likely of the group to be the protagonist of a story--it'd be interesting to see an 'after' shot of him after he does some learning and toughens up a bit--I think he could fill into a hero roll if he could just get his tail out from between his legs. And get a few good meals.

The pups...I just wanted to avoid the 'all mini-moms and one mini-dad' trope.