Bloodlust

As I’ve mentioned throughout my blog, I’m working on a huge sci-fi/fantasy graphic novel trilogy. The interesting thing about this character, is that he is the central starting point for the entire world of the books. I started with a quick sketch (pictured below the final), then wrote a short paragraph of his backstory. Next, I took each sentence of that paragraph, and turned them into paragraphs. As you can imagine, lots of questions arose… and I was off and running on creating a world that made him who he is.

So this was my first attempt at transferring a novel character to the digital painting format. I like the sketchy lines – which I feel is going to end up being a signature style of mine. I tested out solid black areas here too; I like it, but I’m thinking I need to go darker overall. And for the record, he’s not an amputee, nor do I have Rob Liefeld-itis – I can draw feet.

I ended up making this version a little skinnier than the bulky barbarian in the pencil sketch… I think I’ll be going back to the more muscular look as I finalize him though. But this was my first draft, so plenty of things will be changing. I tried to modernize him a bit too, because when I did the pencil sketch, I wasn’t expecting the story to have sci-fi elements.