Get ready for concept drawings galore as we jump headfirst, without regard for personal safety, into the treacherous waters of a new comic project! Way back when I finished up my Ghost short pencils, I went looking for a new script to dig my teeth into. I failed. Luckily, Laura went looking too and she found a really great script resource, the comic script archive!
It didn’t take me long to settle on a new script from the archive because one name among the list of authors stood out, Cullen Bunn. I was already a big fan of Cullen from his work on Harrow County, so I jumped right into his script, Helheim. After reading the script and doing a bit of research, I discovered the title, Helheim, refers to the location Hel in Norse mythology. The Viking’s Hel was kind of an underworld or afterlife, so I’ll be interested to see how this plays into future books in this title. I purposefully have not looked for or looked at any existing artwork from this book, similar to how I handled the Ghost short, just so it wouldn’t color how I created the characters and the panels.
Enough of this jibba-jabba, make with the art! Here come de drawings...
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| Viking Academy 4: Savages on Patrol |
Quick anecdote about the above drawing - this one along with the hell hound a few images down were done on a single sheet of bristol board. They were done using a "hybrid" method - meaning I drew them digitally on my Cintiq and then printed them out on bristol and inked them traditionally. Nifty! Traditionalist would scorn the use of a tablet for drawing and digitalist would bemoan the use of real world ink and brush, but luckily I don't give a shit what any of them say, so f@#k off the lot of you! Moving on...
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| Conceptual vikings - wash works great over 2H pencil here |
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| More concept vikings! Water color and sketchpad don’t play well together... |
Making a return from the first image in this post, it's the hell hound!
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| Because devil dog sounds too delicious? |
Last, but not least, a strange concept that I won't explain for fear of spoiling critical plot points, but you can probably gather something ain't right with Rikard in this drawing. Plus his gal pal Bera looks super sketchy!
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| Franken-Rikard and his erstwhile girl, Bera |
That's all I got, let those concepts knock around in your noodle for a bit and start eagerly awaiting my next update...