No drawing or writing today. Installed a new stereo in my car so that I wouldn't have to fuss with plugging in an FM transmitter and having to connect my mp3 player, and always having to disentangle all those wires. The irony. Well, even after cruising several sites to prepare, I didn't realize that they made 'wire harness adapters,' so I spent all day cutting, stripping and sorting wires. It wasn't until late into the evening that I caught a point of verbiage on one of the sites that allowed me to realize a wire I'd left dangling was pretty much the power wire. So I finally got it going. Now all I have to do is hunt down a 'mounting kit' so that the new stereo isn't sitting in a gaping hole in my dashboard panel.
But that doesn't mean I don't have new scans. Here's how the work is coming along, and some sketches I did earlier this week:
This is a jet design for the baddies, heavily drawing from WWII Fighter craft like Messerschmidt, Mustang and Spitfire jets, and giving it that Forsaken Stars
cuteshrink once over.
Next is Jono Besh, an ancestor of Sera (have you read the first issue yet?) And you should see him coming up
in issue #2. He's in a flashback sequence that has a strong Victorian sense to it, but he's quite the rough guy, so I dashed him up with that mutton-y 'stache.
And to wrap up, we've got a couple of ambassadors. The dragon is in the first issue, last splash page, and the Faerien Princess Lumirya may show up briefly in issue #2 or somewhere down the line.
So that does it for the character sketches, now I can go on to discuss the scan from the first blog posting, which I threw up quickly 'cause I had to run an errand and didn't explain at all. Actually, it makes a lot more sense if I post it again now that it's a little further along.
Forsaken Stars works on several levels, and hopefully it's unlike anything else that's out there. It has obvious inspirations, and obscure ones and I will generally be the first one to point them out.
One of the obvious ones is The Wizard of Oz. While Sera is much more worldly than Dorothy, and Azzi and Kyton each share traits similar to both the Tin Man and the Scarecrow, and XTL hides her fear much better than the cowardly Lion ever did, they are all on a journey to visit their 'Wizard,' ultimately in this case God himself. But in the second issue of Forsaken Stars, Sera is off to see the President of Ohm, of which Azzi states
he is the true CEO. So this particular piece has our four main characters walking on a brick road of some kind with the city proper of Ohm in the background. Sera never gets to see the current President, but she finds something out that sends her on the actual odyssey of our story. And there will be an alternate version of this piece with the other location as the background, and quite possibly a third version with a more surreal backdrop.
I had a feeling that the cover to the third issue would be best served by color. I've always wanted Forsaken Stars to be a black and white comic. Have you ever seen the old Star Wars comic strips inked by the great Al Williamson? He inked a few of the Star Wars Marvel Comics back in the 80s too, and I've always loved the textures and contrasts he could evoke with simple black and white. I should have cultivated the ability to ink with a brush, but alas, I spent my formative years using #2 pencils and black fine felt tipped Pilot pens. These days I tend to use Gilette .7 mm gel ink writers and Pilot V2 .5 mm pens. Or, I'll just mess with the brightness and contrast on a drawing after it's been scanned, with whatever software is on my comp. But now that Forsaken Stars is on the net, color will be a valuable tool.
in issue #2. He's in a flashback sequence that has a strong Victorian sense to it, but he's quite the rough guy, so I dashed him up with that mutton-y 'stache.
