Orcha Marstice

Orcha is a character who has been floating around in my head for eight or nine years as a young, aspiring pirate girl. Until Scoundrels, however, I had never taken the time to fully develop her visually. Her basic appearance has always been the same--short black hair, green eyes, freckles, and that scar--and she'd always been wearing just a plain white shirt and torn trousers. When Scoundrels rolled around, though, I knew I'd have to change her design a bit to include some of that sci-fi vibe. As such, there is a holy TON of concept art for her from the last five months, but I'll show you just the basics of what I went through to get to her final design.

These two were the very first pieces of concept art. Orcha is a ragged little kid with a very strong personality, who wears whatever she likes, even if it doesn't quite match or isn't practical. Initially I just wanted to get that "traditional pirate" feeling while giving her a more feminine look, so I gave her a dress, which is just about the least practical thing to fight in. I did play around a bit with the sci-fi elements while keeping traditional pieces like the vest and the headband; at one point she had an entire bodysuit, but it felt too futuristic for her to wear at all times. (I still like it, though--I'm hoping there will be a way to work it into the story at some point.) It always came back to the somewhat silly yet iconic dress. The dress's casual appearance also contrasted well with the big pieces of armor I wanted to incorporate into her design.

I loved the idea of this tiny kid wearing these huge pieces of armor that she keeps as trophies (and that everything she wears is some sort of trophy), but I had difficulty getting the armor NOT to look clunky, especially with the dress and the vest. Since a big part of her fighting style is sneaking and dodging, she needed mobility. I tried different ways of streamlining her silhouette with different vest and armor designs, and even taking the big boots away altogether, but none of them seemed to work very well. The armor designs I had were meant to look like pieces of a naval officer's uniform, but finally I had to sacrifice the idea of her pulling pieces of armor off of an officer for the sake of appearance. The armor became more streamlined and foreign, until the story became that they didn't come from a human species at all, but were in fact of alien design. The dress shrank as well and became a little short on her--she may have been wearing it for years, but she's growing up and can't wear it forever.

After all of that, I've finally arrived at a design and stylization for Orcha that I'm happy with. Other characters have gone through a design process that is similar, but not quite as long and intensive. I'll be back down the road with their designs, as well as the designs of weapons (that sword!), ships and environments you'll see in the first issue. See you soon!

Creating Katris Tikaar

Today, I made it my goal to work on one of the characters we'll be seeing in Ven's story. My plans for him were that he was Ven's major rival in the short story and possibly would be an alien. My main ideas were that he'd be sort of tricky and arrogant.

When I sat down to finally work on the design, I went through a lot of ideas. I knew I wanted a humanoid figure that was lean and quick. I wondered if I should use an animal as a basis for my design, and what sort. First, I tried experimenting with the idea of an arctic fox, but that didn't sit right in my head. Eventually, I settled down and loosely sketched out some basic body proportions, settling to work on sort of 'pushing and pulling' at a human form.

The overall idea I began to develop was that of a semi-reptilian/aquatic form. The design draws inspiration from lizards, largely, as well as things like Bioware's Mass Effect series, or even the Zora race from The Legend of Zelda. The body markings are reminiscent of facepaint or simplified tribal tattoos, and they vary from person to person.

Further ideas developed as I went, and I've considered that they may be an exlusively male race. They are terrestrial beings, but they can also function underwater, and have a set of internal gills.

Then, I went on to clothing. The general idea was something sneaky and futuristic. I wanted him to look prepared, and generally have a high contrast with Ven's look. Clothing tended to cut along the basic shapes I made in the Koroh anatomy. Katris' gauntlets consist of a thick, hard outer plate which remains open on the inside of the arm, allowing for flexibility of movement. Not visible is the leather lining inside them, with straps to secure them snugly to the forearm.

In regards to naming, I chose to derive names from words. Koroh comes from 'corona' (Latin - crown). Katris Tikaar is derived from 'cicatrice' (French - scar) and 'tikari' (Finnish - dagger).

I think that about covers everything so far in the development of Katris and the Koroh race. I'll see you another time with some more information on Ven's story and concepts!

Scoundrels- "On the Edge" Design post.

Greetings! I'm glad to be on board this project, while at the same time shaking in fear at the prospect of working with these talented chaps. As for my project, I was really excited on the idea of having piracy mean whatever I wanted it to. For me, Pirates are really over-glamorized (In a good way,) because people forget, Pirates are not good guys. With that Idea in mind, I wanted to explore how these guys might work. I thought about the modern pirate, and how they pray on weak cargo and passenger ships off the coast of Africa, taking whatever they can get, and most of the time leaving the crew alive. With the idea of them operating waters they know are common routes to large yield ships, I knew this was gonna be a good source material. The pirates in my story, are of course, still somewhat likable (I mean common, why go all out evil here with protagonists?) but they are still falling short of a good creme egg. They operate and attack incoming cargo ships from their routes as they fall in orbit, waiting for the next big hit. They work in an area that is hard to keep track of by self defense systems, between space and the safety of the planets lower atmosphere.

That's the basic gist of my story, so as far as building my team, I drew on my background and some of my personal aesthetics from pirate tradition to make things nice and refreshing. For the Main Character, Cpt. Maria "La Reina" Cruz, I wanted to draw from the Caribbean tradition of pirates, where I can induce some of my Latin flavor (Yeah I-got-some-shut-up.) I then decided, since this was the future, I imagine that we probably had gone into other planets into our solar system and terraformed them into livable conditions. I then thought, since Mars was really the closest and easiest one to get to, that it would be the first one, but since the culture of man had advanced so far, that we had gone beyond our solar system. Making planets such as Mars, probably not exotic. I imagine the poorer countries of the world had eventually left Earth, and gone into Mars due to it's cheaper cost to live. I also Imagined that Mars, was a lot like how it seems now, a hot and vast desert planet. Even with Terra forming, many have a hard time making living. Forcing many people to get into tribes, and small villages and towns to make sure they had enough materials to survive. Maria is from one of these tribes, which existed as a marauding pirate and nomadic tribe. The rest of her past, I will leave to my story. Her Design was mainly inspired by that of the old Howard Pyle school of pirates, as well as a bit of Jack Sparrow and some Classic Punk style (With just a bit of predator int here.)


Now for the rest of the Team, I will just say a bit. Izzie (The Lizzard Man) is a former K'chikar Slave from his home planet K'chik. In his planet, they honor the ways of battle, and a culture of Battle Clans, and War Chieftains prevails their life. Those that fall into deep debt, or dishonor, are forced into slavery, where their sense of sight, smell, and speech, are bound within an iron mask, leaving them vulnerable, and only able to do very few tasks. Those that do survive are rare, and probably were able to brave through their chains, and rise against their former captors. "Trooper" as they call him, was once an accomplished space Marine with the Human United Coalition. Infamous for their tenacity, he was one of a few of their special forces, in charge of taking out high pay load target space ships. He then turned Mercenary, when his Marine life went south, and has ever since, been working with Maria at the helm. Izzie's Design, was influenced by horned lizards, some like the Horned Gecko. Troopers design was much more obvious, being that of giant biker dudes, like the kind that you see at big tough biker gangs.


Their primary Transport, is a large Ship, called "La Muerte Roja", or "The red death." It flies between the clouds, waiting for a chance to strike, and when it does, it delivers their small portable crafts. The main design element, was that of Harley Davidson, giant metal bikes.

And I have one more design for y'all. The design of some rather unfortunate Pilots. The design was primarily influenced by the armor design in Dead space, as well as motor bike and high altitude pressure suits.

Thanks for listening to my mad ramblings, and Hope to post some more juicy morsels for you all in the next coming weeks.

Chao~

Ven Kingsley - Character Design Concepts

Heyo, guys! Here's the color concept for Ven. For a while, I was working on her vest design in particular, and finally settled on this. I debated various cuts and fasteners, probably way more than I should've. I think it was always part of my mental images to include a long, black coat. I'll have pictures of her without a coat in the future, but for now, I'll mention that she's got rolled up sleeves and some woven bracelets on her left wrist.

At the end is a sketch I did of Ven before creating this sheet and finalizing her design.