Lionsoul – Character Design for The REPLICANTS Project
The Character Design idea of Lionsoul came from a challenge to create a superhero team based on an existing team. The REPLICANTS Project was created by Dean Rivet. Lionsoul is inspired by Thunderbird of the X-Men. Mikhail Selimovict aka Lionsoul is a survivor of the Bosnian Genocide during the 1990s. During the Srebrenica massacre, Mikhail’s family was separated. Mikhail with his father and younger brother Jacob were taken to be executed. It was at this moment that his powers manifested. He found that he had accelerated senses, speed, and strength. He was able to save himself and his brother by fighting off the Bosnian Serb forces. Although they were able to survive, Mikhail and Jacob were now alone in the world. They have spent their time looking for their mother and sisters. Mikhail has taken the name Lionsoul and helps people when they are in need with his powers.
Here are the different steps I used when drawing the character design for Lionsoul. I first did the pencils. I didn’t want his look to be too superhero. He’s more of a guy who fights when he needs to, he doesn’t want to stand out in a crowd. Next, I scanned my pencils and tuned them into blue lines in photoshop. I then printed them out and inked them. I do this so I can keep my original pencils. I then color those inks in photoshop. I’m pleased with his look. I had fun designing his lion tattoo too.
Aurora Light – Character Design for The REPLICANTS Project
The idea of Aurora Light came from a challenge to create a superhero team based on an existing team. The REPLICANTS Project was created by Dean Rivet. The inspiration for Aurora Light came from Wonder Woman. What I did was look at what makes Wonder Woman a cool character. She has a rich history centered around Greek mythology. She’s an amazon warrior for peace. She’s also in this world, but not of this world. I took these core elements in the creation of Aurora Light and Sylvia Knightley. She is from another world, a world of monsters and angels. but she is on earth as a protector of humanity. Instead of looking at mythology, I centered her world around folklore. She is Lilith’s daughter, also known as Adam’s first wife. Like an amazon, Sylvia comes from a world of warrior women. She chooses to protect humanity from the dark evils that wish to harm it.
Art Process: Here are the different steps I took to create my character design illustration of Aurora Light. First I penciled out the original drawing. I used a .05 HB mechanical pencil. Then I scanned the pencils and turned them into blue lines in photoshop. I printed the blue line version on card stock paper. I used a nib pen and a Kohinoor Rapidograph Technical Pen .50mm to ink it. I did most of the inking with the nib pen though. Once I finished the inking I then scanned it again and sharpened the contrast in Adobe Photoshop. Then I created flats in photoshop and used them to help in digitally coloring the illustration. It was a fun challenge.
Character Biography: Before Aurora Light became the heroine of humanity she was taught to despise the children of Eve. Aurora Light’s given name is Sylvia, the warrior daughter of Lilith. Sylvia’s mother Lilith was Adam’s first wife before Eve. Lilith declared that she was Adam’s equal and would not be his subordinate. She flew away from the garden of Eden to find her own destiny in the world. But God sent three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof to take her back. When she refused they declared that she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day. Lilith’s sons were creatures of darkness and her daughters were born of perfect beauty. Lilith allowed her sons to die and raised her daughters as cunning warriors. Teaching them that the world was rightfully theirs and not the children of Eves’
Through the many centuries, Lilith slowly created an army of her daughters that she planned to take back the world. The strongest of these daughters was Sylvia. Sylvia was a natural warrior. Besting her sisters in training battles and tactical exercises. She was her mother’s most devoted follower, believing that mankind needed to be eliminated. These feelings changed though when she encountered Sansenoy, one of the angels initially charged with taking her mother back to Eden. On one of Sylvia’s daily running exercises, she discovers Sansenoy, and she is taken aback by his angelic beauty. Sansenoy and Sylvia began a secret romantic relationship. Meeting every day during her runs. Sansenoy had a true love for humanity and shows Sylvia the great potential and wonders that mankind could achieve. She slowly sees that humanity is not the great evil her mother has taught her. She starts seeing them as brothers and sisters. She keeps her new insights private for fear of her mother’s wraith.
Her relationship is interrupted when Sansenoy has to leave to prepare for a great battle. She soon learns that the great battle is with her mother and sisters. Lilith was mounting an attack on humanity. Sylvia is given the lead of the army, but she is torn between her loyalty to family and her new love for humanity. On the day of the battle, thousands of her brothers and sisters fight as many angels. Both sides take heavy losses, but Lilith’s army begins to take ground and the battle looks to be swaying in her favor. It’s at this moment Sylvia sees Sansenoy battling her sister Rachael. Rachael overpowers Sansenoy and Sylvia sees him take his last breath. Sylvia decides at that moment she cannot allow her lover to die in vain. She turns on her sisters and fights with the angels to stop her mother’s dark army. The surprise is enough to turn the tide and give the angel’s army the battle.
Sylvia leaves to earth and swearers to protect humanity from all evils, especially her mother. She moves to San Diego as Sylvia Knightley and takes the name Aurora Light when she fights evil. She choose the name Aurora Light in remembrance of the northern lights, where she and Sansenoy would spend time together.
The Hunter – Character Design – From Sketches to Final Ink – Part 3
A few months ago I was looking through some of my old drawings. Ones I did while I was a kid up to when I was in college. I found my original sketches for a character named “The Hunter”. I had redesigned his history and biography a few years ago, so I decide to redesign his look too.
For the past year, I’ve been digitally inking my pencils. I usually use Adobe Illustrator using vector points. I like using the pen tool to create crisp sharp/smooth lines. But for this inking, I wanted to go old school and use a real brush and pen. A process I do not use very often. I had a real blast inking it by hand!I didn’t want to lose my pencils so I scanned the original and reprinted them on card stock. I used Adobe Photoshop to replace the original black lines with blue lines. This way it would be easier for me to ink them.
Here are my final inks of “The Hunter” I had a real blast with this piece. I started with very rough sketches to tight pencils and finally to a finished inked piece. In my next blog post (that’s right I have one more to go) I’ll show you what I did to vectorize my final inks so I can print them at any size without losing the quality of the inks. – Shazam!
The Hunter – Character Design – From Sketches to Final Ink – Part 2
While looking through some of my drawings from ten years ago I found a character design I did for “The Hunter”. From that original sketch, I redesigned his look and biography. The newer design sketches were a little rough, but they were intentionally quick to get my thoughts down on paper.
Once I had the look for The Hunter down, then I could start having fun. I decided to draw him in an action pose, jumping at a target with his gun and sword ready for battle. I tried playing with shadows, perspective, and highlights. I’ve been refining these elements in my drawings. They have been helpful in me finding my own comic book art style.
The Hunter Blue Pencils by Ralph Contreras
Now that I’ve got an awesome action pose drawing I was ready to ink it. I’ve been digitally inking my pencils for the past year. For this drawing, I wanted to go old school and ink with real ink, but I didn’t want to lose my original pencils. So I scanned the drawing and turned the pencil lines blue in Adobe Photoshop (being the crafty graphic designer I am). I then printed the pencils on card stock paper and was ready to ink traditionally.
Right on! My next post will show the cool inking of this Pin-up. So keep an eye out. -Shazam!
The Hunter – Character Design – From Sketches to Final Ink – Part 1
I was going through some of my old sketches the other day. I have a personal treasury of character designs and comic book drawings. Back in the day, I would love to come up with new characters. It seems I don’t draw as much now as I did back then (and I draw a lot now). I’d draw and come up with a new character every day.
On one of my inspirational days, I can up with a character named Nemcromn. You can check out some redesign sketches I’ve done of him in a previous post, Nemcromn Character Design Sketches On that day I came up with both Nemcromn and his main adversary “The Hunter”. Here are the initial drawings of “The Hunter”. I had just seen the movie Blade and was really into Brom art at the time. I think his design is very much inspired by both.
The original design of The Hunter was done sometime between 1998-1999. Ten years later in 2009 I found my sketch and decided to change it up a bit. I redesigned Nemcromn and wrote a new extensive biography for him and gave him a new adversary “The Radiant Guardian”. I decided to change “The Hunter” too. He was now an assassin/hunter who now works for Nemcromn. The Hunter and a new character I came up with, named the Grimm Creeper would now be Nemcromn’s most deadly assassins always trying to outdo each other in his favor. You can check out Grimm Creeper’s original and resign on a previous post Grimm Creeper, Hand Scythe Weapons
With the redesign, I made him a little bulkier. These are quick sketches to get the feel and general look of The Hunter. My drawing style has changed in 10 years when drawing a quick idea sketch I want to get his look down. These drawings look a little rough, what I’m trying to do is get my ideas down on paper before I lose them. I’m not as concerned about making them look perfect on these initial drawings, that will come later when I draw him in a pinup of some sequential pages.
In my next post I’ll be showing a Pin-Up drawing I did of “The Hunter”. This will be a more defined drawing. So keep an eye out.
Real Name: Beta – All Terrain Environmental Suit version 5 Aliases: Beta-A.T.E.S 005 Occupation: All Terrain Environmental Suit Group Affiliation: None Height: 6′ 2″ Weight: 325 pounds Eyes: none Hair: none
Known Powers: Mining Tools Special Skills: None Weapons: Mining Tools
History: The Beta-A.T.E.S 005 is the 5th generation All Terrain Environmental Suit. The suit is designed to be used in space, asteroid mining, deep sea exploration, and any extreme environment.
Real Name: Jason Eagleson Aliases: Firebug Occupation: Costume Criminal Group Affiliation: The Holidays Height: 6′ 1″ Weight: 189 pounds Eyes: Green Hair: Brown
Known Powers: None Special Skills: Arsonist Weapons: Flamethrower Suit
History: As a child, Jason loved playing with fires and matches. He would light up trash cans, weeds, his toys, and anything he thought might make that wonderful pop sound he loved. At the age of 17, Jason was well known for setting fires, so when the local church burnt down and took half his neighborhood Jason was the prime suspect. He didn’t start the fire though, it was the local bully Alex Masterson and his little gang. They knew that they could burn down the church for a laugh and blame it on Jason, and that’s exactly what they did. Jason was arrested and with the witnesses of Alex and his friends was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Jason’s life in jail was hard, and there was nothing he could burn. Jason was able to work in the prison cafeteria. He thought to be finely found his way to play with the flames again, lighting the burners on the stove. On his first shift that’s exactly what he did. He played, and he started a fire that burnt the kitchen, the prison, the other inmates, and himself. In the chaos, a badly burn Jason escaped the prison with a few other inmates.
One of the other escaped inmates was James Barton a.k.a Acid-Trail. James had connections with Boss Holiday, a very well-known crime boss who specialized in costumed criminals. James helped a badly burn Jason by taking him to one of Holiday’s safe houses. Holiday’s people tended to Jason’s wounds and helped him recuperate. The only condition for the help was Jason would now work for Boss Holiday when he was well.
Jason Eagleson was given a fire-creating flamethrower suit, on this day Burn was born. Burn is now one of Boss Holiday’s most loyal generals in his small army of costumed criminals.
The Daily Comic Sketch Challenge – Dee Dee Twins (Batman Beyond)
The Daily Comic Sketch Challenge! Here’s the 5th quick 30-minute daily sketch. This drawing was done on Monday, October 12th of the Dee Dee Twins from DC’s Batman Beyond! I took a little longer than the allowed 30 minutes. Probably about 45, but there are two characters.
So for this drawing, I decided to do the Dee Dee twins. They are fun and full of energy. so I drew them jumping toward us. I used my H2 drafting pencil and started with light lines, then added more defined lines. The drawing came out a little stiff again. It might be the way I approach drawing females. This exercise has defiantly shown me that I do approach my drawing in different ways. I’ve decided that I’m going to practice a very quick gesture drawing every day of the female form. Like the beginning warm-up, I did in figure drawing class back in college.
The Dee Dee Twins haven’t been in any comic books, they have appeared in the Batman Beyond – Return of the Joker DVD and a two-part story in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon. Turns out they are actually Harley Quinn’s future granddaughters.
The Daily Comic Sketch Challenge! Here’s the 4th quick 30-minute daily sketch. This drawing was done on Friday, October 9th of Modok (Mobile Organism Designed Only for Killing) from Marvel Comics. I took one day off the challenge, but came back with a really fun sketch!
The last sketch I did of the Enchantress didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped, she came out a little too stiff. So for this one, I decided not to get to stressed and just had fun with it. This was actually the sketch I’d been looking forward to drawing the most. I worked with an H2 drafting pencil and a simple eraser. Started off with very loose lines and added details along the way. To be honest, this drawing took a little longer than 30 minutes, it took me about 45. But I think that’s ok. My goal with this exercise is to help in speeding my drawing but also to loosen up.
When I started reading comics it was Marvel comics. So I totally knew and have read comics with Modok. Modok’s just a supergiant head on a hover chair, that’s fun and cool. I didn’t realize there was such a fanbase for the character. I found numerous websites dedicated to him and Marvel Comics even has an official Modok blog. When Marvel created a new Super-Villain Team-Up limited series, Modok was the main character. I had lots of fun with this drawing and I think it shows. – Shazam
