SHADOW concepts Pt2

Welcome to Pt2 of my posts talking about one of the current projects I'm working on. In the previous post I talked about Sadie and her shadow, and how I created them. I'm going to expand more on it below.

After working though all sorts of other ideas I finally came up with the final design for Sadie's shadow, Athena. She's a clad in armor and acts like a nagging conscience for Sadie, constantly trying to help her improve her life, but Sadie wants nothing to do with her and just wishes she'd disappear.

Poor Athena always tries so hard...

Then there's Theo, he's the shadow of Sadie's mentor, Cain. Theo is a large black dog, often times he is out in public simply pretending to be a normal dog, unlike the picture above. If comics had sound, Theo would sound like an old man, aside from word choice there's not much more I can do about that, unfortunately.

Here's another image of Theo standing next to a prototype version of Glenn, a character who is Sadie's rival, and ally.

I had a lot of trouble with Glenn and his shadow. Glenn is Cain's current student when Sadie shows up and essentially wrecks his life. Everything starts going bad for him around the time she shows up, and her latent potential is greater than his even though he's been training in this kind of stuff for years. To make matters worse, Cain, his mentor/father figure, starts paying more attention to Sadie than him. I wanted the three main characters to form a kind of dysfunctional family, haha.

Anyway, originally Glenn's shadow was named 'Two' and was supposed to be a mirror image of himself, but things have changed around so the image above is a prototype from the previous design.

I messed with a bunch of different ideas, including this kind of Fire Shadow idea. But it didn't really fit, and will actually be transferred to the antagonist of the first book in a way... haha... can't reveal too much yet!

In the end, Glenn's Shadow became something unique- it doesn't have conciousness like all the other shadows in the story. He uses it like a tool and an extension of himself, instead of it being a separate sentient being who's attached to him. This is both an advantage and disadvantage, unfortunately for him.

Well that's it for part 2, be sure to check back for Part 3 soon!

SHADOW concepts Pt1

One of my current pitch projects is something I've been kicking around since I came to LA. I'm getting into comic pages and cover art and preparing to send it out into the world at the moment. I wanted to post some of the early concept stuff here to share with everyone!

This is the first time I drew Sadie, the main character, and at the time I didn't wholly expect it to turn into a full fledged story.

Sadie has pretty much kept the same color pallet from start to finish, although the comic is gonna be in black and white.

Sadie's shadow took a long time to figure out. I was thinking that she may be some kind of spirit or demon companion at this point, so she's taking on a animalistic look here.

I had Sadie's personality figured out from the start. A sullen negative girl who's quick to offer scepticism, she's terrible at controlling her negative emotions, and while she isn't intentionally mean or angry she often comes off that way. She's actually a kind girl, but is too preoccupied by the bad things in her life to focus on anything other than getting by with her 'condition'.

While I had Sadie's personality figured out from the start, her Shadow was another story. I had bounced around ideas that they were friends, that they were a reflection of each other, or that the shadow was a curse of some kind. When going with the curse idea I figured it could go two ways, either they both sympathize with being stuck together... or the shadow would be downright hostile towards Sadie. In the end her shadow turned out very different, and their relationship is not hostile at all, but this sketch was experimenting with that idea.

More brainstorming!

Well that's it for part 1! There's tons more to show from this story in the coming months, so check back soon for part 2!

Mia Sketches and other stuff

Wow, some of these are super old, from before I had completely nailed down Mia's character. It's interesting to see these older sketches right alongside the newer ones. Originally I had been writing this story as a novel, and it's changed a lot since then, so it makes sense that Mia changed too. There's also some thumbnails from a scene I may or may not be using in the final version, either way it's fun to experiment with this kind of stuff

Too Kawaii to Die issue #4

My comic bro Zach has been putting out a subversively bizarre anime zine called 'Too Kawaii To Die' and I've been lucky to be a part of it since the first issue.
If you wanna find out more about it and look up past issues then check out the official tumblr HERE.

Submissions for issue 4 are almost up, so I wanted to show a preview of my contribution this time around.

If you're looking through the old issues and it's your first introduction to this zine then be warned that there's NSFW material in it, so proceed at your own risk.

Grimoire Sketches +2

More sketches from one of the pitch projects I'm working on!