My contribution to the horror anthology The Sleep of Reason is finally coming together! Here is a just-about-finished page. It’s about two female astronauts on a very isolated asteroid base, and needless to say things don’t go so well!
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Some real quick, colored doodles I did when taking a break from homework. The gal on the left is Sulla from O Human Star, and the (curiously shirtless) fellow on the right is Oswald Dytel from Knights Errant.
Someday I will do large, complicated illustrations for both webcomics, but at the moment I have Identity Design stuff and client work to get back to. *slinks away*
aaaaaa look at the cute
And that reminds me to reread Knights Errant, ‘cause Oswald’s a badass.
Welcome back to O Human Star! Aaaand, see you next week, because I gotta take off one more update day to finish drawing my Sleep of Reason pages and other things. Can’t wait til all that stuff is done! But in the meantime, enjoy this page.
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Okay, so in lieu of an update today, I’m going to post some notes on how I designed the main three figures of O Human Star, and some of my thoughts on character design. So let’s start with…
CLOTHES AND SILHOUETTES
AL
Al has a very imposing, masculine silhouette that draws the eye up. Many of the details in his design - broad shoulders, arm hair, a strong nose and chin - imply masculinity. His clothes, however, are another story. Al’s clothes, on their own, are pretty gender neutral. Anyone could wear his simple, utilitarian outfits. But on Al’s body they make him look larger and manlier.
Because a relatively short amount of time has passed for Al between time periods as opposed to Brendan, the changes in his design are minimal. Different style of facial hair, similar gender-neutral outfits. I also decided to make older Al just a tad slimmer, for plot reasons.
The iconic black shirt was also originally a reference to one of the real-life figures who inspired Al’s early design: Steve Jobs. Jobs had not yet died when I was first drafting OHS, and needless to say I was very interested in how the world would react to the death of such a huge tech icon.
BRENDAN
Brendan technically has two silhouettes - his younger body and his more mature one. Brendan’s character is shown through the transformation of one into the other. Youthful Brendan is thin and fit, and wears casual clothes. Older Brendan has been affected by time and gravity, and you see it in his silhouette and posture. He wears more mature, businesslike clothes, and it’s important to note that he’s the only one of the three that wears things that are masculine: loafers, cufflinks, and collared shirts. And, to contrast Al’s Jobs, Brendan’s design is based just a bit on Bill Gates.
SULLA
Sulla personifies the conflict between who she wants to be and who she is expected to be, and this is reflected in her design. She has the same facial features as Al - strong chin, beaky nose - but they’re softened with rounder cheeks and hair over her forehead. Her black undershirt and leggings serve an in-story purpose - to hide her synthetic body parts - but they’re also a reference to Al’s own design.
Her silhouette is very feminine, and you get the idea that this is a teenage girl still learning how to dress for her body type. Her miniskirt and belly shirt are cute and girly, but they also accentuate her height and make her look more gangly, awkward, and immature. I also realized later that the contrast of pastel colors with black made her look like some other superpowered girls with a scientist father figure.
All right, Cedreau and I challenged each other to draw our Pokemon trainer personas, and since she drew herself with a very handsome Ghastly, I thought I’d draw my dream team from one of my old Leaf Green games: a Vileplume, a shiny Golbat named Pocky, and my prized Nidoqueen, Dame Judi Dench.
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I’m gonna have O Human Star stuff at table 238 at the Toronto Comic Arts Fest this weekend! If you can make it, stop by and say hi!
