Main Character Concepts

Main Character Concepts First Pass

Six of the major characters from the comic. The main protagonist, Burcke, is in the upper left there. The main antagonist, Ulrich, is in the upper right.

One of the things about my work is that I am heavily reliant on reference to draw things; I'm just not one of those people who draw stuff straight out of their head, and certainly not over and over again reliably and accurately.

With the main characters, I took a great piece of advice from one of my professors and put it into action: find a famous person who resembles your character, and trawl the internet, films, etc, for shots of them to use as reference. To that end, I've built up a small library of celebrity look-alikes for my characters, so that I always have a solid foundation to return to when I get stuck.

There are some pretty heavy differences between what my characters actually look like and the people they're "based" on, but the key facial structure stuff is all I really need.

2nd Lieutenant. Elizabeth Power

I do studies of each character before drawing them into the comic, trying to get their "look" right, figuring out what works, what doesn't, what elements to include or exclude...essentially developing a visual language for each person to separate them from the others.

Staff Sergeant Kenneth Burcke

It's a lot of trial and error to get the right sort of feel for each individual, and I have plenty of odd-looking sketches floating around in my sketchbook.

Burcke, Before and After

Sometimes a thematic or visual change forces me to go back and revise a previously-illustrated panel. In the case of Burcke, his introduction panel has been re-drawn three times now. Further tweaks are still likely.

Power, Before and After

Sometimes the changes are quite minor, but necessary. These last two revisions of Burcke and Power introduced more angular features, heavier blacks, and a general reconfiguration of their style to fit with the rest of the comic.

2nd Lieutenant Isaac Westerfeldt

Isaac's intro panel. He's lit a bit differently than Burcke due to the nature of his tank's interior lighting. Each character has a signature interior light color to separate out their appearances in the comic, as well as give a different 'feel' for each tank they command.