A Feast of Beasts

One more batch of beasts! First, some sketches from the lovely Lindsay Wildlife Experience in Walnut Creek, which I visited with my buddies from the SF Sketchers meetup group.

 

A couple of weeks later, we went on another sketching outing to San Francisco's world-famous Exploratorium to document an exhibition of Theo Jansen's curious wind-powered "Strandbeests".

Jansen's whimsical premise is that the Strandbeests are living creatures that evolve over the generations, so naturally I had to record the genealogy chart on the wall of the exhibit.

 There was also a demonstration of Scott Parenteau's human-operated Tinspider, complete with atmospheric artificial fog.

The evening culminated in the reanimation of a huge "extinct" Strandbeest. It honestly did feel a little bit occult!

And here's one last beast for the road, courtesy of the Academy of Sciences.

Satanic Mills

And now, some straight-up Pacific Rim fan art, created for a "design a Jaeger" drawing challenge hosted by the AAU Comic Book Club. Since we're meant to represent for our homelands, here's a British monster-slaying robot named after a line from a William Blake poem.

Since Britain is nowhere near the Pacific, I figure they'd just slap something together in the name of global citizenship, then freeze the funding and scrap the whole thing at the last minute. But if we want it to look a little bit cooler, here's what happens when we stretch out the legs...

Battle On, Mekton!

Couldn't resist whipping up a quick sketchy-painty illustration to celebrate the final 24 hours of the Mekton Zero kickstarter. At this point, full color is a go, and we're just waiting to see if the project's wonderful and generous backers can scrape together enough extra dosh to make it a hard-cover...

I asked Mike "Mister Mekton" Pondsmith if he had any suggestions for a scene, and he proposed a monster-versus-robot battle, possibly featuring a Gunfark (which is a giant two-headed lizard). The idea of stealing a march on Pacific Rim sounded great, but I thought I might try a different classic Mekton, the vaguely-described Uru Killer.

While I was waiting for anatomical guidance from Mike, I started sketching up a kind of polar bear/shark/gorilla monster. Then Mike wrote back to tell me the Uru Killer was "like a bear with a shark mouth," plus six legs and neck tentacles. Truly an eerie coincidence!

Mektons

So before it's too late, I should also mention that I'm involved in an ongoing Kickstarter funding drive! Mike Pondsmith and the nice people at R.Talsorian Games are raising funds for a new edition of the anime-inspired giant robot role-playing game Mekton, with the new edition bearing the moniker Mekton Zero. So here's the Mekton Zero Kickstarter page.

At the moment, they're well past their original funding goal, but if they can round up another $4,000 and change then they're going to print the rulebook in full color. Which would be nice for me, because I'm slated to do a bunch of the artwork, including the robot designs!

Speaking of which, this project's given me the opportunity to redesign the humongous Excalibur--one of the robots featured in the second edition of the rulebook way back in the 20th century, with an accompanying illustration by a young and foolish Mark Simmons. Now that I'm old and foolish, it's been a real kick giving this classic 'bot a full-color makeover. I prepared two versions of the Excalibur's color scheme, and the editors eventually went with the gold-based one suggested by my wife Julie. But for your amusement, here's the rejected alternate, in sinister purple hues.

Odds and Ends

Clearing out the metaphorical basement, I present for your diversion and amusement...

A complete lineup of the Mu Gundam robots so far. All to scale, naturally; man, the Kingdam is really huge.

A silly inking demo for my comics class.

Another silly inking demo. Next week I'll be demonstrating ink wash, spatter, finger-painting, etc, which is always fun; plus, that means I'll probably have time to actually finish the illustrations.

Once More Mu Gundam

And here's one last round of Mu Gundam stuff. First, let's fill in a couple more gaps in the good-guy chess ranks, with the robots corresponding to the king and pawn...

The Gardam, as its name implies, is a knockoff of the Ardam. Instead of having super-tough armor all over, it just carries a really awesome shield. And then there's the Kingdam, a monster giant that can take down any enemy, but is normally kept out of the battlefield because it contains the heroes' irreplaceable mandragora root.

In case you were wondering, this is how all these prehistoric giant robots are able to move around. Each one houses an alien plant stem which functions as the equivalent of a nervous system, interfacing between the human pilot and the robot's cogs and gears.

Meanwhile, I figured we needed some characters for this story. I didn't try to get too fancy with the names, and they're just one degree removed from the literary characters I templated them on. Since this is set on the lost continent of Lemuria, naturally there's a lemur mascot.

And here's the obligatory enemy ace, a human traitor who fights on the side of the titanic Atlanteans. Again, I'm not exactly trying to be subtle with the names!

Return of Mu Gundam

I had a lot of fun doing those fantasy-themed Mu Gundam designs, so let's bring on round two!

One thing that seemed a little "off" about the first round was that the bad guys had a strong theme, with the medieval stylings and chess-piece motif, but the heroic Gundams didn't. So instead, I've revived the classic trio of the Gundam, Guncannon, and Guntank, while eliminating the anachronistic "Gun" moniker...

Here, we've extended the chess motif to the good guys, via the original Indian version of the game (in which the rook was a chariot and the bishop was a war elephant). The Ardam is an armored knight; the Bowdam is a ballista-equipped chariot with rocket-punching fists; the elephantine Saydam has giant sabers for decapitating enemy robots. (Credit goes to my friend Mark Schumann for that last concept.)

Meanwhile, here are the Saydam's bad-guy counterparts, the White Bishop Gyan and Black Bishop Gyan. Enjoy!

The World of Mu Gundam

Edit: For the next installment in this series, see Return of Mu Gundam.

I had some free time today for personal projects, so here's a round of robot doodles inspired by a discussion topic on the Gundam Guy blog. The original question was, "What would you like to see in the next Gundam series?" Here's my idea for an imaginary Gundam story, which I'll call Mu Gundam.

The typical Gundam series takes place hundreds of years in the future, but Mu Gundam would be set ten thousand years in the past, making this a gonzo fantasy story with giant robots. It takes place on the lost continent of Lemuria, which is ruled over by a race of super-advanced Atlanteans who came down from the stars and live in a flying city. They maintain their dominion over our human ancestors with armies of giant robots.

 The Atlanteans, of course, look exactly like the bald albino Engineers in Prometheus. I feel like that movie didn't really milk the "ancient astronaut" gimmick as much as it could have, so let's give it another try! Since they're bald and vein-y, they wear pretty wigs to cover their ugly heads, so they're also a lot like the Therns from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series, or the rubber-masked mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

 

 Naturally, the oppressors are resisted by a small team of heroic Gundams, which fight to liberate the lost continent from the tyranny of the wigged Atlanteans. It wouldn't be Gundam if there weren't any Gundams!

Here's a set of alternate color schemes. My wife favors the blue-and-gold scheme for the dragon type, but I'll let you be the judge...

And hey, while I have your attention, why don't I throw in a plug for the Ultrasylvania Vol.2 Kickstarter funding drive? If you like international steampunk intrigue involving famous horror-movie monsters, or you want to support a lovely bunch of up-and-coming comic artists, you have three more days to hop aboard. If they make their target on schedule, I'm reasonably sure I can persuade writer Brian Schirmer to put the Gill-Man in volume 3.

Dangerbirds Are Go!

I've just been watching a bunch of episodes of the late Gerry Anderson's awesome sci-fi puppet adventure series Thunderbirds, and found myself wondering what would happen if you hybridized it with Gundam-style giant robots to create a team of international rescue super-robots. Here's a first installment...

Dangerbird-2 is for airlift and evacuation. It can hover in place under any conditions, and its legs house giant manipulator claws for hoisting cargo. This is the one you'd call for sea rescues in Deadliest Catch.

Dangerbird-3 is designed to deal with fires, radiation emergencies, biohazards, nuclear meltdowns, and so forth. Its fireproof outer armor is filled with cooling systems, and can be jettisoned and destroyed to prevent contamination.

Dangerbird-5 is for excavation, clearing debris, and destroying obstacles. Its tracked lower base can be configured with a variety of heavy equipment.

Demons Demons Demons

Some demonic creature doodles. These first few are ideas for infernal dignitaries, ambassadors, their bodyguards and translators, etc. The hammerhead shark guy in the top right is of course inspired by the Dayak from Enki Bilal's Immortel.

Naturally, the boss of Hell would have to be the Krampus, Prince of Punishment.

A few more. Classic demons would actually be invisible and bodiless, so as you can see, I included a few of these as well.

Finally, some giant robots. I guess I just have a fondness for oversized heads.

Sketchbook Monsters & Robots

A few recent sketchbook pages for your amusement. I've been playing around with an idea about giant robots fighting enormous H.P. Lovecraft monsters, and after briefly trying to make the monsters weird and non-humanoid, I decided to go to the other extreme and visualize them as stuntmen in rubber suits. As it turned out, I really liked the visual of Cthulhu as a Godzilla extra. Some of these are also touched up with watercolors, which is a nice way to fill time while scanning images or watching Project Runway.




The heroic super robots are supposed to be thousands of years old, and so I played around with some ideas based on ancient cultures. This raises the prospect of a hundred-foot-high monster-smashing Venus of Willendorf, which strikes me as a long-overdue direction for the tokusatsu genre.

Robot Monster

Seeing as how I'm a working artist and a giant robot expert, it's high time I drew some giant robots. By way of an opening salvo, here's something I've been playing around with for a while. This is my interpretation of an incredibly obscure 'bot from the Mobile Suit Gundam universe.


More commonly transliterated as Kikeroga, it's written here as Ciqueroga to evoke the oft-whimsical anime approach to English spellings.

Knights 3

Still plugging away on these. First, sketches for Tiram, who's managed to lose those humongous force field widgets on his butt. Perhaps these could be optional add-ons.



With that taken care of, we can start playing with colors for these two.




So now the lineup is starting to look something like this. From here on, I think the main task is going to be making these guys look like they belong in the same story. That may come down to the balance of curvy and boxy shapes...

Knights Round 2

I haven't had a chance to work on these for a while, but let's seize our windows of opportunity as they present themselves. Having nailed down the silhouettes, I've been working on the interior details for my cyborg robo-knights. Lots of scribbles, details, and ideas for design gimmicks...




Which is nice, because now I can play around with color schemes. Here are a few for Lamok. Almost done with this one!

Knights in Question

For various reasons, I've been thinking about character design recently. As a New Year's experiment, I've decided to revisit one of my long-running pet projects and see what happens if I apply a more orthodox design process to the cast of characters. If you check the King of Mars tag on this site, you can see just how long I've been fooling around with various permutations of this story idea!

In a nutshell, it's a sci-fi fantasy story which takes place thousands of years in the future on the planet Mars. As part of the back story, I've posited a glorious Golden Age in which the deserts of Mars were policed by an elite cadre of four cyborg warriors, all but one of whom have since been destroyed. These legendary guardians are based on the three great knights of the Arthurian era (as per Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur), plus the also-ran Palomides who constantly tries and fails to best Sir Tristan and join the elite top-ranked tier. Each one also corresponds to a playing card suit, and its associated Tarot suit, so ultimately they're nothing but a pack of cards.



First up is Gahad, the Lancelot analogue. He represents the suit of Diamonds/Coins and the element of Earth, and so naturally he needs to be massive and solid. In these silhouette-style thumbnails, he gets progressively more bulky and tank-like, but I wanted to leave his legs fairly mobile so he can run around and fight. His signature weapon is a hammer.



Next we have Tiram, the Tristan stand-in. As the Knight of Hearts/Cups, he represents the element of Water and has a fickle, unreliable temperament (just like his Arthurian prototype). Having envisioned him as having a flowing, unpredictable fighting style, I immediately thought of the wiggly flexible swords featured in Chinese wuxia movies, and the rest of his design followed pretty naturally from there. The crescent shapes on his back are force-field generators.



Lamok gave me fits. This character is based on Lamorak, an utterly forgotten Arthurian character whom Malory nonetheless ranks as one of the top three knights. He's the Knight of Clubs/Wands, corresponding to the element of Fire. His signature weapon is a spear, and he's an aggressive fighter who rushes into the fray of battle. I actually had an earlier design for him that I really liked, but in all honesty it was better suited to a different character, so I switched them around and started Lamok over from scratch. After several pages of dead ends, I finally looked up some traditional Korean armor designs and found they were a perfect fit for what I had in mind. Saved by research!



And finally we have Palom, templated on Palomides the Saracen. As the Knight of Spades/Swords, he represents the element of Air, and like his associated Tarot suit he's an ill-fated troublemaker who sows strife wherever he goes. As the sole survivor of the Four Knights, he's a major antagonist in the story. In this case, I simply swiped Lamok's previous design and grafted it onto Palom, since its spiky shapes are a perfect fit for the character. The only element of Palom's original design I've retained is that groovy sword.



So there's the lineup. These four knights, and their characteristic shapes, will be serving as templates for a lot of other characters in the story; you could consider them to be the Platonic ideals of their respective suits. Having nailed down workable silhouettes, I'll now get started fleshing out the design details...