It’s been a while, but I just felt the urge to paint again. Chapter 3 of “Hockey, Love, & GUTS!” is taking a little longer to finish and the disappointment of unemployment is only exacerbating that progress. But, it’s getting there, and I’m trying to find ways to keep me motivated to keep writing and drawing. So I decided to take the character of Mercedes into a more colorful realm, trying to maintain the line weight and quality that is so strong in the black and white drawings, while giving some dimension and developing a style that fits with my tastes. Also, lately my blog has gotten quite a lot of views from 9 fans (I’m looking at you “9 Movie Boards”) and that’s gotten my riled up to get back into character concept design. So what better way to practice than to use my own characters.

Character Design is of course as hard to describe as art, so I’m not going to get into definitions here, and only talk about and show what I like, and you’ll probably get a feeling for my tastes. It may come to no surprise that I am a fan of the artists at CAPCOM and SNK. I’ve grown up being flooded with their art work, so it’s hard for me to even think without their influence. Recently though I decided to look at my art books again and do some “art studying.” I’ve noticed that while the Capcom artists differ wildly in style, their line work is still the thing that governs a lot of their color and compositional choices. I think that’s what keeps their illustrations feeling “cartoony” and fun, being very realistic, yet not explicitly. Subtlety is key, and I revel in that.

So expect more to come. These didn’t take that long to do, and hopefully I’ll only get faster at doing them. Well, for one, they help me relax from all the story brainstorming I have to do while drawing panels and pages of the comic. So enjoy the progression below of my thought process and feel free to give me tips on that too.

Check the finished piece after the jump