Forsaken Stars Issue Four, Page 11
The origin of our new host, the gremlin Kyton, as told by Azzi. Again, very little paint bucket or masking on this page. Enjoyed hunting down dressing screens for reference.
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Forsaken Stars
The end of the future is here.
You know, the design of the ship is really interesting and the shot from head-on in the last panel is really good. Did it take a long time to get the design right?
The Bluebird always takes a long time to get right! I remember thinking to myself, “now the design has got to be easy to draw, ’cause I’m going to be drawing it over and over, so it should probably be organic-looking in the sense that it has a lot of curves, ’cause that’s what I draw well.” I turned my mind back to memories of a high school chum, Jim Nerison, who would doodle these really cool shapes that he would then shade to give them volume. So I decided that’s how I would create the Bluebird (which at inception I called The Last Rites). What I created was a nightmare for myself, because once I started drawing it from different angles, I realized why the gang over at Star Trek reduced many of their ship designs to basic geometric shapes. *cough*borgcube*cough* I’ve been telling myself for months to get my hands on some modeling clay to more easily render the Bluebird when she comes into frame! A few other thoughts that came into play when creating her? Hot Rods, the kind that showed up on my binder folders in grade school.
A gremlin. I love it! I demand that he wear goggles. 😀
Have you checked out Google Sketchup? It’s a free* 3D modeling program, and there’s no way I could make Westward a daily strip without it. Admittedly, organic shapes are much more difficult to model, but even if you’re looking for basic conglomerations of shapes to use as reference, it might be very helpful to you.
Well, maybe he should have worn goggles… 🙁 Let this be a lesson to you kids!
I will check out Google Sketchup ASAP, anything to speed up my process, which has grown quite insane per page. I’m going to try Issue #5 in a stark, black-and-white, Frank Miller Sin=City-esque style, and see if I can get ahead. As it is I’m switching to “Updates Twice Weekly” instead of “Updates Mondays and Thursdays” until I can get it back to a more consistent release schedule.