Today, I have 2 more character designs I finished recently for the forthcoming Fanstratics game. The Slime and The Cultist, two very different baddies who both offer some great opportunities for shape language and expressions!

The cultist is the fun kind of cultist, you know the kind, the ones who tear their own burning hearts of their chests with ceremonial daggers, and probably summon Cthulu just to get revenge on that girl who turned them down for a date in high school. And I had the chance to go crazy with the pose for this one. And by that I do mean that I was dancing around the studio acting out all of these poses. (To my disappointment though, no Cthulu appeared; and I chalk that up to my absolute lack of a crooked hat made from a material that feels suspiciously skin-like.)

After turning in these sketches, the art director gave me feedback and what was working and what was insane, and from those notes, I made this:


If you look close you can see my lighter sketch of #4 that I was drawing over for this refined version, which borrowed elements from the other 3. With this complete, I went ahead and finished the tight drawing, using a 2H Kimberly’s pencil on Strathmore smooth Bristol.

 

I had a lot of fun with the shadows on this one. If they are evil, they should have evil looking shadows in the cloak!

Next, we have the Insidious Slime!:

This one also featured a lot of great opportunities for shape and expression, so much so that I actually ended up doing 2 pages. (Because 4 slimes is never enough)

 

 

 

As with the Cultist, I was given some notes in response to the previous sketches and based upon those I cobbled together a slightly better version, with the weapons more refined, and the shapes better resolved. I always want to figure these issues out here if I can, rather than getting into the drawing and finding out something is terribly wrong, and now needs to be fully erased and redrawn.  

With this finished, I move on once again to a tight drawing in pencil.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these 2 monsters! (And for those of you wondering where the VODs are, we had some trouble uploading them to Youtube this month but they should be back for our next Fanstratics Monster, the Toad warrior!)