Spacewalk!

All Manner of Comforting

Crew of the Grand Tour

L-R (San Pan, Torankusu, Sun Wukong)

IN THE ‘VERSE

When some invaluable gold orbs were stolen from the moon of Zeta by the terrorist Red Ribbon Army, Zeta’s powerful Capsule Corporation decided to send a retrieval party out on its newest ship, The Grand Tour. The party was meant to include the teenaged heirs Torankusu and Goten, but the impulsiveness of delinquent daughter San Pan meant that the ship left without any of the adults, and instead of Goten included the young martial arts wunderkind Sun Wukong. Rather than return, the three youths decide to take the quest on themselves, flying out to the Border Moons and making their way with martial arts and moxy.

SOURCE MATERIAL

Not everyone’s a fan of Dragonball GT (Grand Tour, natch), but you can’t beat Akira Toriyama’s character designs. I changed very little in terms of clothes and colour schemes.

The Motley Crew series started out with my desire to draw Elgyn’s mercenaries from the far underrated Alien: Resurrection. It progressed to drawing other Whedon-related science fiction characters in a style that lets them fit into the ‘Verse as established in Firefly/Serenity and has since expanded to any motley science fiction crew. My only remaining rule: the original property should not be ‘uniformed.’ (That makes them less than motley)

Aethryndel o’ the Wolvenblade

My first D&D character was the Elfquest-derived, poorly-named, elven warrior Wolfblade. Much later, I revived him as a character in the background of Antequeroth Elmstepper and always intended to play him but never got around to it again. In this guise, he was renamed Aethryndel o’ the Wolvenblade, a knight of Elvendeep. The Wolvenblade was a magical heirloom – a bladed rod that could transform into any type of sword. The idea was that Aethryndel was not a master of any one type of swordsmanship, but instead was a fluid and adaptable warrior who could take advantage of his weapon’s versatility to fight with a claymore one moment, and a rapier the next.

This version was fun to draw, as my imagined Elvendeep uses more Renaissance fashions and armour than your typical fantasy. Doing reflective armour in paint, however, proved harder than I first thought.

Here’s one of the original drawings I did of “Wolfblade” as he was then, revealing very strong inspirations from Elfquest.

The Sagitarriad

L-R, Antequeroth Elmstepper, Jinnai Halfmoor, Jak Mathom.

Many years ago I roleplayed in a mIRC chatroom called #blkdragon*inn. It was a glorious time. Freed from the set narratives of D&D campaigns and the mechanics of dice, I spent years honing character voices and interacting in the “space between adventures”. It was freeform, communal storytelling at its best.

These are three of my characters – although I mainly played Jinnai – a half-Pango bounty hunter. His close friend Antequeroth Elmstepper, or ‘Teq, was a fashion-conscious Elven ranger. They were joined by ‘Teq’s apprentice, Jak Madden (later Mathom) a halfling rogue training for a war. Jak was also a tabletop character I played later (post-war).

Blkdragon*inn had a mailing list that was a prime place for amateurish stories in which your characters took centre stage. My “Sagitarriad” stories mainly consisted of Jinnai and ‘Teq competing at marksmanship while having deep and utterly wanky conversations. They weren’t good, but they were a whetstone in which I honed my limited skills.

I’ve only recently felt good enough to draw them, and so now I can include this group shot on my site!

Cool Dwarves

Spent the last month drawing dwarves. Just couldn’t stop!