Comic Development, Process and Sketch Dump
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When I first started Recombinant I was looking for a project that would help me grow my skills and push my character drawing and environmental illustration. It was only when I started playing the game Biomutant that I descided the genre and world that I wanted to create.
Biomutant is an is an open-world, post-apocalyptic Kung-Fu fable RPG, with martial art styled combat. It has some really interesting world concepts, and aesthetics however, I really felt dis-engaged with the way that it was trying to tell the story.
So I ended up challenging myself to try and construct a graphic novel with similar themes/concepts but make it my own.
Other References for the Comic
Early Character Explorations
My first step was to determine how I wanted to illustrate the world and characters. My original concept began with human like characters then pivoted to a cartoony anthropomorphic style.
Scout Character Development
While I did have fun with this design, I overall felt that it was way to cute for the personality of the character. So I scrapped the orange-cat concept and decided to go for a more weasel/rabbit like look.
Final Scout
After scrapping the first design, I started experimenting with what I wanted the comics aesthetic to be. I ended up doing some explorations of Disney characters and fell in love with the 2D-cell animated style. Pulling in that style and blending it with an anime aesthetic similar to shows like BNA.
Weirdly having the comic in pseudo grey scale was a happy accident. I was doing expression tests of all the characters and was like; 'Damn... this is a fun and doesn't require me to learn colour theory'.
Early 11525 Experimentations
This character went through the biggest re-design. The best way to describe the early concepts for them would be, sock puppet horse...? Honestly unsure exactly where the inspiration came from.
Final Design
For their design I ended up going for a more bear/wombat look. Studying Tigress from Kungfu Panda as her whole vibe was something that I wanted to emulate in the 11525's character.
Hudo - 414
Hudo arguably went through the least amount of physical redesign, but the largest story/wardrobe fix.
Final Hudo - 414 design
For Hudo's final design I decided to go for more of a cyborg concept. His suit design inspired by mega man/the robots from portal.
Clerks design
Clerk was a character developed later in Recombinants run out of necessity of the story. I really wanted to lean a bit more alien/insectoid in his design.
I had alot of fun developing what an overworked office clerk could look like in the world of Recombinant.
Creature Explorations
When designing the mutants for the comic, I wanted them to be quite distinct and visceral in comparison to the characters and world. One way that I rendered/coloured the mutants in juxtaposition to the mostly monochrome world/characters. I also refined their line work differently to how I do other characters, not using an ink brush but rather just cleaning up the rough sketch/painting them.
Comic page development process
When working on each issue of recombinant I often started with writing down my general idea on the notepad app, roughing out the interactions and general vibes. This is then translated into a super rough thumbnail using pencil and paper which I use as a ref when taking to digital.
A lot of the issues went through multiple re-writes, adjusting tone and characterization. Issue 4 in particular went through I think about 3 re-writes before coming to what I have now.
Digital process
Rough digital sketch lines
Inking lines
Values/rendering of objects
Backgrounds and detailing.
Sketch Dump!
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