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The assassins from the spine of the world instil deep fear into the hearts of men throughout the lands of Bhumi. Not truly alive, they exist only to take the lives of those they have been hired to. Unwavering focus and unshakeable resolve leads them relentlessly towards their assigned targets. Only the sun god has the power to strike fear into the life stealers.

Viilal is a member of this ageless clan from the land of Shyatha and his target runs fearfully in front of him...

The appearance, movements, clothing, weaponry and expressions of Viilal were developed over sometime. Here is a breakdown of some of the stages:


Firstly our penciller Keith Burns builds the basic stature and movement style of the character through rough sketches known just as "roughs"



Then we develop some of his more advanced and unusual movements in roughs



After that, we produce more detailed pencil sketches of his face. Pencils are usually done intitially in blue, as it is easier to remove the lines later if they are in blue.



Then we produce pencils of his upper torso



And eventually his entire body



Then we move on to the inking stage, where our inker Ken Cheung paints black ink onto the pencilled drawings in order to add in shadow and light, bring out important aspects of definition that have been created by the penciller and in some cases, outline the strongest lines.







In this case we also experimented with adding in a little red colour to create an unusual effect





This last inked image of Viilal that we used for our Character Design Competition is both sinister and somehow amusing at the same time



Finally we scan the inked images into the computer and our colourist Johnny Tam paints the colours in using a WaCom touch screen. In our office we call him the Wizard.

 

For the next few blog entries I will be going into detail about some of the major and minor characters that we have created for the DevaShard storyline.

As much as possible I will also be uploading artwork which showcases the development of these characters from the earliest rough pencilled sketches all the way to the finished people. In this way you will literally be able to see the individual characters of the graphic novel series coming to life from earliest concept to final realisation.

Please drop comments and give me your feedback!

Beyond the animals that roam the lands of Bhumi, there are older, darker creatures that have taken this land as their own since before human memory.

Terrifying Ice Dragons scour the open tundra of Im-Himna occasionally ravaging the nearby settlements and terrifying the inhabitants.

Further South beings have harnessed the giant insects that roam the lands and are now commonly known as the insect riders.

In the bowels of the Earth nameless blind and grossly deformed monstrous creations make their home.

Whilst in the land of Umbrastra rumours continue to persist of a great bone dragon whose impossible life continues to strike fear into the hearts of all...


Ice Dragon




Insect Riders




Creatures of the Underworld




Bone Dragon

 

What kind of world would it be that didn't have animals living in it? Well an empty and rather boring one for a start.

Bhumi in fact is a world filled with a myriad of animals and other creatures. Many of them are similar to those of the Earth (as Bhumi itself represents Earth in an ancient mystical time, before the world was torn) and some of them are vastly different.

I don't want to reveal all the different exciting animal inhabitants of Bhumi now and spoil the excitement of discovering them in the books to come, but here are some of our early concept drawings of a snow dog: