Little Legends : Character Design : Ricky

Readdressing the main character of Ricky's design.  The first pass of the characters wasn't allotted much iteration time and I thought this guy deserved a little more attention. His design will dictate the direction I take the rest of the characters as well.  Especially the kids. The first thing I wanted to focus on was a shape language that would determine the ease of animation by streamlining portions of the design.  Eventually variation took over.

 

And this was a Chuck Jones phase.

The Drawing Lance Pitch : Little Legends

Recently I threw together a pitch for a children's show (or animated short) for Nickelodeon's open submissions earlier this year.  I based the pitch material on Drawing Lance, and it took me a few weeks to get it to a decent enough spot for submission.  Which is why you haven't seen many comics go up on www.drawinglance.blogspot.com.

When I first started my comic Drawing Lance it was supposed to be about a group of buds adventuring around a game table. Their modern personalities coming to the surface of the game characters. While I sort of pull this off, most of the initial concept was neglected in favor of 3 panel beat comedy strips.  I revisited this idea with the pitch.

In this iteration, I take the personalities of my friends and I and install them in tiny, child versions of ourselves.  The core concept of the show would be to address the trials and tribulations of growing up as a weird kid.  All the frightening experiences of youth, like first kisses, lunch room food fights, pop quizzes and proms would be played out in the kid's weekly D&D-like campaign. Wherein they find the courage and solutions to their little problems.... making them legends in the real world as well as the fantastic one.

Saw I'm calling it Little Legends.

Below are the first few revised character designs of Attar, Henklestout and Ebelnard. Our heroes of Drawing Lance.  The first draft of the kids lineup follows, along with a study of the wizard's, er... study.  And the first half of a short adventure.  (i'll post the rest of it soon enough.)

I would like to flesh this out even further and build a real, legit cartoon show.  This means that Drawing Lance will probably be retired so I can focus on new adventures.

(it's just kinda the Sandlot. I wanted something simple and recognizable for the pitch)

Drawing Lance #42 & #43

New Drawing Lance comic is up and we're nearing the end of this arc (maybe the series for a while too). The plan is to wrap up this project soon so I can make room for new work. Things like new comics, animation and storytelling.  I won't write an obituary for this webcomic just yet, but I have really enjoyed the experience and am looking forward to implementing the things I've learned in future endeavors... which will also be chock full of adventure!

Check out the new comic through the link

DRAWING LANCE

Drawing Lance : #41

The pencils for Partnered Savaging.  Check out the latest strips by clicking the link!

DRAWING LANCE

Drawing Lance : #40

New comic strip is live!  Check out the pencils for this latest strip after the link!

DRAWING LANCE

The Brave Companions

...who are only three but will grow in numbers. Let their adventure be told.

And be told it shall, only at...

DRAWING LANCE

check out the newest comic strip by clicking the link

Drawing Lance #35

This comic from Drawing Lance was actually one of the first strips I ever drew for the series.  In fact, that one silly line, "rustle me from wakefulness" was one of the comical inspirations for the comic as I spouted in my haste to sound encouragaing for the quest ahead.

The rest is history.

DRAWING LANCE

(click for the adventure)

This 3 panel colored strip below was the first draft of the comic even before I refined my method for color.  Since the style of the comic has been evolving I revisited this one to keep it current and the establishing shot of Winterhaven.

Drawing Lance : #33

This week on Drawing Lance I revealed my new style for the comic. This simpler, more graphic approach is to help me produce even more content for Drawing Lance as I want to complete this project by the end of 2013.  I felt that the only way to actually get through the amount of storytelling I have in mind I would need to optimize the process. Which meant cutting the entire coloring process in favor for the tonal approach.

I have great hopes that this will benefit the comic and I hope you all like it as well!  It's been a lesson in artistic evolution and I'm excited for what's to come for this web comic.

Click though the link to read the rest of the story!

DRAWING LANCE!

Here's the last strip I colored which came before it. Just for kicks.

Drawing Lance Inks #31

New comic at DRAWING LANCE! 

Enjoy a look at the inks for this week's strip and click through the link to keep up with the adventure!

Drawing Lance Inks #30

Inks for last week's Drawing Lance strip... ya know, while we wait for the next installment!

Character Design: Drawing Lance: Irontooth & Kobolds

Here are the newest character designs for my webcomic Drawing Lance!  

You may have seen a few sketches of these guys grace my other social networks, but I can finally call them done here!  I noodled over Irontooth for quite a bit. Two of the most troublesome details were his wolf skin cloak, which was just a bit ungainly in his reverse design and a possible goat skull tattoo on his face.  The skull proved difficult because it obscured a lot of his face and distracted from the acting I wanted to get across. So I nixed it. In hindsight I wish I had just put the tattoo on a different location of the character, but maybe he'll receive it later in the story...

Since these characters are encountered in an actual D&D module I've played I wanted to be as true to their description as I could while at the same time making them easy to draw and act with. (except Ninaran! I was going for something entirely different. ;) )

The kobolds went through their own iterations.  I initially tried to drive their design toward a more typical kobold type. But I found that boring. So I looked toward something more off beat. Which lead to the fat, squat alligators with bad tempers!

Character Design: Irontooth: Pencil Work

Here are the final pencils for Irontooth's design.  This guy started off on the wrong foot and he felt too much like an orc than a goblin (and we all know what that's like). You can see an early draft of him HERE. After further exploration of his design I was able to drag a better set of shapes and personality out of him!  Irontooth has some classic fantasy details that make up his appearance. Like a notched battle axe, wolfskin cloak and a painted hand on his face. So he's naturally been very entertaining to draw!  

DRAWING LANCE

Irontooth is copyright WotC and can be seen in the Keep on The Shadowfell module for D&D.

Drawing Lance: Ninaran: Model Sheet

I don't think I ever shared this final model sheet of Ninaran. This is what I load up and work from when drawing and coloring Ninaran for my comic strip. Sometimes I include the inking file as well for best practices.

Drawing Lance #28 Inks

If you didn't catch the latest update to Drawing Lance last week be sure to click through the link!

DRAWING LANCE

Here are the inks to the current comic strip.

Character Design: Drawing Lance: Irontooth

New design for Irontooth for future Drawing Lance strips. The latest iteration didn't feel goblin enough (you can see that here http://www.ricklacy.com/2012/11/concept-art-drawing-lance-iron-tooth.html). He was too large and imposing and I wanted more comical puniness for the comic's first real villain. Ya know, for laughs.  

The wolf's head cloak is working well to illustrate his small stature and I can't wait to get him in the comic strip. Bossing around kobolds and plotting against our heroes.

Irontooth is copyright WoTC and is featured in the Keep on the Shadowfell game module.  You can follow the continuing adventure of my game group as we waded in to the fray at Drawing Lance!

Character Design: Ninaran Expressions

I've been really enjoying drawing Ninaran and exploring her character design.  Here's an expression sheet I've been chipping away at recently.  It's been very helpful in nailing down the nuances of drawing this character and you can see the odd shapes her skull takes on as I move it around. The profile is the trickiest and I noodled that one for a while trying to make sense of it. Ultimately though, I felt I was drifting away from the design just to make it beautiful. So I'm letting the shape speak for itself.  A little odd, but I like it.

EDIT: tooled around with her profile even more. The oddness got the better of me and I updated her shape.

Ninaran is a character featured in WotC's Keep on the Shadowfell module for D&D. I chronicle my experience with that game in my webcomic Drawing Lance.

Drawing Lance & Zynga News

New DRAWING LANCE comic is finally up! Been a long month, brothers and sisters, but I've finally found some time to finish the latest strip of my webcomic, Drawing Lance. Below is the comic in black & white, but you can catch all the adventure by clicking through the link.

In related news and one of the reasons my time has been so precious, is because I'm very involved in a new job. Recently, I've taken a position at Zynga as the Lead Artist on Farmville 2. It's a great experience and offers some wicked growth to my career. So I've been putting a lot of myself in to the project. It's a really great game fronted by some amazing people.

DRAWING LANCE

Drawing Lance: Ninaran

Drawing Lance has been late to update because I've been putting some finishing touches on this girl here. Her name is Ninaran.  She is featured in the D&D module The Keep on the Shadowfell. Her purpose was that of mysterious envoy. But an envoy to what? I'd not ruin the story.  Tune in next week for her first appearance in my webcomic, which chronicles my entrance in to the &D role playing adventure world.

Drawing Lance #26 : Inks

The inked page from the latest Drawing Lance strip.  Keep up with the catastrophe!

DRAWING LANCE

Character Design : Drawing Lance

Here are the first model sheets drafted for Drawing Lance (new comic is up too! check it out by clicking the link). when I first started moving forward with publishing strips. The pre-visualization was fairly close to these final designs as I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted when I started drafting them.  The most evident point is the attention to detail here. I wanted to showcase so many different things with the designs. Armor scars. Buckle methods. Slung blades and stitching. A good foot forward for exploring the character but I wish I had pulled back on this aspect and considered the webcomic medium a little more.  Which is a weekly chore of updating to build readership and content.  Thugwart the Cleric underwent the most drastic change however after I put him in the pipeline. He had too much line mileage and I set to simplify early.  

You can see that the designs in the strip became semi-altered. This is due to the high volume content production of animation, which is how I am now approaching Drawing Lance.  I have a new step in the current arc coming up and I'll take that opportunity to fine tune the designs even more.  In this week's strip I notice that Attar is loosing the love of detail that was evident in early strips.  My next goal will be to fine tune his design so that I can convey hefty, bolted armor with few strokes. But the core of his problem is the undulating shapes he has.  His chest armor is a solid block while his shoulder pauldrons are getting too squirrely.  I'll play with his contrast of color too. Adding more blue to soften the intensity of the red.  I'll get in to his color expressions in a later post. 

Until then, have at thee!

...of the Turquoise Serpent.

His rifle is a hodge podge of game mechanics. Not featured in 4E.

Thugwart is the most solid direction for the character designs.

An original Thugwart design. Note the extremes.