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Chapter 1 Concept Art
This is just some behind the scenes on the creation of some of the characters and locale and my thoughts of them. Just figure I'd present it here to give you some insight on my process... or to show you just how weird I can be!
Just the pencil version of the cover to Chapter 1! Figured I'd show off the nice looking drawing first!
So this here is where I went through some ideas for Strife. My initial goal when creating Strife was to give him somewhat spiky hair like most RPG protagonists have. I also wanted to make his hair kind of crazy, hence some of the hair choices. In the end, I went with the style of the 5th choice with the bangs of the 3rd. Of course, he looked like a bed head and as I tried to give his character more personalization, he looked a little too crazy than what I had wanted, so this design is pretty different from his final. I changed the long bangs and made his hair look a little less crazy. You can still see relics of this design in the earlier comics. His design pretty much evolved as it went on, as most characters do.
As for his clothes, they've stayed pretty consistent over the course of his creation as I already had a strong idea of what I wanted for him. The main part of his outfit was inspired by Cloud from Final Fantasy VII (if that isn't obvious!) The scarf pretty much comes from most the fact that a lot of early RPG protagonists loved to sport scarves (ex: Cecil in FF4). As for changes among his outfit, they're pretty minor. The biggest would have to be the gloves. I initially wanted to have a grip around the forearm as well as a design down from the top to the hand. In the end, I went with simplifying the whole thing and extending them past his elbow. It's probably hard to tell here, but I also slightly changed Strife's sheath as well.
One interesting thing to note is that I originally gave him a shield. I scratched that idea when I realized none of my other characters would be toting shields and from an RPG standpoint, it wouldn't really work.
His personality is another thing I had established right from the get go. I just wanted a normal boy living in the weird world of RPGs, expecting to have a normal everyday life, but instead coming face to face with all the weird tropes that embody RPGs and coming to the fact that his world isn't as normal as he thought. Of course I have other plans for expanding his character, but I'll save that for later!
As for his name, I named him Strife as he always seems to be struggling with what's going on with the world around him. As for his last name, it references FF8.
Another sketch of Strife, much closer to his final. His face and hair are significantly different and the shield has been ditched. The gloves and sheath still maintain the design of the initial concept. Did forget to draw his little bag by his side here though. Wonder what he keeps in there?
By now, Strife's design is finalized. I realize that he tends to come off as a serious and snarky character at times, so I figured I might as well draw him doing something silly here.
So in the story, Lance is represented as Strife's best friend. My first goal with creating Lance was to make him look more visually attractive than Strife. See how long that lasted! Another goal with creating him was to give him spiky hair seeing as it's somewhat of a common trope in RPGs for the protagonist's best friend to don some kind of spiky do, so I tried a couple and I hated it. In the end, I figured I'd go opposite of Strife's hair and give him more of a natural, laid back hair-do. I had also wanted to present him as someone more muscular, thus his jaw is a bit bigger than Strife's.
As for his outfit, I already knew from the get go that I wanted to make Lance into a spear user. I wanted to somewhat visually represent one of my favorite RPGs (FF4) where Strife is the sword user like Cecil where Lance is a spear user like Kain. Of course they're nothing like those characters at all! As for Lance's armor, it's a little bit inspired by Dart's armor from Legend of Dragoon, but a LOT more simplified. Lance's design overall has remained pretty much the same. The only big changes I've made would be to his headband, armor, and boots. The headband initially was a lot longer when coming out of the back, but it's been shortened where you can't see the ends coming out of the back if you look at him from the front. For his armor, I've pretty much changed the chest area. There are less gold buttons now and he doesn't have the border around his chest or waist, though this relic can also be seen in the early comics as well. As for his boots, he was initially going to have buckles on his feet as well as his ankles, but I just felt it looked a little silly, so I removed the ones from his feet.
Lance's personality evolved quite a bit when writing out the script for the comics. Initially, Lance was going to play complete opposite of Strife. Where Strife is baffled by how "not-normal" his world is, Lance accepts it as is and plays the tropes down straight. The more I wrote Lance doing this though, the more stupid I realized he looked as Strife was calling him out on things. So to match that, I decided it would be best to make Lance more of crazy character and changed the style of his hair a bit to match. I figured this worked out for the best as only these two characters would be by themselves for a little while and I wanted something to drive the story for a bit until I hit the plot, so making Lance become more crazy while Strife played the straight man seemed like the best way to go. I'm a big fan of that kind of humor so I think it worked for the best!
As for Lance's name, it was a no brainer for me. I named him Lance for two reasons. First, he obviously uses Lances! Secondly, the protagonist's best friend always serves as "the lancer" so it made the choice for his name pretty obvious for me. As for his last name, it's a recurring name for dragoons and spear users in Final Fantasy, so that was also obvious. Can you tell where I pulled a lot of inspiration from?
Just some sketches of Lance and coming with ideas for some spears he could use. Also made some enemy designs just because I can!
Just some more enemy ideas that I've had. Since I'm a huge fan of Dragon Quest, I thought it'd be fun to create enemies that have puns for names. Seemed to fit right in with the kind of universe I was creating.
Ah Shin, the first henchman I came up with the idea for my comic. When creating him, I wanted to have some one who would serve as the loyal henchman, willing to do whatever the villain required, while serving as a bit of comic relief. From the get go I wanted to create some kind of intelligent dwarf, one who relies on technology. At one point, I also wanted him to have the "weird" powers so to speak, hence the idea of him summoning creatures, but I eventually did away with this and gave those powers, in a sense, to someone else I'll be introducing WAY later in the story.
I was really in love with his initial design from the get go, so I didn't really change anything on him. I wanted to give his looks a sense of looking evil, but at the same time make him goofy looking and I think that came along nicely. I was a little bit inspired by Dr. Eggman from the Sonic franchise to get that point across as I feel his presence pulls off the sense of villainy and goofiness quite well. The outfit itself is loosely inspired by Eggman as well as Cid from FF4. I wanted to add lots of zippers along his outfit as well as pouches and bags to get a sense that he constantly looks like he's busy, always doing something.
As for his name, it was a tough one coming up with. Unlike the heroes, I really have no deep meaning for his name. It was just something that I liked that I wanted to stick with. Really, hitting someone in the shins, I consider is sorta like going for someone's weak point and in a sense, Shin is the weakest of the henchmen as we'll be getting into later. That's not to say he's weak though, he's still quite a formiddible foe. He did nuke a town after all!
Just some messing around here. When I figured I'd be combining chibi-esque characters into the comic, I drew up a chibi version of Shin. Also doodling my idea for a crazy outfit Lance would be wearing.
Very basic, very rough version of Lancaster Castle Town. Things pretty much or less stayed the same. The only changes that have really happened between this version and the comic is the fountain has become more basic. I was originally going to do the whole "fallen hero" statue bit, but didn't find it fitting to well with where I was going to take the story. The only other change really is the bank. In the comic, though not obvious, it has become an item store, which was originally going to be at a booth instead.
Sometime at a later date, I'll be putting up the full town layout of Lancaster, so look forward to that!
And here's Melchizadek, a crazy oaf who we'll get to learn about much later in the story! Nothing has really changed on him, he was one character who I knew from the get-go how I pretty much wanted him to look and what I wanted him to play in the story.
As for the many various pig heads, I wanted to give this comic somewhat of a blantant parody mascot, such as how Dragon Quest has their slimes and Final Fantasy has Moogles and Chocobos. Here, it's the pig heads (officially called Porkchops) and their many, MANY palette swapped cousins. Keeping up with RPG tradition, I tried to give most of them names based off of terrible pig related puns.
So here is the "unnamed" Princess of Lancaster! This is actually her alternate outfit to what she usually wears. Could you tell I based it off of Marle's outfit from Chrono Trigger? This may or may not be a sign as to what her true personality might be like, but seeing as this is a parody and not Chrono Trigger at all, maybe how she is might surprise you!
LAST UPDATE
July 25, 2014