adamwarren
patreon
FAILED-PROJECT FRIDAY: CANNIBAL SUN, pt.2
🕑 Added 2019-07-19 13:01:00 +0000 UTCFollowing up from last Friday's initial peek at artwork for my 2003-ish SF comic Cannibal Sun pitched (and, temporarily, accepted!) to Wildstorm's Cliffhanger lane, here's s'more developmental stuff from the (theoretical) series.
These first three pieces are actually con sketches of the project's heroine Skaya, from the now-defunct era when I took commissions home and drew 'em on linen-finish cardstock.
As before, note that these sketches were photoreferenced from that leather jacket.
Interesting that I was taking commissions based on a project that didn't yet exist.
And now, some character design roughs for Skaya:
My artwork was taking a highly stylized and exaggerated approach to "chara design" circa 2002, as you can see.
Very large eyes on proto-Skaya, you'll notice.
Below, studies for Skaya's shorts, which would've featured glowing neon outlines. In a chara design twist that will probably not shock you, she would've had a "toothsome rump," as Empowered's Caged Demonwolf would put it.
Looks like she would've worn barbed wire as a "scrunchy" to hold her ponytail back. Ouch!
And now, a few environmental sketches for the setting of the first Cannibal Sun story, which would've taken place in a hollow "Bernal sphere" space colony:
Tough to think of a worse setting to draw, gotta say. The cylindrical O'Neill space colony from Dirty Pair: A Plague of Angels was much, much easier to draw than a Bernal sphere.
The reference to then-Udon artist Arnold Tsang's signature was the fact that he used a seal for his name, along the lines of the (non-Arnold) image-searched example below:
The first environmental rough mentioned a "Berkey ship," which would've been a none-too-veiled homage to the work of painter John Berkey. In fact, the ship that Skaya commandeers to sail along the habitat's equatorial canyons would've looked like this particular Berkey painting:
As I said, drawing backgrounds along the inner surface of a hollow sphere would've been nightmarish indeed. I wheedled a friend of mine into generating some CG images as reference:
Lordy loo.
In case you didn't follow the link about Bernal spheres, here are a few old Donald Davis paintings I would've used as reference:
Gee, can't imagine why I would've found this series too ambitious to ever make very much progress on. Here's a rough from the first issue of Cannibal Sun: 3K Microlife Blues, which would've been the first miniseries:
I should say, however, that Cannibal Sun was fatally flawed in other ways than just boasting difficult-to-draw environments; maybe someday I'll try and write up those reasons in detail. (I could scan some of its scrawled, fairly unhinged story notes, I suppose.)
Anyhoo!
Wave goodbye to poor, abandoned Skaya, folks; next week, we'll move to another failed project.
Comments
Strypgia
Getting some GITS / Shirow Masamune vibes from the headshots.
Adam Warren
I did find a few pages of roughs from that, so remind me about this if I'm able to attend Heroes next year! And on the SF front, I wouldn't worry about the technical aspect; I've seen plenty of manga that tell perfectly viable SF stories without complex background work.
KranberriJam
Definitely interested in the story notes for this one! I lovelovelove Skaya (if you have any of those roughs still laying around, I'll take some home from Heroes next year!). Sci-fi is so much fun to watch and read, but I am far too scared to try drawing any of the more mechanical side of it.
Ruth and Darrin Sutherland
So many awesome pieces in this post!
Shofie
Lordy loo indeed!
