I know the blog has been pretty dead lately. Apologies for that. I’ve been rather busy lately working on exercising, not to mention games like Theatrhythm and Darksiders II releasing. There’s plenty to write about when I get the opportunity, but when I do get the time to be productive I’ve been spending it on the comic. I’ll have some new things to show you soon, but I figured I’d take this opportunity to show some concept art.

As usual, I lack a scanner that works with Windows 7, so you get photos taken with my camera.

The beginning of the story will have reference to both the original Breath of Fire game and, through this character, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. This is concept work of the protagonist’s Uncle who awakens the hero during your typical disastrous night that kicks off the adventure. I wasn’t really happy with any of these variants, primarily due to the beard. I’ve instead chosen to go with a sort of mustache instead, though the hair will likely be kept the same as in the above image.

I don’t remember if this character started out as a planned love interest, but in a lot of ways the central theme of the comic is going to be about the protagonist and this young woman dealing with their feelings for each other. I don’t want the girl to just be written with no greater purpose than to be the love interest, though, and thus I’ve been taking great care in crafting her personality. One of the things I wanted was for her to be a tomboy, sure, but even though she likes to play warrior classes that wield giant hammers she is still a fan of cheesy pop music, loves pink and tries to be quite the fashionista (and fails each time). Most of all, though, I wanted to come up with legitimate reason that the romance with the protagonist would indeed be a struggle based on her personal life. Hopefully I’ve succeeded in creating a character that will feel real.

I think I’m going to go with the short-hair variant on the right, just because I like short hair.

I also chose to make her Asian in an effort to add some variety to the color of the cast.

On the left is the image concept for the generic bad guy soldier. In truth, I like how it turned out on the first try so didn’t bother with other variants. On the right side, however, is a character I’ve been struggling with. I wanted to make a conscious decision to do more races than just a bunch of white folks in the main cast, and so I decided the second major male character would be of Indian descent. The tough part was figuring out what that’d look like. My first attempt was with curly hair, but upon using Google to see what long-haired Indian men might look like I came back with, well, the fourth variant on the lower-right.

That’s the one I’m leaning towards for now.

I started with 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons, so like a heathen when I hear “Kobold” I think of little reptilian creatures rather than fuzzy ones. Nonetheless, I chose to go with the name Drakelings instead. I technically drew one in the practice comic I had made earlier, but I wasn’t too much a fan of it. This is second design concept, one I like better and will be sticking with.

I’m making a conscious decision right now to shove dragons into everything I create, because dragons are awesome.

Finally, one of the villains of the comic. I have a quirk in mind for him to keep forgetting words to describe his thoughts and feelings, only those words tend to be huge and uncommon. A villain with a vocabulary, basically, and one larger than my own. Ultimately, though, the villains in this story are one big homage to the villains from the first Breath of Fire.

That is all for now. Next time I should have a pleasant surprise for you all.