Steam Pirates Loose Sketches

Honestly, I'm not even sure if anyone reads any of my posts on here but I can tell you that they are truly important to me since I have been spending the last year working on designs for this story. This is also an effort to help me develop my writing and inform myself and others of my process in designing characters and elements for this story.

I started developing a very loose concept of what the final group of pirate designs will be for this story. The best description in my head that I could come up with for them was "Hipster Steam Pirates". These pirates will use a steamboat as transportation and use steam power, mist and vapor to create a cloud that they can hide in when fighting enemies. Drinking coffee will also be a part of their lifestyle. They also have an anthropomorphic otter that helps them fight battles and juggles. Orange, earthy brown tones and a distinct black and white checkered board pattern will be their color pallete.

About two weeks ago, I decided to research possible pirate clothing styles, hipster clothing styles, actor personalities and steam powered appliances. I continued more in depth research last night by finding such machines as espresso machines, steam irons, old plastic vaporizers and tea kettles. The point of this research is to gather the specific ideas and element that I would want these pirates to have and decide how to design specific characters using these elements.

For personalities a few actors that came to mind were Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live, Musician Reggie Watts from Comedy Bang Bang and Kumail Nanjiani from Silicon Valley. I only use a few of these people as a guide for the style and personality that I want this group of pirates to have.

It's really been a struggle for me to continue with this project. I really spent a lot of time recently trying to scratch some drawing in a small sketchbook that I carry in my bookbag. What it really comes down to is that I have to motivate myself to do this. No one else can do it for me.

Today, I reflected on the many tiny sketches that I did in my small sketchbook and decided to try to make a few more developed sketches of a few of the characters that I came up with based on my research. These are the three that I did today. They are no where near a completion only a template to work from. I still want to develop how they will use the steam in their weapons and what kind of weapons they will use. It really is a struggle for me but I'm happy and content with what I created today. I will also probably try to design a few more of these pirates.

Neon Stingrays Rays complete design portfolio

I posted this same video on Instagram, showing a compilation of some of the designs that I have been working on for this story. What you are seeing here is some of the work that I have been working on in the past year condensed into a video that is under a minute. Character design sketches, finished digitally colored character designs, costume designs, logo designs, linoleum block prints, weapon designs and a vehicle design. All of which took a lot of time to complete. So if I'm spending a long amount of time on this, it really means whole lot to me. Thank you for taking the time to view this blog. I appreciate your support.

Neon Sting Rays Jet Ski Design

Its been a little while since I have worked on any designs for my story. My goal this past weekend was to do the research, draw and get this vehicle design complete. So on Saturday, I spent a few hours looking up and drawing jet skis. On Sunday, I tried to take what I learned and apply it to designing a stingray shaped jet ski. After several rough sketch on Sunday, I felt I was sort of getting there. I then proceeded to give it another shot on Monday and finally came to a final developed result.

This is the vehicle that Jimmy Fishbone would ride. In the final color version you can see the area between the seat and handlebars where he would keep his bat. I’m thinking for the other characters vehicles I may have to alter their designs to accommodate their specific weapons to fit properly.

Rosa Laguna Design

Another gang member of the Neon Stingrays, Rosa Laguna. I've been chiseling away at this drawing for the past week and a half. 

This is her weapon. A mace that turns into a morning star whip. The neon electricity from her body powers the neon whip that shoots out of the staff. 

Jimmy Fishbone and his Weapon

This is a very Raw Pencil version of this character colored in Photoshop. It was done very quickly and I feel the new story will fit this raw style. However, I did decide to expand upon this character more. I wanted to define his baseball bat weapon a little better

I decided to zero in on this weapon and create a version where it looked like the axe pieces would come out of the sides of the bat from a glowing green center. The crystal piece would fit in the base of the grip area. In order for Jimmy to electrically power his bat and allow the axe blades to protrude, he would squeeze the grip and his tattoos would electrically charge the bat and transform it into a new axe weapon.

This version was meant to be a lot cleaner and emphasizing the character's electric tattoos in addition to his baseball bat morphing into an axe.

 I took this concept a whole step further and created an elaborate animated gif illustrating how the axe would work. In the process, I learned that in order for the axe blades to come out of the green area of the bat, they would need to be a little smaller. So, in the end the axe blades are really not physical blades that need to fit inside the bat. I think of them more as a green electrically charged central crystal that forms the shape of the blades.

This will be another set of characters that can each be a self sufficient energy source in the Swashbuckling Steve Silverado Universe.

Neon Sting Rays High Seas Biker Gang

Developing a High Seas Punk Rock Biker Gang that will exist in the new Swashbuckling Steve Silverado Universe. I don't want to say too much about this gang only that they also have the capability to power electronics with their bodies. I want to start conceptualizing "Sting Ray Jetski/Chopper Bike Hybrid Vehicles" that they will ride on. Also, I have some ideas about possible weapons they may use.

This Character name is Jimmy Fishbone and he is the leader of the Neon Sting Rays. 

From left to right the member of the Neon Sting Rays are:

Tony Mackarel, Jimmy Fishbone and Rosa Laguna

Captain Blackberry Beard and His Crew

This composition that I decided to work on would sum up all of the character designs that I completed in the past few months. My goal was to draw Captain Blackberry Beard on his ship with his Bluejay "Tweakus" on his shoulder and his crew of the Impazoid's behind him.

                                              This is the first rough sketch that I completed.

This is a tighter version that I light tabled over the original sketch. I also decided to copy the original sketch and reduce the size around 90% so you could see more of the chainsword on the character to the left.

I established that The lighting will be at night with a pale moon backlight and the Impazoids almost completely in darkness. Captain Blackberry Beard you will be able to see a little in the darkness but the main focal point in the composition will be his glowing purple beard and the glowing eyes and torsos of the Impazoids. I attached a small cropped area of what the coloring will look like. 

Captain Blackberry Beard's Pirate Ship

I've been doing tons of drawing the past two weeks to flesh out my design for Captain Blackberry Beard's Ship. I would post some of the dozens of drawings that I did to get to this point but it would probably take me all day to scan all of them and upload them on this site.

First, I researched sail boats and pirate ships and started drawing several different styles. I also found a pirate ship model at a local flea market that aided in this design. My friend Joe Dillon lent me a book on Sail boats, my other friend Chuck Kivlen gave me a motorcycle toy that had a Shark's head on it and my friend Tom Johnson gave me a book about the North Carolina Pirates. These all helped me out.

The design that I had in my head was a pirate ship that would be built using old powerlines as masts and a robot shark head at the front of the boat. Bluish Purple would be a dominating glowing color that would indicate that the ship is powered by Blackberry Beard's "Purple Electricity".

Next I researched sharks, shark heads and how other artists handled designing a robot shark. The main focus for me was to establish a simple shape for the shark's head and figure out how it's jaw would open and close. This was the most difficult of the whole design and took the most research and drawing.

While I was drawing the shark heads, I started studying different powerlines and began to notice them more when I was driving my car. There were several that I noticed such as simple ones made of wood, huge cylindrical steel ones and other ones composed of intersecting steel beams that formed X's. For the masts of the ship I decided to go with those designs simply because they almost completely simplify a ship's mast and cargo nets that a pirate can climb. Basically, by using the X design, the mast head not only serves as the support for the sails but can also be climbed by the pirates without the use of a cargo net.

As I was designing the entire shape of the boat, I came to a conclusion that the fin on top of the Shark's head can serve another purpose in addition to simply reinforcing that the ship is a shark. Traditionally in old pirate novels, there is always a plank that pirates make their prisoners walk in hopes of having them eaten by sharks. Instead of doing that with my ship, I decided that the purple segments of the fin would extend out toward the center of the ship and create a series of stairs to the top of the fin. When someone walks up the stairs to the top, the curvature of the fin can be a sliding board that Blackberry Beard forces his victims down which would land them directly in front of the shark's face. Then the shark would chomp the victim away.

Robot Skeleton Pirate Design Process

The initial design process starts with researching robot character designs and skeletons that I know of and creating a drawing based on that research. I immediately thought of the simplified skeleton robots of Mega Man, both Skull Man and Doc Robot. Warhammer 40K's Necron army of Robot Skeletons was also an inspiration in my design process.  

Next I started doing various shape designs of possible Skull Designs. Luckily, about a year ago I attended a Still Life Drawing Workshop at AFA Gallery in Scranton, PA, where I remember drawing a fake skull that was part of one of the still life's. My memory of this session aided in quickly constructing these skeletons on the page. 

At this point, I was looking more at the Necron Army for body construction of my designs but also utilizing the simple spherical joints from the Mega Mans for the connecting of their robot bodies. I also started gradually adding Pirate attire to my Skeletons. First, adding hat's then researching more and adding some clothing. 

I got to a point in the design where I had a very generic Robot Pirate Skeleton and wanted to create more distinct characters from that mold. I started adding sharper edges on their chins to indicate beards, sharp teeth, missing teeth, and indicating hair. Then I started doing tons of research on Pirate costumes, accessories and weapons.

In the final designs, I didn't want to add too much clothes so I modified some of the parts of the legs and arms so they almost look like they are clothing instead of skeleton arms or legs. I also combined traditional Pirate weapons with Power Tools in some of my designs.

BlackBerry Beard's Mechanical BlueJay Design Process

My focus this past week was to design Captain Blackberry Beard's Mechanical BlueJay that sits on his shoulder. The idea is that Captain Blackberry Beard does not want to be like other pirates and have a parrot on his shoulder. He always wanted a bluejay, even though they don't generally live on the high seas. So, he decided to create a robot blue jay. 

This was a rather difficult assignment that I gave myself. So I started from square one. What makes a blue jay a blue jay? I looked for references of blue jays and proceeded to draw them. I tried to capture as many details as possible. Elements of importance that I noticed were their pointed head shapes and markings on their wings.

After drawing bluejays I then asked myself about the mechanics of a bird's wings. How are they constructed? What do they look like when they are opened and what do they look like when they close. I looked at several anatomy charts of birds wings and how the feathers are in section both on the outside and the inside of the wing. I did tons of drawing studies of wings like this. I managed to post a few on here.

The final part of the process was the most difficult because it required me to take what I learned about bird's wings and blue jays and create a functional robot model of a blue jay. So, I would have to approach all of the bird's organic anatomy as if it was a metal robot.

I began to do a lot of research into robot designs, specifically Capcom's Mega Man series of simple shaped robot designs. Subconsciously, the head design seems to be a combination of Magneto from X-men's helmet along with the pointed fin design of the Rocketeer's helment. His body basically is Mega Man's Xbuster hand shape. I also looked at several metal sculptures of steampunk and mech blue jays. However, most of these designed that I looked at did not have functioning wings. Either the wings were stationary and closed or they only remained opened.

I was baffled at first with how to handle the wings but after a few days, I came up with the idea to make a hinge attached to the Blue Jay's body that attaches to a metal arm. As you can see from this drawing above, there is a half circle shape attached to the metal arm. when the half circle shape extends outward, the arm gets longer and opens the wings.

I also wasn't sure about how to attach the legs because generally, birds legs would come out of the front of the torso. But, my design choice was to have the legs come out of the sides of the bird so that it can turn sideways and morph into a cannon airplane like the image below.

Silverado's First Encounter with Captain Blackberry Beard

I really dedicated a lot of time to create this promo piece for my next story in the Steve Silverado franchise, Swashbuckling Steve Silverado. This illustration was to focus on using two light sources, the moon and the glowing bluish purple light from Blackberry Beard's beard. I also created an animated gif to show how the beard would appear glowing.  The point is to show that Blackberry Beard is an electrical powersource that has the capability of charging electronic objects and destroying nature by turning ecosystems into cold electronic environments. His quest is to take over every island on the high seas and turn them into his personal electronic wastelands that he can control.

Captain Blackberry Beard Character Exploration

Just about a year ago, I attended an Animation Design Workshop in Seattle, Washington called Schoolism Live. There I learned from several professional animation production designers. From Sculpture to Character Design, they explained their processes and what they each find important when designing for video games, television and feature length movies. Chris Sasaki from Pixar was one professional whose presentation greatly informed me about how to approach designing my own characters. What stood out most for me was his attention to the pre-designing researching phase. He advised in the beginning to stay on track that designers should briefly write up a description of the character using simple adjectives and ALWAYS refer to this when in the design process. After establishing who the character is in writing, He says to research costume designs and similar actors or characters that may embody that character. Putting together a "Mood Board" or visual collage of all of these references.

When I started designing Blackberry Beard, I envisioned him as being a lot shorter in stature compared to Steve Silverado. He would always be looking up to him but not be afraid of him. In fact, he would be intimidating Silverado. I also researched some steampunk eye pieces for his bionic eye. My idea for that element would be that it can act as a nautical telescope as well as a microscope to examine his victims up close. For his bionic corkscrew arm, I was thinking about the simplicity of the designs of armor from the Mega Man series. To me the corkscrew hand serves as torture device for his victims. I envisoned it slowly getting longer as it gets closer and closer to it's victim's throat. As I was fleshing him out, I thought of the Characters of Tormund from Game of Thrones and Ganondorf from Zelda. He has a threatning and insane demeanor as well as slicked back hair and beard.