Captain Blackberry Sketches

I'm happy that my friend Dave Corrado gave me a steampunk eye scope to use as reference for this character.

Steve Sketches

I've been super busy with projects at school lately and trying to squeeze in some time to work on sketching Steve. I also just recently sent out my final design to get printed as a cardboard cutout. I should be receiving that in the mail in a week or two. 

Finished Steve Silverado Cardboard cutout design

This is my finished cardboard cutout design. It took me a while to do since I am not that great with Illustrator. It was a pretty complicated process. I'm not going to lie. I probably could have completed it in Photoshop in a quarter of the time it took me to draw everything with the pen tool in Illustrator but it wouldn't be in vector which would be the problem since I need to scale it so large. Next, I want to take the  time to work on a vector drawing of the title logo. Everything takes time.

Sam Bouka sketches

I was spending some of my time drawing more of Sam Bouka, the Otter Pirate. For me, each drawing is about developing a character's personality.

6 foot cardboard cutout of Steve

I spent a lot of time this past weekend trying to figure out the Affinity Designer Program on my Ipad so I can create a large vector image of a Drawing that I made of Steve. I came to the conclusion that while Designer is a great program merging both vector and raster together, its a little difficult to use on an ipad as are most vector programs. I ended up creating this one in Illustrator using the pen tool. I cant seem to figure out a way to easily add shading to my drawing in Illustrator that's why I kept it in flat colors. I tried using a clipping mask but it didnt work right. I guess the only way to do it is to just use the pen tool and redraw the entire shape of the shadows which takes forever.

Capt Blackberry Beard's Chainsaw Arm in action

I'm continuing to develop my character, Captain Blackberry Beard. Following through with his chainsaw arm, I created two versions of this illustration, one with blood and one without. It made me think about my audience for the story, which would be 13-15 yrs old. At that point I thought about the violence relating to the story. Maybe it's not a good idea for him to have a chainsaw arm or maybe I can just get rid of the blood. Or maybe there could be two versions of the story, one that is more dialogue heavy for teenagers and another that is more violent for an older audience.  At the same time, maybe I can focus more on the human attacking robot violence instead of the human attacking human violence for the story. These are just some current thoughts that I have about this project.

Final Color Blackberry Beard Robot Arm Designs

These are what the various drillbits inserted into Captain Blackberry Beard's arm would look like.

Final Capt Blackberry Beard Arm Designs

Around 20 drawings later, I think I figured out how I want his arm to work. Like the original design that I posted, it will have an empty hole on the end where he can insert different drill bits. In addition, there will be a compression area between where the drill bit goes in and the elbow joint that will allow his arm to reach out longer.

These are a few drill bit ideas that I think would work for his character. The chainsaw drillbit would be for close combat. The top right drillbit he would use if he needed to hold something or work on. Also, since his arm has the ability to extend, it can serve as a grappling hook to reach higher places or easily grab adversaries from far away.

The corkscrew is his signature tool. He uses that to torture his victims. Since his arm is able to extend longer, this tool can prove to be more effective for him to move the corkscrew closer and closer to his victims and lure them off the deck for his shark pirate ship to devour them.

More Blackberry Beard Arm designs

Try to come up with more ideas with how the arm would work. I'm thinking now that there would be fingers around the hole where the corkscrew would come out but the fingers would bend the opposite way causing the corkscrew to spiral out of the barrel. My initial idea was thinking about how a corkscrew actually works and applying that idea to my design. Still a lot more for me to think about and conceptualize. I'm also thinking that maybe a "hookshot grapple" could shoot out of the barrel too. It would be helpful for him to shoot it at someone's legs to pull them down or he could use it to easily reach higher places on his ship should he need to. I'm trying to think of practical applications for his arm. Now that I think about the drill bit arm idea it doesn't allow his corkscrew to get longer and spiral out of his arm. I think the corkscrew should be an important part of his character.

Blackberry Beards Arm design Revisited

My idea with these new designs is for him to have a functioning robot hand that can morph into a drill bit clamp that would allow him to add modifications to his arm such as a drill bit, corkscrew or any other possible tools that can be inserted. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 illustrate  the concept.

Steve's Nightmares

It's been a while since I posted any artwork relating to the future of Steve Silverado. He can't sleep because of nightmares that he has been having about his own future and where his life is headed.

Silhouette Designs

I learned in school and from professionals how important a clear readible silhouette is when designing a character. It's a very simple concept but they illustrate the type of clothes a character is wearing and emotion a character is feeling that is determined by a specific pose.

The first silhouette images show all of the major characters in the story accompanied with the important color theory highlighted by each character's personality and element they bring to the story.

The second series of silhouettes focuses on the single character of Steve and illustrates his complexities. I was looking at two particular artists when I came up with these drawings. One of the lead character designers of ,"How to Train Your Dragon" and Kung Fu Panda", Nico Marlet. When he designs a character, he creates small thumbnails of poses and narrative elements to bring his character to life. Animal Character Designer Dave Coleman also creates thumbnails in this way as well.

Pirate gangs framed prints

I'm happy because today I just finished framing my 3 prints of the pirate gangs that will be in my story "Swashbuckling Steve Silverado". Each print shows the gang's logo, members and vehicle that they use.

Swashbuckling Steve Silverado Teaser

This is the final concept for the development of my story. The next step for me is that I am going to create a book with all of the art that I have done so far for this story and explain all of the characters.

Freygor tied up colored

Freygor The Living Dragon Island

The concept is that Freygor is a Living Dragon Island that was suppressed by Captain Blackberry Beard. He tied Freygor up with his purple electric wires. Freygor was once peaceful and in control of his fire and island. Now Blackberry Beard's purple wires have infected him and caused him pain. His pain causes the entire island to become unstable purple volcanos and people cannot live on his island anymore. Freygor cannot control the pain and needs to be rid of Blackberry Beard's stranglehold on him. This is a very rough idea to show a size comparison between Steve Silverado and Freygor. It is another piece of a puzzle that is almost complete in my mind. 

Ramsey Longhorn

This original sketch was done probably about 3 years ago. I took a photo of it on my iPad and drew over it in Procreate. I added an important “mood ring” that he will be wearing which is an important element of the story.

Steamboat Pirate Ship

The Steamboat Pirates Steamboat Pirate Ship. 

I researched steamboats and came across the most common ones with the paddle wheel in the back. As I continued looking them up, I found some boats with the paddle wheel covered up and almost in the center of the ship's design. I felt that as a pirate ship that it would make more sense to have the paddle wheel in the center of the boat's design and covered up. Simply because it could be easier to defend in case the boat was under attack. It would be easier to guard in the center. As far as structure, I noticed that most steamboats have stacked layers and multiple support beams supporting those layers. Those beams seemed very flimsy to me and easily susceptible if the ship was under attack. I decided to think bulky when creating the final design. In the end, I decided to make the steamboat look like a floating metal diner with wooden decks. I also added the checkered board motif to the side of the cabin.

This is only a few of the drawings that got me to that point. 

Now the Steamboat Pirates are complete and all of the Pirate Gangs are complete. 

The next part of the story is to focus on Steve Silverado and an uncharted volcanic island that he visits.

Sam Bouka: The Otter Pirate Design Process

This was a challenging assignment for myself but this character is important to my story. First, I researched otters from life and tried to find as many photos as possible of them and created a collage of these photos. I began sketching my references in my sketchbook as you can see from the first 3 photos. I was trying to pay attention to such important characteristics of what makes an otter an otter such as their elongated bodies, button nose, whiskers and long tail. 

After several drawings, I tried to determine in my head who my character would be and what kind of clothes he would wear. I was thinking first that he would be a sailor and immediately I thought of Popeye and "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou". So I made some design choices to give him an orange sock hat similar to Bill Murray in that movie plus the orange would harmonize with the Steamboat Pirates that he belongs to. To keep the orange theme, I gave him a striped shirt similar to what sailors would normally wear and kept them orange. The checkered pattern also was something that I needed to incorporate into the design so I made it appear as a handkerchief that would be hanging out of the pocket of his pants. This would indicate that he is a hard worker on the ship and often uses it to wipe his brow when he is sweating. 

The main challenge that I found in creating this character was the proportions. Simple because otters generally have an elongated body with short arm and short legs. But, for this particular character, he is a worker and often needs to take tools out of or put tools in his pants so if he had short arm and a long body, he would not be able to reach his pants. Initially, I had his torso very long and his pants areas very short. To change up the design I ended up making his arms longer, pants higher and his neck a little longer. I also gave him a little gut that would allow his pants to be a little higher in the back and lower in the front. In the end, he is able to reach his pockets with his hands with no problem and still holds the characteristics of being an otter. 

The final element that I added was a pipe that he smokes that he blows bubbles with. I was thinking maybe this is a way that he fights enemies. He blows the bubbles and either floats on them or throws steam bubbles at enemies.

I ended up drawing 4 pencil versions of the final drawing of Sam before I was happy with one.

When I got to the point of printing out the final color version. One problem that I ran into was that the nose was looking too dark when it was printed and it was difficult to see his nostrils. To fix it, I lightened up the highlighted area on the nose and the darker nostrils were able to show through when it printed.

I'm happy with how it came out and glad that he is finally part of the crew. 

I only have two more elements that I need to design for my story. 

The Steamboat Pirates

Here are 5 portraits of the Steamboat Pirates. I'm not sure if I am going to give them names yet. I still have to design a flag for these pirates. I also may design two more characters. Each character took about 4 to 5 hours a piece to design.

Captain Clifton Blascoe

 Captain of the Steamboat Pirates. I spent all last week working on this character. In my sketchbook, I spend some time altering his proportions and pushing and pulling shapes until I came up with something that I was happy with. I also definitely took some of his demeanor from Steve Harvey while I was watching the Family Feud the other night. He is a jolly fellow who dresses the part and is not phased by danger.

Steamboat Pirate Color Studies

Oranges, earthtones and checkerboard scarves are the key color elements of this band of pirates.

I based the color design on the secondary triad scheme for the 3 pirate gangs. The secondary triad of colors consists of green (The Neon Sting Rays), purple (Captain Blackberry Beard) and orange (The Steamboat Pirates).