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.