camleecomics - Tumblr blog

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Phil

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Erling

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Redhead

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Foden

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Grant Douglas

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Austin Scott

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Portrait illustrations of the boys in a more detailed and painterly style than my usual cartoony cel shading.

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Headshot sketches of the Macedonian prince and his beloved.

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Some early headshot sketches of Leon and Lykos with their looks after the time-skip. It took me a little while to get used to drawing their new hairstyles. Leon’s felt especially tricky to nail down.

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Philippos appears in Chapter 1 of the comic, then again in Chapter 25 which takes place 10 years later. The historical King Philip of Macedon is known to have lost his right eye during a siege. I knew early on I wanted to incorporate his missing eye into his design when he eventually returned in the comic.

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Some concept sketches for Zeus. I like the idea of his hair being like a cloud. It’s white when he’s calm and happy but then darkens when he’s angry or using his storm powers.

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Some sketches of me working out how Leon and Lykos look after the two year time-skip. Leon’s letting his hair grow out now, both on his head and his face, and Lykos is wearing his hair shorter and now styles it upward.

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These were early passes at designing Alex and Eta for the comic. Before reading up on actual descriptions of Alexander the Great, I tried making him an anime pretty-boy.

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Concept sketches for Alex and Eta. Some characters in the comic refer to Hephaistíon as “Eta” for short. Eta is simply the first letter of his name, in Greek. It’s like calling someone named Justin, “Jay” for short. Hephaistíon is a cool name, but it’s a bit of a mouthful and can be a lot to cram into speech bubbles.

There are a fair amount of varying descriptions of Alexander the Great left to us by history. For my take on the legendary Macedonian I tried to take some of the most striking features I’d read him described with, such as the dichromatic eyes, redness of face and chest, and strawberry blond hair, and incorporate them into his design. The spiky hair is less of nod to history and more of a nod to anime tropes. Spiky hair just gives off anime protagonist energy to me, and Alexander the Great was pretty much the anime protagonist of his time.

Alex’s design being a mishmash of striking features also plays into Eta’s design choice as well. There is a story of queen who, upon seeing Alexander and Hephaistíon together, mistook Hephaistíon for Alexander, because Hephaistíon was the taller and more handsome of the two. So going off of that story, my goal for Eta’s design was to make him taller and more conventionally handsome in comparison to his lover.

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Hoplon

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Bedros and Edonus

Leon and Lykos' buddies