Apparently I liked that creature on yesterday’s sketch page because here it is again.
Also on the page is Mara Winikat making faces. One of my practices is to run character through their emotional paces. I often present them expressing extreme emotions because
A) Extreme emotions are fun to draw
B) How the character expresses those emotions says a lot about the character. Some of the character that live in my head don’t exhibit emotions loudly. Others couldn’t be subtle to save their lives.
Hopefully by now King Roach is easy to identify. The rest of the creatures on the page are various possible adversaries. At the bottom, on the left is the freak creature. On the right is the samurai thing.
Not sure who the noseless guy is. I must have just been inventing him as I sketched since I can’t identify him. The KR adversaries that I’ve put thought in to are always recognizable to me when I see them again. I can’t say I remember the details of their stories but I do remember that they had stories.
The portrait of the woman done in colored pencils is probably just me playing around with my tools. I don’t recognize her as a character in any stories.
The rest of the page is dedicated to sketches of one of the survivors of the empire I mentioned yesterday. A finished portrait can be found here.
Part of the background for the King Roach series (at least in the version in this 2003 sketchbook) is ancient, lost empire. History has forgotten it. It was powerful and, basically, fundamentally, corrupt and evil. It had the sort of advanced technology that looks like magic to pre-industrial cultures. Tiny pockets of tech staffed by former citizens of the empire (kept in stasis) lay hidden in unexplored pockets of the world. Woe to anyone who pokes about in those pockets.
Most of King Roaches adversaries are giant monsters. King Roach stands about 15 feet tall. His enemies range for slight shorter than that to much, much larger.
For the fun of it I cast versions of various movie monsters as King Roach opponents. This one is a version of Anguirus. Anguirus has the distinction of being Godzilla’s first sparring partner. He appeared in Godzilla Raids Again, the first sequel to the 1954 Godzilla. The figure at his feet is an “average” human male. Increase the figure in size by three and you get a rough guess as to how King Roach compares in size.
If I ever get around to doing the King Roach series I’m unlikely actually many movie analog monsters. They’ve already got their own movies. As much fun as I have drawing them I don’t really have any new stories to tell about most of them – “Giant monster appears and King Roach has to figure out how to make it go away without getting squished” – is good once. After a couple dozen times it would just be tedious.
Here we have a variety of supporting characters for the King Roach series. This version of the series is set in the Sentient 39 universe. The technology of the society is about the level of 1950s Earth. There are finished versions of some of these characters in my Epilogue.net gallery.
When I design a character I try to make him/her distinct enough that he/she could be recognizable if depicted naked with a shaved head. I probably only succeed to the degree that I can recognize the characters when I encounter them again.
It’s the clash of two unrelated projects!
On the right is the male figure for the kung fu dictionary for Mandate of Heaven
On the left is Mara Winikat, King Roach’s alter ego. Wait, you ask, wasn’t Brian Daniels King Roach’s alter ego? Yes he was. And he still is actually. It’s more complicated than I want to get into at the moment. Suffice to say, there’s more than one kid who turns into a giant monster. And while I like Brian he’s not the greatest protagonist. He’s kind of complainy and whiny and spends a lot of time wishing that things would turn out his way. In that way he’s uncomfortably close to … me as a kid. (Probably me as an adult. I’ll leave that to others to determine.)
Sigh.
I don’t remember if I submitted this finished version to Epilogue.net or not. If I did it must have been rejected but since I don’t remember a rejection I suspect that I didn’t bother to submit.
In which a group of jocks learn the hard lesson – don’t pick on freaky kids with poor social skills, they might gain the ability to turn into giant monsters and come beat your ass.
