This sketch was done after watching some weird kung fu movie with Derek. We were doing research for Mandate of Heaven, his kung fu RPG. I don’t remember what the movie was now. Mostly I remember how the demon villains would twist and change their forms when they revealed their demon selves. They didn’t just get big and ugly, they’d get weird and ugly. It was inspiring.
Category Archives: mandate of heaven
Mara Practices the Horse
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.
Horse with Character
In order to do the diagrams for Mandate of Heaven’s kung fu dictionary I needed to create some characters. For projects that require multiple drawings of the same figure it helps me if that figure is an individual, if only to me. Otherwise I get bored and if I’m bored, drawing is no fun. Stories engage me. Individuals have stories. So I invented a couple of characters to demonstrate the different actions that would be in the dictionary. This was the male figure.
One Punch, Two Punch
Here are a couple of practice drawings for the Mandate of Heaven kung fu dictionary.
The Horse
One of the features of Mandate of Heaven was to be a “kung fu dictionary”, a collection of diagrams showing most of the basic moves that a kung fu practitioner would know. I believe this position is called the Horse. It’s a base position used for establishing balance and gaining strength. Try holding it for five or ten minutes.
Mandate of Heaven
Around this time (early 2003) I started working with my friend Derek Fetters on an RPG called Mandate of Heaven. Mandate was a game set in alternate future Hong Kong, a Hong Kong that had rebelled against China and had become an embattled free state. Players were to take up the parts of members of ICON, a secret organization dedicated to … all kinds of things. Much kung fu and gun fu occurs. Most of the figure sketches here are me trying to get a handle on drawing kung fu action.
