Deckhands

So, more pirates. I think that calling them deckhands might be some kind of reference to their hooks, but I'm not certain.

These sit in an odd place. They have an obvious distinguishing feature - the hook - but it's not the overwhelming focus of their design. They're not excessively characterful and so would make good mooks.

On top of that, they have more colour detail than usual. See the linework was unusually open and they looked flat and boring without it. Also I'm still getting the knack of dressing pirates to look like pirates, and what seems to work best is patches of subdued colours with lots of bright detail. The hooks got some special treatment to make them stand out too - though #1's is odd. Also #2's short trousers are awkwardly uneven.

#2 was the first one of these I did, with hair inspired by Tekken's Heihachi. I tried to give him some facial hair but it just wasn't happening. #2 was coloured after Serious Sam. I'm not totally convinced by the ragged fade on his jeans and might scrap it, but the legs needed some spot detail to balance him out. The orange-striped shirt is cute and that hint of purple in his hair too.

#1 is obviously a total badass to get away with wearing a pawprint shirt. I may have been feeling silly when I did that. Same mood as when I gave #2 a shine on his pate.

Pistoliers

I was trying to do a new pirate, because honestly so far the pirates have been pretty shit. I think almost all of them need to be redone. And as a lot of my figures do, it turned out looking pretty androgynous. And since all the other pirates are male, I decided I'd roll with it and make the gunslinger a woman.

It's interesting to me that I seem to have settled on hips, thighs and shoulders as the distinguishing characteristic for women. I didn't set out with that as my plan; it was just the path of least resistance.

So as it happens when I was done with them they didn't look much like pirates any more. Far too well-dressed. Maybe they're first-mates or something. Or I might put them in the "generics" folder. Whatever.

Number two has literal hand-cannons, which amuse me. The iron sights on #3's guns are cute, because they're "free" in terms of line count, though they do require an extra node because they break the rectangle.

The gun barrels have three shades - a shadow layer and the usual metal shine. I think that, unlike flat metal, they really need that third shade to give a 3d impression.


Colours took ages to coalesce. #1 was based on a my little pony and it was all downhill from there. The result is three colour palettes I don't usually use. I'm getting more adventurous with colours and I like it. The purplish "highlight" on #2's hair is cute and gives it an interesting texture. I think that's a technique I can exploit elsewhere.

Diving suits

Obviously heavily inspired by Bioshock's weaponised diving suits. A good idea is a good idea. These seemed a good way to add more body-types to a sailors/pirates theme

I didn't expect to be able to make variations, but it came together pretty neatly. Harpoon guns were a pain though, because the original was rotated at an arbitrary angle that I had to try and match. #2's gauntlets are my least favourite part.

I went wild with the detail layer. Possibly a bit too wild. And that verdigris is... wrong. I like how it looks, but there's no escaping that that's just not how verdigris develops. And it's too intricate besides. #1 was the last one I detailed though and I'd already used up the best ideas on #2 and #3.

I was going to do a boring gem-type shine on the faceplates, but this murky reflection is so much nicer. I'm also happy with the colours. Surprised that I managed to get a nice aquatic-feeling palettes that neither overlap nor diverge too much.

Hmm - should I have given them air hoses?

Gunners and incisors

Pirates and mad surgeons; going a little bit retro here.

 The pirate gunners feel a bit old-fashioned to me. I think it's the feet - I've largely stopped varying feet/boots now. But for pirates I think a wide variety in clothing is a good thing. Only one of them has variant legs, but I think it's best to consider the torso+legs as one element.

The guns are deliberately over-large so that I could detail them a bit better. They're far from perfect though. Particularly the way #3 carries his. Doesn't feel right. #2 and 1 are okay though I think. The cannon-style gun is particularly cute. Maybe it's that #3 is too vanilla in general. Should I have mixed the parts differently?

I'm also iffy on the colours. I can't point to any one thing to change, but they seem very earthy and subdued overall. I got to a point where I gave up and moved on. Coming back with a brighter palette later on would be easy.

Now, surgeons. "incisors" to be specific. These are also old-fashioned in my eyes due to the gowned body. I like the super-slim waist combined with the broad manly shoulders and power-tool. It gives them a distinctive look. I continue to be a big fan of men with exposed armpits.

There wasn't much for me to do here with colour detail. The gowns resisted any kind of crease-highlighting that didn't look over-the-top. Originally I was going to confine the blood to the tools in a tasteful (but unrealistic) manner, but it left the gowns looking so sparse...

Number 3 got a bit messy. I figure when you're using a chainsaw there may be a little splatter. It's given him a distinctive appearance though.

The design of the tools is something I worked on for ages. The bodies are a little wishy-washy, but I like the business-ends. I don't think there's any other way to do a chainsaw in this style without a crazy line-count. With the nifty blood pattern on the rotary cutter, it might not need those extra "blade" lines.

Tango Foxtrot

I find myself with some more pirates to throw on the pile. I sketched this one as a generic armoured guy with a shield, but had more fun with the idea of a pirate carrying a drink in the left hand.

The bottle is a bit specific, but the pose wouldn't allow for (say) a beer stein without encroaching on the torso detail. I toyed with giving one of them a sack slung over the shoulder in that hand, but couldn't pull it off. And so the bottle it is. I'll need to make sure they're not over-represented or it could look silly.

Fairly generic as pirates go. Not really a bad thing; it's good to bulk out the crew. I like the name too - Bravo is a good word to describe people. Possibly even too good to waste on these particular characters, but we'll see.

I don't really have much interesting to say about these, now that I think about it. The pose has enough of a sense of weight to it that I'm content. The nodes are nice and sparse. There's a fair amount of variety in the details and the colour. They're pretty adequate in all respects.

Mark II crew

Fiddled with the cannoners and the misc pirates a bit. They were just outside of my tolerances. Barely worth posting the updated versions, but I can't see any harm in it.

The pirates were leaning too sharply. It's a common mistake I make, since I like to sit at funny angles I'm seldom looking at the screen straight-on. What I should do is horizontally flip what I'm working on to see if it looks wrong the other way round. I didn't bother this time and they ended up all Pisa for it.

Easy enough to fix though. Isolated the hands, weapons and heads, then skewed everything else back towards the normal, then moved the unaltered bits back into place. They also got some colour changes because i saw room for improvement.

The cannon-luggers' feet really bugged me - totally sloppy. So that got fixed. Redoing the cannon entered my mind, but they don't bother me nearly so much as the feet did. The colours could probably be tweaked, but really the feet were the main irritations.

I've still got those desert swordsmen to fix up. I'll leave them for now though - maybe when I do another desert-themed character and have more ideas for detail styles.

Scurvy

A pleasant change. These came easily and, while I can fret over certain details, all in all they please me. These are your generic deck-clogging sea-dog-type pirate.

No eye patches, hook hands or peg legs you'll notice. I don't want to overuse that kind of powerful cliché if I'm going to be doing more than just a couple pirate-themed guys. I figure that in any given trinity I can use one (1) of those on one (1) of the characters. For example the dock thugs (who are still borderline pirates in my mind) have one eye patch between them. I think one of my old pirates has a peg leg, so that uses up that. Hook hand I have an idea for making huge and weaponised, theming a whole character-type around maybe.

Anyway - these guys. They flowed nicely. Originally I was thinking that I could swap about the sword and pistol hand between them, but it always looked best with the pistol up and the sword down so that idea was nixed.

I've got a good set of swappable components here. Head, torso, sword, pistol, legs and even feet. The clever bit though is accessories. I managed to rig it so that the sash and epaulettes are swappable too. #3's gloves can be the third accessory type, but they're not as itneresting as the other two. Of course this all gives me way, way more combinations than I need. No big deal.

I'm rather fond of #3's hair; I don't think I've done that style before. Just four V-shapes, nice and clean, but implying some nice messy-spikey-hair. His tailed coat too actually - I figure it used to belong to a marine officer, or maybe he even used to be a marine before getting captured and joining the pirates. Made sure he didn't look too sharp by putting a bare chest underneath it. Same kind of thinking behind #2's epaulettes.

Trivia: If you take the big hat, the epaulettes, tailed coat and long boots you end up with a rather official-looking marine-type person. May or may not be useful.

I'd like to do a gunslinging pistolier pirate, but it's not coming together yet. Also perhaps a spyglass/sextant/compass-brandishing navigator. I also wanted a booze-themed barrel/crate carrier, but I'm just failing embarassingly in that direction. Combined with my old pirates it seems there's a lot of space to be explored.

So far I've been thinking that each set is good for one, maybe two missions. But if I can get a large enough set, I could have multiple missions based around the same theme, but each with a different selection of enemies.

Jezzailachis

Another set that I kind of forced through. There's quite a few areas that I consider questionable. Feet again. The designs of the cannon. Some aspects of the pose. I liked the sketch though and wanted to bring it to a finished state before I lost the love.

I experimented with some shine on the cannon barrels - they didn't look right without it. A 40% transparency layer of stark black and white seems about ok. I drew the shine bands manually, with a mouse, and it shows. When you zoom out though the wobble seems natural. That's probably just my laziness talking, but it's on its own layer so it'd be easy enough to tweak later.

Still, the cannon didn't look right until I dulled down the whole body to something closer to black to make ti stand out from the bright clothes of the gunners. Reminds me of TF2 where the weaponry is all a very subdued black and grey to be visible against the character models.

Pirates are a new set. I've done four or five good solo pirates previously, so I can fill out their ranks easily enough even if I find myself unable to come up with anything else. The dock thugs could be pirates too I suppose, though I intended them to be unfriendly locals for the harbour. Uncertain how I feel about that kind of crossover. Then again, I do like the idea that the sets aren't toally foreign to each other. Even the jungle natives, if they're on an island or a foreign coastline could be geographically close to a pirate base of operations.

Thugs and brains

Generic dock toughs. They should fit nicely alongside the various sea cultists and mutants in the corrupt port town. Not exactly in line with my plans, but then little ever is.

I think it's the swaggering pose that sells them. They're also nice and simple in the design - a return to form. The lines of the jacket are a bit clumsy still, but you wouldn't know from the final output.

#1 had concerns. His cutlass hilt was a trial and I'm still not happy with it. His hat is fine on its own, but when colouring him any bright colours made him look like a YMCA member. It's probably the bare chest that does it.

Hmm - speaking of bare chests, I've just realised that #1's sling-strap-thing and #3's scar run the same direction. I should probably flip one of them so that it doesn't look like a pattern. #3, most likely, since now that I think about it that kind of scar would likely go top right to lower left, if inflicted by a right-handed opponent.

I also returned to the hospital of horrors. No variants though - I think these are the "boss monsters" of the area. Graft-spiderman's skeleton is too distinctive to reskin and I can't come up with any worthwhile ideas for scalpelwoman.

Spider-guy's really loaded for bear. Bonesaw, scalpels, syringe, trolley, even a cloth for his brow! A surgical genius who decided he could do so much better with an extra pair of hands.

Scalpelina's something I promised I wouldn't so. Leggy woman in heels. I tried so hard to avoid the sexy nurse cliché, but the sketch just... happened. And I liked it. I'm still wavering over whether she's too long and spindly, the leg is a little unconvincing and the swoosh of the coat is bizarre. But nevertheless, I like. At least she's flat-chested. Maybe I'll come back to her tomorrow and, with the benefit of fresh eyes, despair over the anatomy and start over.

Still, I can overlook dumbsexy a little for the sake of a boss character. And I do really like the pose with the scalpel and clipboard. If Dr Spider is the frothing nutjob, she's the obsessive badass. They could each support their own staff, or combine forces in the same hospital. Who can tell. She was originally going to have a fuckoff hypodermic, but that was harder to look cool than I expected. Happier with the scalpel.