It's funny how many projects get started but never finished.
Aegisteel is one of those projects. I worked on it with the intention of designing the characters and illustrating a graphic novel. Unfortunately, the creator and I had some minor creative differences and I had a few life events that pushed me in a different direction. I reluctantly quit the project after the character design phase.
At the end of 2012, I was doing a lot of work with Mike DeVito and Jon Conkling of Th3rd World Studios. They approached me about working on a really cool "sorcery punk/fantasy" world that author Mat Nastos created. After looking over the material, I thought it sounded fun. It had a lot of elements I like about fantasy: magic armor, creatures of all sorts, and giant monsters. Plus ancient races, ruins, and weapons. Definitely up my alley, so to speak.
I got busy designing the main characters for the book. I'm still proud of the work and a little disappointed that I didn't end up illustrating the world.
First up is the main character in his armor, Morgan. This was a really fun piece to do as I wanted to show the character fully armored and without the armor, so I did a sort of cut-away. I had a lot of fun designing the armor for this guy.
I also designed a bunch of different characters that were part of Morgan's party of adventurers: Artis, Eckhart, Laerwynn, Longbarrel, and Rowena.
The final character, Breck, was where Mat and I really disagreed. At the time, I was reading the reboot of Rob Liefeld's Glory character, and I was in love with the idea of a fierce female warrior that wasn't a waif, as so many comic heroines are. My initial design was a tough, beefy character--massive, stocky, and heavily muscled. The first design was the original; the second design was the final corrected design - honestly, there didn't end up being a huge difference and I did like the final design. I had to slim up the waist, arms, and legs and we were essentially golden.
Here's the lineup so you can get a sense of their height and size.
I also did a couple different logo designs, which I rather liked. The second one was my favorite of the bunch.
It was fun doing creative development for Aegisteel, but ultimately I had to move on. There was a perfect storm of events at the time--the birth of my second child, some minor creative differences, and getting involved with the now-defunct publisher Noble Beast (which launched Outland into digital publishing).
It's a neat world. If Mat and the guys at Th3rd World manage to do something with it, I'm certain to buy the book and read it!
JM
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I also did a couple different logo designs, which I rather liked. The second one was my favorite of the bunch.
It was fun doing creative development for Aegisteel, but ultimately I had to move on. There was a perfect storm of events at the time--the birth of my second child, some minor creative differences, and getting involved with the now-defunct publisher Noble Beast (which launched Outland into digital publishing).
It's a neat world. If Mat and the guys at Th3rd World manage to do something with it, I'm certain to buy the book and read it!
JM