Droids Custom Madine: Finished art!

by Bill Cable
on 2024-10-23, 09:41:26

It's been a productive week! Enjoy while I take you step-by-step through my progress. As I stated last week, I wasn't super happy with Madine's hair. So to begin, I fixed the hair, and added a couple of his Howling Commandos.

It was a decent start. The hair now looks way more Madine-ish, as terrible as that is. And that's where I left the art at the end of that session. When I picked it up again, I wasn't happy with the poses of the commandos. So I changed them.

The next day I added a bunch more detail to the commandos, and then I sat down to look at it. I really wanted a multi-tiered kind of layout, but I needed a vertical element. And I was thinking add a commando standing on a rock or jumping or something. But none of that really grabbed me. I pondered maybe have a commando standing on a tank, bringing to mind that famous G.I. Joe comic book cover. But what tank did the Rebels have? Then it dawned on me... I could use my favorite Mini-Rig!

As a kid the MTV-7 was probably my favorite Star Wars vehicle. There was just something so satisfying about the way the wheels spread out when you pushed down on it. I'd play with it for hours. So yeah... thrilled to finally be able to include on in one of my Droids Customs. It's these little, magical instances of inspiration that I really savor when I'm doing these customs. I know it's technically an Imperial vehicle, so we'll just assume these badass commandos stole one.

All the piece needed was some background. And I pulled from McQuarrie art for that...

I could have been lazy and just had mountains instead of the decaying hull there, given 95% of that will be obscured by the bubble area, but that's just not how I roll.

With the pencils finished, last night I sat down to ink. And I crushed it. Here's where I was at before taking a break to play some games on my phone:

And here's how I wrapped up the evening:

All in all it went pretty great, other than I bit of an ink bleed on Madine's lip that I'll fix in Photoshop. By next week I expect I'll be able to share the rough color blocking, if not more. See you then!