Mhetli in the clouds

I've drafted the first illustration from Breaking Point.

Mhetli - above it all

I first had this idea almost 2 years ago just before the launch of Book 2. On a plane to Barcelona for a litter R&R I had this vision of Mhetli in the clouds, high above the world and his problems.

At the end of Spirit Shear he needs a bit of R&R himself to recover from the beating they all got on Rheza. What better place to get away from it all than high in the sky, above the clouds, above the world?

I'm not 100% convinced of the greys that I've used for the sky. I'll probably end up doing several drafts as usual. But, I'm stilly pleased with how the book is already taking shape, both the writing and the fact that I already have so many great images in my head. This picture has captured my own sense of the vastness of a new beginning - a feeling that will be pervasive in Book 3.

Persistence and proliferation, friends!

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Death bird

The first round of edits on Draft 1 are done... and so begins the drawing storm.

Round 1: Mhetli

Sem and Gemmy got their Rhe'zan cloaks and now it's Mhetli's turn.

I wanted Mhetli to look like a giant bird of prey. On Rheza birds are revered as hunters and the island even boasts several species of carnivorous raptors. So, it seemed fitting that our verdant vindicator would be decked out bird style.

In the book his cloak is described as: "dark green and had maza feathers on the shoulders and bottom for ‘swift and silent travel’. It made him look like a very deadly bird, Gemmy thought."

Deadly indeed with his two large Rhe'zan swords.

A colleague asked how I come up with the designs for costumes. Well, there's lots and lots of sketching. I mostly doodle on scrap paper when an idea comes to me. For things like this I like the details to be meaningful so spend a lot of time 'inside' a drawing before properly drawing it out.

Thought process:
With the cloak I knew that I wanted it to be split at the back so it could look like wings. Functionally, since it's a warriors cloak, it also couldn't be too long in the front so that helped dictate the shape.

Next, I wanted to get the back right. Similar to Sem's cloak I wanted it to be representative of an animal and have a face. When sketching it though it looked a bit too much like a bug so I need to add some elements to the tails to make it look more like wings. I tried stripes which worked best, however, I went with the zig-zags to represent feathers as it was more in keeping with the Aztec motifs of the others' cloaks.

Finally, it looked a bit bare on the back so I added the triangular symbol which is actually a Rhe'zan glyph for strength and unity. It is the symbol of one of the Rhe'zan gods Ce’ahuli. It is given to all guards, warriors, and protectors on Rheza. Incidentally, it is related to the glyph of the Emersus Project. 

So, that's how Mhetli got his Book 2 gear.

What do you think?

Enjoy!
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Tatt-t-tatt-tat-too

In preparing to get stuck in to Book 2 I'm reviewing the outline.

I'm super super excited to get to work on it. It's definitely much more action packed from the first book and *spoiler* we see a lot more of Mhetli.

You're going to find out a bit more about who he is and what exactly happened to him in Black Star labs. He's going to spend a good lot of the time scrapping and scraping and we'll get more than a few flashes of his nasty tatts that were embedded under his skin to help him control his powers.

I decided to spend a while exploring exactly what that would look like so here's a sketch of exactly how extensive Mhethli's metal network of subdermal tattoos is.

Enjoy!
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Mhetli's subdermal tattoos

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Emperor's new clothing

Taking a break from edits and working on some more drawings. I realise that my first drawing of Gemmy in his uniform is the one that I'm definitely go with. after drawing and redrawing it I keep going back to the original. There's the magic of discovering a new character in it that I just can't recapture.

Anywho, I spent the morning pouring through old sketch books to see if there were any other magical moments I've missed. I came across a drawing of Mhetli's coat that I'd forgotten about. It's a nice drawing and I think I want to do a finalised version of this for the book.

Mhetli's coat - ballpoint pen

I love all the small pockets that conceal various weapons that may be less than deadly until coupled with Mhetli's power. All the clasps are made of metal to he can electro-magnetically manipulate them at will.

Enjoy!
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