Wednesday 24 April 2013

Mokkan Portrait

While re-reading Marlfox I somehow got this impression that the Marlfoxes were like White Tigers and ancient royal families, terribly inbred all for the vain sake of beauty and purity. Maybe its just my perverse mind, but would you really put it beyond Silth to breed with her brother/father/son to create this brood of ‘beautiful’ children. Coincidence that her mate is never mention and was killed off before the book (there’s a conspiracy I tells ya!) Added to that the fact that the Marlfox brood would probably have to breed with each other to create more Marlfoxes, lucky for us that situation never arose (phew! These are after all still children’s books, its just my sick mind is reading between the lines, haha!).

Anyway, the design for Mokkan is based on a white tiger, albino and other white morphs of the red fox and the books description of the fur being mottled with black and blue-grey patches.
I was also nice to play around with trying to convey the eyes reflecting the moonlight. I used various photo’s of cats eyes and foxes at night for reference.
His Redwall Wiki Page:
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Character from Brian Jacques’ book Marlfox
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Tuesday 16 April 2013

Damug Warfang Portrait


He’s so badass he don’t care that he is cutting up his fingers on that blade.
Jez’, after three attempts, generally being busy with other things and my brain just melting after doing all these portraits here is Damug’s ‘mug’ (yes, I will hammer in that pun until I kill someone).
I like how the armour turned out and I had fun painting that. Also a chance of play around with some custom brushes for the chain mail and chain.

Out of the characters in this project he is the one that probably sticks the closest to how I have imagined him years ago when I first did these portraits, with the blue/grey fur and facial structure, he even has the same long leather coat. I know that in the book he is never described with a leather coat, but that’s how I picture him. Besides, a coat is a tough handy thing for both land and sea, much more convenient than a cloak when you’re just roaming around, surely?

As to the book itself, the Long Patrol, it felt very much like those classic war stories, like Bernard Cornwell’s “Sharpe” books, and it feels like the odd one out in the Redwall series…don’t know, maybe its just me. It was nice to see the ancient abbey actually showing its age and collapsing so those pesky heroes can’t take it too much for granted and just hide inside and snipe from the walls. They actually had to get out there to defend themselves, which is a welcome change. Ups the threat value.

To the left are the tribal marks that I used on the flags and for his tattoos. It was fun playing around with the designs.

His Redwall Wiki Page
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Custom brushes: “Tanathe’s Lazy Brush set”
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Character from Brian Jacques’ book The Long Patrol
Character Design by Myself.
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