Hot-Head is a pretty old character of mine, a teen adventurer and superhero with an interesting history in my Old Multiverse. He initially was set in the Krazy Komix cartoon universe, where he and several other kids went on somewhat whacky adventures, but at some point he got migrated over to the Power Universe, the main superhero setting of mine at the time. There, he shifted from adventurer to full-on superhero, even becoming a founding member of the New Force. He also has familial connections spread across the Old Multiverse as well. I might draw some of them in the future.
For this image, I decided to save the various stages of the work. Looking at the finished product, I have to say, my style probably comes across as deceptively simple. Even I'm looking at it thinking this should have only taken twenty minutes at most, but this took me almost four hours!
Snow first appears in my self-flagellating, self-insert web fiction SalQuest, where she is an "original character" even within the context of Salvador Roberts ending up in a world cobbled together form his own ideas. Which is to say she is a combination of concepts Salvador never thought of prior to ending up in the Endless Frontier.
Snow is a white wolf of the Annextrian Wolf Clan, Annextria being a world of animals with human-like intellect and lifespan, and the ability to communicate telepathically via "thought-speak". She is also a Gear Mage, enabling her to create and manipulate machines that operate by way of a cartoon logic of mechanics.
She's a character I spontaneously came up with as I write the very chapter she appears in, and she was rather fun. She wasn't intended to be an important character, but SalQuest has thus far been largely an improv-based story, so who knows if she may play a larger support role than initially intended.
I mean, probably not, given how many other characters Sal is going to end up running into, but we'll see.
After giving it some test runs, I finally cracked and bought Clip Paint Studio, which has some nice features that make it ideal for creating comics. Up until now, Krita has been my program of choice, which is supposedly better for more painterly styles. Each has its benefits and quirks, so I'll probably use both depending on what I'm trying to do.
As for this comic, I just wanted to sketch something comicy. I have no idea who this guy is, where he is (although some might find the tower and dark sun strangely familiar), or what he's up to.
Comics is the medium that speaks to my soul, and where a lot of my ideas would probably have worked best, if I hadn't wasted so many years not practicing my art. Maybe eventually, whether it be through my own drawings, 3D assets, or both, I'll get a comic made again. Just depends on if I can get another story going.
