presumptive plot comics #1

i don't really know how HALO games work, cause i've never played through much of one, but the suits and vehicles look too awesome to let that get in my way:

"I think kyle is a pretty cool guy. eh loses limbs and doesn’t afraid of anything."

yellowpad (compare panel 10):

R&D

caste system and new helmet design:


design for the training room scene:


and these are designs for the actual characters behind those masks:

double agent

the only thing that really makes storm shadow cool is that he keeps switching sides. if he'd stayed a bad guy or switched to a good guy and stayed there, he'd be boring. luckily, when he breaks into g.i. joe headquarters in every single issue, you're not sure if he's there on cobra business or just to chat.

general issue

today i thought a little bit about what my cobra soldiers would be wearing. i need to blend the iconic henchmen uniforms from the g.i. joe cartoon with something with a little more basis in the real world. the biggest challenge will be the helmets, as cool-looking helmets and practical ones seem to be mutually exclusive.

i started by photo referencing some SWAT team and military gear from real life, and was happy to see that some troopers really do wear faceplates.


this is the same blue i chose for zartan's pants, thinking that maybe he wouldn't be as different from the other troopers in my version as he was in g.i. joe, aside from the non-regulation hoodie.

this dark red circle was intended to be a stand-in for a cobra-like logo that i would design later, but now i'm thinking it looks pretty good.

expensive notebooks

i spent some more time drawing at the coffee shop with todd last night. this time i concentrated on a few doodles of a G.I. joe character called "bazooka." maybe i just like him because the red, white and blue jersey doesn't match the green of his helmet and pants at all. throw in a comically oversized mustache... looking good, fella.


i copied this pose from a google image search result for "assault rifle." it's my favorite of the batch, so i went ahead and colored it.


i went ahead and filled this in with some flat colors because i wanted to emphasize which shapes were blood splatter and which were hewn flesh.

things that directly fed into my week long obsession with G.I. joe:
classic G.I. joe, volume 1 (rereleased comics from the 1980s)
G.I. joe: the movie (watchthe whole thing on youtube)
YoJoe.com (archives of every G.I. joe action figure ever)
G.I. joe article on wikipedia

oh, and it is also notable that this page of doodles exists not in a free notepad, but in an approximately 5'x8' tan paperback moleskine that i bought in a set from barnes & noble.

cowboys

cowboys and cowboy-related artifacts. my favorite is the skinny bald guy in the vest. i also like how the growling cowboy is holding his gun by the barrel - clearly an afterthought - "oh wait, cowboys are supposed to hold pistols."

looks like i had been googling different kinds of pistols, too.