DIRTY PAIR: PLAGUE OF ANGELS design sketches
Added 2020-09-22 13:00:05 +0000 UTCVery, very rare to find any design sketches from my first three Dirty Pair miniseries, but I have managed to dig up three pages of 'em from 1990/199's Plague of Angels recently whilst cleaning out my studio space. A few words:
Ladies and gentlemen, that gun design is clearly based on the Pancor Jackhammer, which was all the rage in 1990's cyberpunk SF culture of futuristic-looking guns (caseless ammos, H&K G11 variations, the US Army's Close Assault Weapons System program, etc.). Decades later, per the link above, "the Pancor has popped up as a selectable weapon in more than 30 modern First Person Shooter-style games including Far Cry, Fallout, and Rainbow Six." Ah, but I was out there ripping off the ol' Jackhammer way back in the day, folks!
(The previous miniseries, 1989's Dirty Pair: Dangerous Acquaintances, may have been the very first appearance in fiction of the now-ubiquitous Desert Eagle in .50 Action Express caliber, but that's another story.)
I'd love to tell you that the Chinese titles for the various Kuan Yin mecha assets from the Plague of Angels #4 scene excerpted above were based on serious research, but I'm fairly certain I cribbed all of 'em from the names of gods in the Chinese mythology chapter of the 1980 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Deities & Demigods reference book.
What might arguably be impressive is that I'm pretty sure I didn't bring my AD&D books out to San Francisco, where I drew these pages during my ill-fated sojourn in the Bay Area, so I might've had to rattle off those names from memory. (Or not.) By that time I was years and years removed from my last RPG session; I wouldn't DM again until, well, Christmas of 2019.
Screentones on this sequence by my friend Tomoko Saito, who always took a bolder and more artistically daring approach to her toning. My own tone usage was plodding, methodical, and "safe" in application, while Tomoko's techniques took far more artistic chances; I can tell our screen tones apart at a glance, believe me.
Interestingly, the Plague of Angels pages aren't quite as detailed as they might appear, because if you were to take a gander at the original artwork, you'd be struck by the fact that they're absolutely gigantic. Below is a photo of a Plague page, drawn on old-style Marvel full-bleed paper, next to a modern-era Marvel page and an Empowered original page:
Your pages would look impressively detailed, too, if the original artwork was being shrunk down for printed reproduction by such a high percentage!
Down the road, I'll post more designs from the later miniseries SimHell and (especially) Fatal But Not Serious, before moving on to design sketches for Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal, Gen13, Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone, Empowered and more! Yes, folks, this is a new recurring Patron feature, looks like!
TOMORROW ON THIS HERE PATREON: Something Damsel-in-Distress-related for the $5+ tiers, though at present I know not exactly what content that might be!
Comments
Love seeing the development designs and behind the scenes.
Ruth and Darrin Sutherland
2020-11-13 23:09:28 +0000 UTCWow, memories. I think PoA was one of the first DP stories of yours I bought, somewhere in high school. The tones have a stark, very Shirow-feel to them in this. And all the gear looks pretty sweet. The Army never gave me that kind of kit.
Strypgia
2020-09-23 03:42:03 +0000 UTCI would love to hear more about your tabletop RPG games (past or present) sometime. And yes, though I'm sure I couldn't tell at a glance, there's a lot of neat stuff done with tone on that page.
Kyoumen
2020-09-22 23:01:15 +0000 UTCBlast from the past, this is the first DP (and first Warren) I ever enjoyed, way back the tiny town miles from where I actually lived got MANGA MANIA in its little newsagents. Pleased to see I'm still stupidly fond of Field Marshall Connolly, och aye the na.
Luke McKinney
2020-09-22 16:46:40 +0000 UTCFun fact: there's exactly one working Pancor Jackhammer in existence; a prototype that was later owned by a movie prop house. Somebody tried to sell it at auction late last year at Morphy, but from what I can tell, nobody bit, so it could come back on the market. They'd been expecting $100-175K, with a $50K minimum, so might be just a bit out of your price range, but it could help solve your squirrel problem. Maybe try the old Marcel Duchamp special and see if they'll take a drawing of a check?
Burninator
2020-09-22 15:27:53 +0000 UTCexcellent post! I had no idea about the Pancor jackhammer.
Brandon Graham
2020-09-22 15:05:38 +0000 UTCPlague Of Angels was the first DP thing I bought, and was in fact one of the first books I bought as a not-kid, and I am compelled to admit it was entirely because when I picked up the TPB it opened to the page where Kei is waving a chainsaw...
Mike Powers
2020-09-22 15:01:41 +0000 UTCYou’ll probably be seeing a LOT of its creation, as I seem to have a whole lotta design sketches from that miniseries kicking around.
Adam Warren
2020-09-22 13:58:05 +0000 UTCSo glad to see the design sketches for that combat IR monocle/comlink too. Plague of Angels had so much cool tech and the overall design of the Kalevala space station was great. All that plus Corey Emerson
Otaku Twenty-Four Seven
2020-09-22 13:50:52 +0000 UTCFatal but not Serious is among my favorite graphic novels of all time and look forward to seeing a little of it's creation!
Ross Fisher-Davis
2020-09-22 13:11:28 +0000 UTC
