I decided to take my first character sketch from this series of character designs and work on a special project with it.  So far she’s turning out beautifully.  The next step for this illustration is to get working on final line art and begin illustration work.  I’m having a lot of fun working on this one!

I went with a much more clean sketch style with this one.  It takes much more time, but I really love to work this way.  I used Sketchbook Pro for this.  That program is amazing for sketching, though I don’t like it’s lagoon over Photoshop’s interface and shortcut keys.  I still prefer to color everything in Photoshop.

The idea of this one started out organically.  I wanted to originally create an android in middle of assembly, but then I got a great disturbing and sad idea.  In the future where military operations are fought by private corporations, could human lives be the cheapest computer resource?  With cybernetic technology, could fallen soldiers be used as a CPU for a tank?  All that would be needed is a mood inhibitor chip inside the brain to override the thoughts and opinions of the individual and then become a weapon.  It is a pretty dark idea, and so is war.  War crimes are hideous.  But, just a thought, where will the value of human life be 100 years from now?  Also, I was wondering, what would be stopping people from turning themselves into instruments of war?  People could easily be plugged into a mech of some sort or cyber suit.  Losing limbs in combat at that point wouldn’t be such a big deal.  Protecting the core organs would be all that is necessary to protect one’s own life.  This could easily be one thing that upsets the “spirits” of this world, something that would easily cause division between mankind.

For this project, I really like the spirit designs so far.  In this world design when the spirits show up I want there to be a disconnect with the inhabitants of the world, even with the audience.  I feel that if we got to enter the spiritual realm of ghosts, demons, angels, and other deities there would be a great difference in opinion on modesty.  I don’t want to push the envelope to its limits, but I do want it to be a little “uncomfortable”.  Or even bring up the case, I would love to dress like that, but there’s no way society could handle it - actually maybe I couldn’t even handle that kind of attention.  It is the type of other worldly sensibility disconnect that is more realistic in my opinion.  I really like how this character turned out.  She is like an untamed fickle lioness.  Pretty dangerous, but at the same time she would be a lot of fun to be around.

A theme of this particular IP idea is magic vs. technology.  A lot of this will be metaphorical of old and new world conflicts.  It is the struggle of change.  There are many things that challenge our definitions of morality, ethics, and survival.  I really would like to explore a world where these polar opposite worlds clash.  It would be wondrous to traverse and interesting to see how the characters grow in such a world.

I really like how the armor of this character came together.  There are still a few areas I would like to rework moving forward with this design, but this design still is mostly just initial exploration for how I want the designs to go moving forward.  After I finish some of these initial sketches for this particular project, I will need to go and write much more backstory to this world to pull all these elements together.

My first male character for this cyberpunk world idea.  I feel these designs still lack a strong sense of unity within the designs.  I think a few more designs may help bring them together.  I may look to music fashion styles for this.  Never the less, I really like where these designs are heading.

This is another character concept for an IP I’ve been working on.  I guess this is more or less a distraction from my current manga project, but it is an idea for a side scroller beat-em up rpg adventure I want to make some day.  I’m basically playing with some different types of costumes and characters that could possibly live in this new world I’m trying to make.  It is a cyberpunk world in a fantasy universe. 

This is my first post for Zero Gear, Ltd!  I’ll give myself a small introduction with this one.  I am a concept artist, scenario writer, and creative director in the game industry.  I work on a variety of games in an indie game studio.  I own my own studio Zero Gear, which I run on the side.  One of my life long goals is to create beautiful stories on a variety of platforms.  Primarily, I want to tell those stories through manga, and it would be amazing if those stories could grow and be told through games or even through anime.  My biggest passion is storytelling.  But, for these stories to become an experience others can enjoy is a huge undertaking.  It requires me to continually grow as a concept artist and writer to create such worlds, and it also requires a great deal of work to create not just the story but the implementation of that story chapter by chapter, panel by panel.  I hope you enjoy my work.  I know it may offend some, but I love things that are bold and not afraid to be what they are.  I love to create characters that aren’t afraid to be sexy, cute, classy, strong, bold, rough, timid, shy, weak, cool, badass, etc.  This is the reality of our own world, as some of us are confident in who we are, while others fear the judgement of others.  I do have an appreciation for flamboyancy, but I love the variety of the people of our world and the many great unique things we all have to offer. 

This sketch is a bit rough.  I’m a little undecided how clean or rough I want these to be.  On one hand, I want to keep moving forward, but on the other hand I do want to keep getting better at keeping my work clean and push the quality more.