Chapter 3 is well and truly underway, now, and as you might imagine, this is yet again the first part of a two-page spread. I’m going that a lot more these days, because I think that, not only are the results more coherent and satisfactory, they also are a lot more fun to draw. It’s also a bit of a head start to me to have the heavy-duty sketchwork done in advance, two pages at a time. So it’s off to the races.
The supersaturated colors I’ve used up to now are giving way to a much more limited palette here. There’s basically only four or five colors here, but I think they work pretty well overall. This happens to be one of the creepiest and moodiest scenes I’ve done so far. All the atmospheric effects and so on: it’s new for me, but I think it’s retaining the original artistic direction of this comic pretty well. Portraying the aftermath of an atomic exchange isn’t easy to do because we haven’t ever really had one, except for Japan, and that was pretty limited, however horrible it may have been in and of itself. However, I can say from experience that this is what the aftermath of a wildfire sometimes looks like. While I was living in Florida some years back the upper Everglades caught fire, and were burning as I drove up the edge of the event. It was very eerie, as I was practically alone on the highway, the sun was dulled out by the smoke and the sky was kind of sickly red-brown. I found out later that the stop-line for the fire had been only a few hundred yards from where I’d been; I remembered thinking I’d seen a bit of flame off in the distance, but had convinced myself it was my imagination. In retrospect, it was quite possible, given that I was so much closer than I’d thought. I drew on that experience for this sequence.
So anyhow, the first 6-Commando “stuff” I’ve been so cryptic about is apparently wending its way across the continent as we speak, having been completed about a week ahead of schedule. I have to go through the whole rigmarole of seeing what I need to do to sell them, from a legal standpoint, but they are at least going to be in hand by the middle of the week, and when they are, I’ll make some kind of grand announcement or some such. But until then I’m going to keep being cryptic.
Other than that, thanks for stopping through, and see you next week for the next half of this spread!
Foist!
I want a puppy this time!
Looks a lot like a pic from when Mt. S.t Helens erupted, same magnatude, same destruction, less radiation.
Volcanoes!!
Mama Natures Nukes!
Similar effect, it’s true. Especially the fallout, which though not radioactive, can be just as dangerous.
–M
Well now, short of the moon crashing into the Earth at least things can’t get any worse…wait, I just jinxed it didnt I?
Don’t speak too soon!
–M
“The nucklear blasts and fallout were in fact just a prelude to the real horrors of the war aftermath, for innomirous deseases elaborately engeneered for war got free and were running wild across the survivng population. Some of them were in fact realeased by men? others got fre on their own when the labs were destroyed – that matterd not for the result was the same…”
*Puts on gravelly Ron Pearlman voice*
War… War never changes. Since our ancestors discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything, from God, to justice, to simple psycotic rage.
In the last years of the 20th century, many decades of tensions and fear were sparked into a conflagration, a single misunderstanding that burned the earth in a storm of neuclear fire.
A silence decended over the Earth and seemed as if, a kind of twisted peace had at last been acheived. But it would not last… For the survivors of the holocaust, the end of the world was mearly the prelude to another bloody chapter of human history.
Because war… War never changes…
Eat your heart out Bethesda!
*clap* *clap* *clap* Well done sir, well done!
Oh, man, Fallout was such a total trip. I mean, really. And though I don’t have a retro-50’s style here, I admit that there’s a lot of inspiration from Fallout in this comic. And this sequence in particular.
–M
Now I’m intrigued. I wonder where the story will be going. When I started reading 6-Commando I never envisioned it would take such a drastic turn.
Twilight 2000.
Here we go again! 😀
I admit it is a bit of a left turn. Okay, a pretty drastic one. But this is not capricious – it’s all part of the Master Plan. And unexpected though you may find it, I’m glad it’s keeping you engaged!
–M
And I’m gald you’re doing such a great job with 6-Commando. Alternative history is a difficult and touchy theme (and people will spot occasional paradoxons here and there, but it doesn’t matter too much. The story is what really counts.
Thank you!
A good depiction… Still I can think of some things that would IMO look different, but I am not the artist here so I will keep them in me. After all that way it really looks moody. Darkness, Despair… And no living soul seen… 🙂
Well, in all honesty it’d probably be a lot more charred, and there would be more bodies. I stopped short of that for purposes of good taste, and also because all those charcoal greys killed all the line definition. A browner look was more in keeping with my imagined idea for the scene, smoother and dustier, with a first layer of fallout having descended on everything by the time the scene has started.
–M
Actually….
I would depict it less charred. Given that cars are dragged mere meters across the road (not even far from it) and all of them are still standing on wheels I’d say that this site was pretty far from the blast? so I would not expect a lot of fires here.
Of course it also depends on time of year and region, for the forest really might egnight from a mere spark, but I would still expect to see more surviving foilage: bushes and grass that were sheltered from heatwawe by other trees and bushes.
Plus the blaswave comes seconds after the heatwave so even if the trees got egnighted they would not have enough time to burn through and so they whould be rippeg from the groung with their roots out.
And finally – I see some trees that fell the opposite way from proposed blastwave direction… 🙂
Could just be a regular forest fire. Assuming the Great Yellowstone Fire never happened and US policy was total fire prevention and not controlled burns. A massive wildfire is perfectly plausible.
Actually, the trees are likely to be blasted in all directions as I understand it, since they’re pulled inward first by the vacuum of the initial blast (which burns off all the local oxygen with its titanic heat) and then blasted outwards by the shockwave. Which is, of course, by way of saying I wasn’t really too careful when it came to that aspect of it, was I? Oh, well.
–M
Yep, that’s always what I envisioned the aftermath of the end of a major nuclear exchange would look like. All we need now are the half-collapsed buildings and rubble piles in the city, which I suspect will be in the next panel.
Yep, it’s gonna really suck to be a survivor of all this, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.
Just wait for the killer robots to come stomping out of the rubble, crushing bleached skulls under foot
Or under tread. Mike is the killer robot, here, I think.
Though Skynet did have those cool Hunter-Killer Tanks.
–M
Thank you people … now I can’t get that damn starting theme from any of the terminator movies OUT OF MY HEAD!!
Hey, do not forget Dobrynyas. They pretty much have feet to crush skulls under. 🙂
The tank things were called Centurions I think, Hunter-Killers were the flying things, then the last movie added the slightly silly Moto-Terminator attack bike robots, those really nasty killer eel things and that big-ass Harvester bot
I love this, really moody illustration. That clouded up sun I like best I guess. Can’t wait to see whole spread!
Thanks, Joost. It took a lot of trial and error and a lot of layering in Photoshop to get it right, but the effect, in the end, seems worth it to me. It’s definitely a major turn from the really bright, almost forced colors I’ve used up til now. This sequence was why I overdid the colors early on (though I might have gone too far in some places) – mainly to make this sequence contrast what went before it.
–M