Zatswan: Multiversal Guardian

[Neil Allen]

[Neil Allen]

[Neil Allen]

[Neil Allen]

[Neil Allen]

[Neil Allen]

Trying out some new crayons:

[Neil Allen]

[Neil Allen]

[Neil Allen]

[Neil Allen]

An image that somewhat displays my process. This is all lined and ready to be painted, though some small adjustments will be made here and there.

[Neil Allen]

Some people might find this interesting. It's a video of me working on my comic while I talk about the process and materials I use to create comics. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem you can embed Youtube videos into posts anymore:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2sbBdbMuz8

[Neil Allen]

I have completed 100 pages and 5 covers for my comic series Zatswan: Multiversal Guardian, which you can read for free at https://zatswan.com/

To celebrate this milestone, I made this soft pastel painting of the two main characters.



I used Pan Pastels and Caran D'Ache pastel pencils for this piece.

During Black Friday, which is basically my favorite time of year, I ordered some Rembrandt soft pastel half sticks, so I'm really looking forward to using those. I don't have any really good archival pastel sticks, and I really could have used some here.

Oh, this was also my first time trying out Lux Archival paper from Brush and Pencil, which is a really expensive sanded paper. It's actually the most expensive paper I have, and I have some expensive paper. I've been wanting to get around to trying it out. I really like it and I would say it's worth the price!

[Neil Allen]

Mmm, I took another look at that picture the next day and realized it wasn't done yet, so I made some adjustments. The largest was fixing Allecka Xona's leg. I also added some size to A.C. Cooper in the lat area, gave him a fuller head of hair, and then made some very minor adjustments here and there. The nice thing about soft pastel is that corrections are very easy to make. Now I'm very pleased with this picture!

[Neil Allen]

Zatswan animated cartoons are on the way. Here is a basic animation of Allecka Xona:


I did this to get familiar with the animation software and get used to animating.

I'm already a master musician with all the gear needed to record the soundtrack, so I'm really looking forward to that:
https://youtu.be/OY2ilS8Lkhs

As for the voice work, I'll explore my options for that.

The goal is to have the cartoons look something like the animated scenes from many PC Engine and Sega CD games. Some examples:

Castlevania: Draxula X :Rondo of Blood intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sME5_tyRbkg

Lunar: Eternal Blue intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcoajt4Y_Hg

I feel doing work in that style is doable for me. I think it looks really cool if executed well, and the animation is pretty minimal.

[Neil Allen]

I decided to release the chapter 7 cover early simply because I have a special fondness for this painting. I feel it does a great job at capturing the distinctive sentimentality of Zatswan and my imagination.



Here is a picture of it while it was being worked on.