Something I was working on last night...

I've had it in my head now to 'redo' Jason and the Argonauts. I'm talking specifically about the 1963 film starring Todd Armstrong as opposed to the original tales. The reasoning behind this is twofold:

1 - I'm more familiar with the film
2 - The original tale is extremely long winded and complex.

Thing is, I don't really know what I'm doing with this. Am I going to just do pictures? Am I going to do a comic? I'm not sure. Either way my current plan is

- Get the characters right
- Draw the iconic scenes from the movie - Talos, Harpies, Clashing Rocks, Hydra and of course the Skeletons
-?
-Profit

So anyway, attached is the very rough drafts for the characters of Jason and Heracles! That's right folks, Heracles! None of this Roman 'Hercules' nonsense! If I'm doing this I'm going to do it right!

PS: Forgive the quality of the scans - my scanner is broken so I took a picture of the drawings using my digital camera. This won't matter in the long run as I'll be inking them using the computer but these are just to give you a rough idea.

Jason - I wasn't happy with his face originally as I thought he looked a bit dopey

Jason up close - a different drawing where I worked on the face a bit more to make him look a bit sterner



















Heracles - As you can see I wasn't happy with his posture and face, hence all the scribbly bits, but that improves in the last drawing. The hard part with Heracles is to make him massive without making it seem like he's dumb or simple. This was surprisingly difficult as, although he wasn't as clever as Jason, he wasn't an idiot either, and striking the balance was something I found hard. I finally realised it was all down to his arm length and face. If his arms were too long, he looked like a knuckle dragging caveman. If his face wasn't right, he looked dim. I finalise his face in the last picture.



















Jason and Heracles together - A size scale (although not finalised by any means) to show the size difference between Jason and Heracles. Note Heracles' face is much more refined than the last picture. Also notice the streak of white hair by his temple. This gives him an older, wiser look and further helps make him look intelligent rather than dim-witted. This is the face I will be using for the final character. Note also that his posture, despite not being a complete drawing, is far better (imho) than the above picture.



















I'll be working on these for the next few days - inking them using my Wacom (which I've never really used properly so it will be a learning experience!) and colouring them in Illustrator (which I've also never used before, traditionally doing everything in Photoshop).