Jason Lenox

TERRORIST DEATH CULT LEADER- UMEX!

The matching bookend page of the main villain, Umex the Defiler in a solo appearance to signify his importance to the story and his place as a leader of the forces of Evil in the world of Aiden.   You can see the main hero, Aegeus, in his solo page here.

While Aegeus was straight up and down and stoic- symbolic of his straight forward approach to law and order- Umex is on an angle, and is moving, the slanted angle (dutching or the “dutch angle” read about that visual concept here) hints at his twisted nature.  Small details of note- nuclear fallout ash is in the air, and an ominous dual black tower on a 3 pt. perspective dominates the background with a bridge going to a single door that connects the evil looking structures.

Other challenges were to show another angle (right side v. left side) with Umex, which is important to me as a creator to not repeat poses (unless I have to!) and to make a scary and dynamic composition for this character in his spotlight page.  On a technical note- getting all of Umex’s odd shapes and body armor correct on the angle he is standing at was difficult- you can see many of my erased lines as I struggled at times with the anatomy, proportions and perspective.

Below are the final pencils, in process pencils and a small poster I made with the artwork as a promo piece on Manga Studio 5.

Enjoy the leader of the DISCIPLES OF UMEX!

Promo Poster of Umex

In Progress Sketch of Umex

Another showcase pinup of the Heroes from the Lords of the Cosmos Team!

Icepaw the Polar Warrior, Orchamemnon the MechaFlower, and Ironshell the War Turtle.

Icepaw ended up being the easiest of the three, I was really plesae with the subtle facial structure I was able to learn about and then execute using reference of real polar bears. Ironshell brought out my inner Warhammer 40k geek of showing a gigantic war creature, and I feel I was successful in giving the creature a sense of grand scale.  Orchamemnon was hard, really hard.  The original creature description we made almost a year ago was very similar to Groot, so I moved away from that, and wanted to keep it a plant based character.  So I put a flower in a machine, which caused me to really get involved in the engineering of his mechanical transit robot body- rulers, compasses and drafting tools really became important.  I needed more space than usual to actually show the legs, arms and flower globe to the viewer- thus 3 characters not 4 or 5.  I am attaching the final pencils and the tracing paper I used to make sure that what you see works out with the parts that Icepaw hides with his bear sized body.

LORDS OF THE COSMOS… ASSEMBLE!

Enjoy!

Tracing study of Orchamemnon’s robot body- note my see through compass tracings to get the proportions, and mechanical engineering correct behind Icepaw!  I made a small sketch of the entire machine in the lower right hand corner for my own reference as I worked to find out “how would this thing work?”

Lords of the Cosmos… ASSEMBLE!!- Four new heroes get their debut into our new universe….Aviteus, Mechaspring, Shar-dor the Ice Assassin and (one as yet to be named, go go writing team!)  Watch them swing into action against the evil of Umex and his Disciples!

Aviteus- a roughly humanoid hero with a bird head, arms with extended wings attached and two powerful legs ending in vicious bird claws. Descended from the great man-Rocs of old, Aviteus soars the skies of Aiden searching for the stain of Umex upon the land. Along with Green Man’s animal spies, Aviteus serves as scout and first striker for the Disciples of Umex. His massive talons can tear flesh and rend metal when their diamond tips are exposed, but by Aegeus’s order Aviteus keeps them shod in dragon-hide leathers. Though he respects Aegeus’s ethos and stalwart resolve he longs to feel the flesh of his foes rent asunder under the might of his magnificent talons

So I did a full character study of my main hero- the nearly invincible Aegeus, and it was a challenge- I learned the pain of drawing a roman helmet, folded arms and did some retro work on his original pinup appearance from a few weeks ago to get his image in line in both works.  I placed Aegeus at the bottom of Mount Dragonspine, the location of the Lords of the Cosmos’s base of operations.

Two items of note- my son drew a brown crayon mark over the moon, and I really was happy with his sword belt and scabbard with links to the belt, my drafting tools and some reference really knocked this one detail out of the park.  And for a behind the scenes photo, here is my son and I drawing below the artwork right before he got me with that damn crayon!

The Villains of LORDS OF THE COSMOS in their second pinup- the pencils were wrapped on this last night, so it’s exciting to share since Bonesaw entered my unconscious mind in 2013.

So a broad establishing shot- the Planet Aiden- home of the action for the LORDS OF THE COSMOS and THE DISCIPLES OF UMEX.

Oddly this was harder than it looked to do, and I had to push myself to make a good composition, my original sketches were very narrow and small, just the kind of thing you would scold someone for in a basic composition class.  I think the simplicity of planets, orbits and circles tended to just blind me to how hard this was to do.

The moons helped build some much needed depth in a bare composition

For an intro page, I think I got the point across.  Welcome to Planet Aiden!