Tazz
Haigh
Refrence Images
Gathered Images
Because I'm doing a lot of images, (at least 5 panels per page) there's a lot of visual refrence i need from buildings to motorbikes because lord help me i cannot draw either for toffee.
Blacklight Photography
The idea for the blacklight photography came from reading a magazine article in Feb, which then led to me having an idea based on what the article was about. The article was focusing on adding a phosorecent or flourecent marker to cancer cells so that when under black light they would glow and be able to locate the cancers close to the skin. From this i thought what if magic glowed underblack light in the same way, and so the entire story was spawned of this.
So in this world, freckles, hair, eyes, anywhere where there's menalin buildup or keratin, glows a different colour depending on the level of magic they have; red, orange and yellow bwing lowest, green, mid range, blue, purple and pink being the highest. And of couse black doesnt show under black light it just becomes the void.
I also really just love the bright vibrancy of the blacklight photography with the neon colours on dark backgrounds.
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Cityscapes
Since I have all the patience of a gnat when it comes to drawing buildings, the backgrounds for some of the scenes will be half toned photos. The actual city, Chiaroscuro, is based off Singapore because I felt that it was modern, not western so not very familiar with western audiences who would be used to recognising the likes of New York, San Francisco, London, Sydney, etc, in the background. I also looked at city concepts to look for alternate layouts and more futuristic and less familiar places.
I didn't want to have something familiar in the background so people would place a location to the script, and would leave it for the most part culturaly ambiguous.
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Motorcross
I cant draw motorbikes for shit. So I had to get a lot of motorbike refrences, and dymanic refrences at that so i looked at motorcross. I've still no idea the difference between a speed bike and a dirt bike but ahwell.
There's a lot of motorbikes in the start because it's a more dynamic and open air mode of transport which allows the characters to move their arms around and be posed better .
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Fashion
I've still no set fashion style for the city so its a mix of pastel fashion and biker punk.
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Birds
There are actually a lot of birds in this, mostly because I like drawing them. All the birds in Blacklight are actually summons or Golems. They exist to fufill a purpose and when that purpose is complete they dissolve. I wanted there to be different types of birds between different people, but other animals to be summonable too.
There's the Anhinga, the largest black bird which could be mistaken for a comorant. This is actually the summon of Vanta Black, and acts as a patrol through the sky, and sheads off smaller birds which are Ibises and Curlews (the smallest of the birds). All of her summons are waterbirds, so are waders and use their beaks to spear prey with which i felt was reflective of Vanta's personality.
Alice Cerise actually summons a giant Rooster or phesant, which i based of the Filipino legendary bird, the Sarimanok;
"The Sarimanok is a legendary bird of the Maranao people who originate from Mindanao, a major island in the Philippines. It comes from the words "sari" and "manok." "Sari" means cloth or garment, which is generally of assorted colors. Manòk means "chicken"."
Because of this she has a giant rainbow cock, and yes that probably is gay subtext. On its own it would be mostly pink/red but together when aided by the rest of the colour runners its rainbowed and opalecent.
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