David Petersen's Blog: Plotmasters R-Wars

The latest episode of The Plotmasters Project went up on the site today. It was an episode Jesse and I recorded LIVE on my Twitch stream for ONLINECON titled: R-WARS! To the left you can see my finished art for my Plotmasters update of the idea. Below in this blogpost I'll show a few steps of the process as well as a better look at the individual character re-designs.

If you haven't seen the episode, I've posted the video at the bottom of the blogpost, or you can link to it directly on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/d-qAckOx1mE

The origins of R-Wars were from our mutual friend Mike Davis (real life Rand)--he'd wanted to create a Star Wars/Wing Commander style comic. We share a lot of the old and embarrassing artwork in the episode, but here for quick reference is my mid-90's versions of the core group: (Clockwise from top) J-Man, Zubelflex, Sal, & Davis (or Mike or Hiro depending on what incarnation of the project this was)

At some point, I'd decided to keep the name R-Wars and make the 'R' stand for 'Resalvage' and theme their space exploits to be about fighting over scrap ships & debris.

The thrust behind the design choices for my Plotmasters update were to think of the characters as they would be built by the Jim Henson company as fantasy puppet characters. Lots of textures, wrinkles, layered costumes––and a variety of character shapes ranging from what would be mouth/hand puppets, to human performers with animatronic masks, to walk around full-body characters. To the left you can see my pencil drawings that lead to my final character designs.

The next step was to ink those characters. Because I wanted to have each character isolated for a nice vignette, I inked them all separately––with the plan to assemble them digitally into a group shot when they were all finished.

I inked these on a Huion light pad with printouts of my pencils taped to the back of some Strathmore 300 series bristol. I inked these all live on my twitch stream with Copic Multiliner SP pens.

Below, in the final rendered color images, I'll go into some character design choices for each one:

DAVIS:

Let's start with the only human in the crew. At different points in the history of drawing R-Wars characters (1991-2006), I'd drawn mike as a kid, teen, and adult. For this re-design I thought making him young, but not a child was the right way to go. To help with reinforcing his youth I made sure some of the gear (belt & gloves) were too large for him--like Gully in Battle Chasers or Jarek from Tellos). I also wanted to emulate the feel of a young Luke Skywalker looking out at the twin suns of Tatooine––and perhaps I got a little too close to those aesthetics with the hair and clothing (but I tried to play with the color to shift back away from that particular pre-Jedi). Davis is the pilot of their vessel, a homage to my pal Mike Davis who came up with the original R-Wars characters and always wanted to be a pilot.

J-MAN (now JAEMAN):

The original version of him was Mike's homage to the Kilrathi from Wing Commander, and Jesse Glenn and I always drew him like a taller version of a cat from Cats Trio, but with no nose. For my update I decided to use the posture of a full-body walkaround puppet (like Big Bird, Bear in the Big Blue House, or Earl Sinclair). I also decided to give the character a role––he'd never been fleshed out as to what his character contributed. I made him the captain of the ship, and so I gave him some classic ship captain trappings with a more uniform like coat (like Captain Gloval from Robotech), a turtleneck tunic, and a pipe.

ZUBELFLEX:

Zube was always meant to be a bit of a Han Solo character––perhaps a little more lighthearted though...so I just leaned hard into that design archetype. Most of the update was about making his original costume more interesting (giving the long vest some trim (which was based on the lining of a trench coat I wore in high school), quilting his shirt, and defining his boots). In fact, the pose is the same as a promo photo Harrison Ford took as Han back in 1977. Zube didn't have a definitive crew role, but I always described him as a crack-shot furball––so he's been given the task of security.

SAL:

Sal's name came from 'Salamander' and he was always the mechanic of the crew. For my redesign I kept his basic silhouette & proportions, but played up the alien species aspect with scales, gils, and eye-stalks. The pouch bandolier is completely an homage to Chewbacca's. If R-Wars was being developed as a live action project, I'd see Sal as a hand puppet who was occasionally a little person in costume for walking sequences.

DOC (formerly CAP):

This character started out as Cap Tranfo (a character I made up when I was 13)––and not at all a part of R-Wars. But over the years, I incorporated him in. For his original incarnation he's a scientist who becomes part of the intergalactic space police after a few years of space salvaging. He had metal buckets that he'd sometimes have over his hands or legs that could transform into various tools (jet engines, saws, grappling hooks, etc.) For the update, I changed his transforming buckets into an augmented mech gauntlet. It allows him to move heavy scrap, but also a precision for any medical treatments. Because I'd given Jaeman the new role of Captain, it seemed odd to keep this character's name as Cap...so I changed it to Doc as a nod to his new science role as the medic.

Over the years of drawing the R-Wars characters, neither Jesse or I had ever drawn their ship. And since I design structures better in 3D with my hands, I made a model of a space freighter that had something very much like a shipping container/garbage truck aesthetic to the area that salvaged parts are stored. The model is amost entirely made of shipboard (the backs of bristol pads) with some rigid tubes, cardscock, and thin dowels in for details.

In the inked illustration of the ship, io get rid of the silliness pardoy-like name of 'R-Wars' as a title, I decided that the ship would have a call sign R.WOR. That way it still had some connection to the old, while bringing it firmly into new territory that could be developed for real.