The joint works of B. Zedan and C. Allgood

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Wow I forgot about this blog so hard that when I started work on Hyacinth again I didn’t even look here for reference work although I knew I’d done more sketches than I’d found for it.

Anyway, this comic is done (for now). Twelve pages about finding your place in the world over on my blog.

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“Growlers”, a super-mini comic of an idea Chase and I had that mixes non-trad zombies with the traditional plague doctor costume and colour theory of the 1971′s The Andromeda Strain.

Physical and digital media.

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FINALLY laying out pages. When was the last time I did this even?

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Prompt: you choice!

So I just did a cover-y kind of thing. One of the things about the prompt list I've been working from is to turn one of each week's sketches into a full colour drawing. Not sure if I want to do that yet.

Going off these prompts has definitely helped my solidify some things about Hyacinth's world, this has been so fun!

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Prompt: three outfits! Character: Hy likes making clothes, so it's fun to draw clothes for her, but also difficult because of the Imperial's little stubby tails. Suspender styles are a must!

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Prompt: favourite place Character: Hyacinth, sewing something

Have I mentioned lately how much I love drawing the lizard-y Imperials?

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Prompt: a scene (as if a movie, but like, here's a simplified page)

Trying to decide how I want to do this.

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Prompt: group shot Characters: Hy's mother, Hy's father (foreground), Hyacinth, Thaym mystic

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Prompt: alt universe version Character: Hyacinth (as a human)

Even though Imperials only grow a minimal amount of hair, Hy always finds a way to keep it over her eyes.

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Prompt: Character's room Character: Hyacinth

Hyacinth isn't of her majority yet, but she's got a pretty clean room, except for her sewing stuff.  A minimum of books, because the house has a library, so just stuff she likes is there. The fancy window seat is a weird thing to be in a child's room, but it's an old, rich house and you don't get rid of expensive drapery, you just pin it up until the kid is old enough not to ruin it.

The vine growing on top of the corner shelf is dusty as shit and since a housekeeper waters it, Hy forgets the plant exists until tendrils are long enough to grab knick-knacks.

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Prompt: character as child/adult/senior Character: Hyacinth

Imperial babies are all the best parts of baby reptiles and baby birds.

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The prompt was for redesigning a character you don't use any more, so I'm filling the space with attempts to get the Imperial head shape down. I'm not a doodler, really, so what I need (and why I'm doing these prompts) is just more time essentially teaching myself via repetition.

That's the joy of designing a species for something like this though. I can decide they're made of the basic shapes that are natural for me to do.

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Prompt: antagonist Character: Hyacinth’s mother

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Prompt: protagonist Character: a Thaym mystic

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The other species in Hyacinth Planted are the Thaym, an amphibian-ish folk who are very solid, with a thick layer of fat (think like, seals, the muscular jiggle). They've got a hip setup that turns their legs out, no neck and big ol' eyes that handle the dark of a swamp well.

I also draw them a lot better in thumbnail. Working on that.

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Before we get into character/world-building sketches, let's gander at species design! One of the two peoples in Hyacinth Planted are the Imperials, a reptilian-ish group adapted for warmer, dry, climates. They've also got a rigid, cut-throat matriarchy (you can see the bio females of the species are larger and more solid), but that's for another day.

The prelim design was very anthro-reptile and rough, after talking with Chase the design became less Star Trek alien and more logical species design. Their sparse hair grows in areas to protect all them soft & fleshy bits, like genitals, underarms, neck and eyes.

Also: I think they are adorable.

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It was not until I was trying to think of something for the last prompt that I remembered Chase’s and my rejected New World submission (which we’ll be doing on our own). UGH, I could have been working on it this whole time.

Prompt: your choice From: ‘Hyacinth Planted’, Hy’s dad giving her the wedding gown she’d made.

See all of my sketches for this challenge here.

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I'm going to be going (roughly) through the prompts from Character Drawcember to lock in the world building for Hyacinth Planted before I start drawing it out. Once there's a queue built up, we'll start posting it here!

Like a lot of the projects we do together, the creative workload for this story went sort of like this:

Chase and I hash out the basics of the story and world together

I block out the broad strokes/arc and some blocks of story

Chase goes in and tightens/smooths things and fills in details

Then I refine it

If there's a physical aspect to it (art, comics, etc), then once we're both good on it, I make it

For some projects, Chase's workload in step three is way more involved than my work in steps 2 and 4, but in other projects that's flipped.