Introduction to Recca's Champions

Recca’s Champions is a graphic novel project of mine that I’ve been working on for over a year now. The story is set as a prelude to another story I was writing during my high school years over seven years ago. The storyline has changed rather drastically since then, but I cannot deny it’s roots. Especially since keeping those roots around will one day open up an avenue to an entirely new adventure that will be more closely based on the original storyline.

What is it about?

Recca was once a prosperous place full of magic and wonder that was nurtured and maintained by the Six Founding Gods. One day, over a hundred years ago, the God of Darkness and Chaos became selfish and tried to usurp the other Gods so he could be the sole ruler of Recca. This was the start of the Great War. The Great War ended some time later with bloodshed and devastation on both sides. The Founding Gods had all been sealed away or weakened to the point of eternal slumber. The mortals of Recca were alone and suffered greatly from the imbalance of the world.

The story begins over a hundred years after the Great War when a gryphon seer finds the Dark God’s sealed soul and awakens him. The Great War is about to start again, but this time around there are no other gods to oppose the Dark God. In the face of destruction, the mortals of Recca must take a stand. The future speaks of the rise of Recca’s Champions and Recca’s Fiends, mortals given the powers of the Gods, to fight for the world or fight for its destruction.

Who will triumph over the other has yet to be seen…

The Gods

There are six Founding Gods of Recca that each control an element as follows:

Holy, Goddess of Light and Serenity

Latz, God of Darkness and Chaos

Xaphain, God of Fire, Death and Rebirth

Rae’Kia Goddess of Water and Life

Kizaar, God of Earth and Valor

Isaria, Goddess of Wind and Spirit

During the Great War all six of the Founding Gods were sealed away, disrupting the balance that they together created.

The Heaven Realm is also home to a large society of lesser gods, though they were pretty much wiped out during the Great War. Those who survived were banished to the Earth Realm.

Champions

One of the definitions of ‘Champion’ is:

Hero or warrior

A hero or warrior, especially a knight who fought in behalf of a monarch in former times

It is not immediately the definition one thinks of when thinking of the word ‘Champion’, but I found that it fits in pretty well with what this story and the title of the story represents.

The Champions of the story are characters who are given powers by either a god or goddess of Recca to restore the world’s balance. Sheena for instance will become Holy’s Champion, with the ability to manipulate the light element.

Fiends

Fiends are the same as the Champions with a different set of goals in mind. They are characters who are given powers of the gods in order to further disrupt the balance, destroy the world and help created it anew under Latz’ rule. King Bloodfang in the prologue is given some of Latz’ powers and becomes his Fiend of Darkness.

How exactly these powers come into play will be determined as the story progresses.

Blue and Gold Macaw Pair WIP

Start of an Experiment

This project was a bit of an experiment for me. Normally I use Bristol board paper for the majority of my works, but I saw on WetCanvas! that colored pencil artists have been using Ampersand Pastel Board for their works which turn out some fantastic results. I did not have a pastel board in my inventory, but I did have a 5x7 Ampersand Gesso Board, so I tried that.

This piece is also the first in a while that I have done without the additional use of pastels, markers or pen…yep...strictly Prismacolor Pencil all the way through.

I started first with making a sketch off of my reference photo on a separate piece of paper and then tracing it over to the board with tracing paper. As you can see in the picture, I smudged some of the graphite while trying to clean up the lines. Trying to erase it made it worse so I decided not to try that again. Luckily I was pretty certain at the time that I wasn’t going to leave the background white so I could cover it with color in later steps.

Layers

The gesso board has a bit of a texture to it (probably more toothy than the pastel board would have been if I had one) so I had to build up more layers of colored pencil than I normally would. I started first by lightly blocking in all of the colors just to get a feel for the texture. Afterwards I was fighting the urge to outline the macaws and the branch with pen since the initial layer of colors started hiding the pencil outlines. I resisted though.

I built up more layers of color on the birds on the progress shot below. During this stage some of the layers were getting thicker and I noticed that sometimes the act of trying to go over the layer again started pushing aside previous layers. This worked well for adding in highlights, but was a bit of an annoyance when a lightening effect wasn’t my goal. More layering helped combat this issue.

  

I blocked in the remaining sections of blue on the two macaws with true blue and went over it again with a heavier layer of powder blue to give me an undercoat of color to work with. The roughness of the board forced me to press down pretty hard on the powder blue layer to cover the majority of the white spots so the waxy results of too much prismacolor pencil in one spot was already starting to show, but there was still enough tooth left for adding in feather detail.

Next I added in a layer of electric blue over the powder blue to darken it up a bit and used the other blues from my previous list to start adding in the feather details. The primary feathers and some of the shadows have some violet blue added in as well.

  

I finished adding the details to the birds and branch before adding several layers of greens down for the background. Here is the final shot.

List of Colors

Here is a full list of colors that were used in this piece. All of the colored pencils I am using are prismacolor pencils. Unfortunately I don’t have much of a method to my madness so I couldn’t really say how I color. One of my goals for recording my art during the WIP stages is so that I can start to nail down some of my methods.

Background is a light layer of aquamarine with some spots of muted turquoise. It was then layered with dark green, peacock green, grass green, true green, indigo blue, and blended with a brush.

Yellow parts are a canary yellow with goldenrod and yellow ochre shadows and cream highlights. I believe there are some areas of spanish orange too.

The macaws’ beaks are muted turquoise and cool gray 90%.

The black feathers under their chins are indigo blue, dark green, and some cool gray 90%

Their faces are cool gray 90% and the white part is the exposed board.

The green parts of their heads are a mix of spring green, true green, dark green and olive green. (Possibly with some hint of a blue color too, I cannot remember.)

The blues of the macaws are done with a mix of true blue, powder blue, electric blue, cerulean blue, an unmarked blue that looks like a lighter version of true blue (303 is the number, but the name isn’t showing), an unmarked blue that is slightly lighter than indigo blue (306), and indigo blue.

The branch was done with putty beige, sienna brown, sienna beige, colorless blender.

Weekly Preview: 11/14/2011 to 11/20/2011

Every site I’ve looked at for tips on blogging said that consistent and knowledgeable posts is one of the biggest keys to blogging success. Honestly, I’m very new to blogging and to consistency, but I’m going to give it a try with hopes that this blog will blossom into something my readers will find interesting and informative.

 

I have put together a very basic schedule that I will edit along the way:

 

Mondays - Weekly Previews

 

Wednesdays - At the drawing board discussions.

 

Fridays - Inside looks at my graphic novel Recca’s Champions

 

And if there are certain topics you would like me to cover then please send an email my way at darkgryphstudios@yahoo.com

 

This Week

 

Wednesday I will go through the steps of progression on a colored pencil drawing of a pair of blue and gold macaws.

 

Friday I will give an introduction of my graphic novel, Recca’s Champions. Get information on my inspiration for the story and the events that lead to the start of the story. I will also write about the meaning of the title’s name.

 

Recca’s Champions will be going through a style change starting on January 15, 2012. I will be using traditional media to color the pages instead of photoshop. Visit Recca’s Champions official homepage regularly for further updates.