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Description

America's elite fighting force. Led by the futuristic cyborg Warcry, Battleforce is made up of some of the most powerful and dangerous individuals alive. The invincible Titan! The powerful telepath and telekinetic, Psyche! The deadly ninja master Wyndstryke! Gun totting mercenary Rook! The armoured warrior Cybermax! And the bestial Squatch. Together, they defend the planet against the worst scum possible!

Yes, folks, it's bad to "Da' 90's!!!" I kind of thought I may never return to this series. But after I bought a trade paperback a few weeks back with early 90's Rob Liefeld art, I was "inspired."

This time around, I decided to try and really ape Rob Liefeld's style even further. The last time I got part of the faces right. But this time I really wanted to capture the weird eccentricities of Rob's style that he seemed to get away with. The feathered hair that was the exact same on every single character, male or female. The lopsided eyes with no eyes that didn't line up. The weird mouths. The horrible, horrible anatomy. The grasping mandible claws instead of hands. The fact that characters holding swords don't actually hold swords, Rob just drew fist then drew the hilt and the blade around that without bothering to connect the two. And so on.

I also wanted to really capture the rather lame character designs from back then. And when designing them, I actually understood how easy it was to fall into some of those traps. When you design a character without a strong focus on what message you are trying to send with them, it can be hard to come up with any sort of memorable design. If all you are going with is "Big, strong. Has guns," then that is kind of hard to tie a central image around. And without a central image to work with, all you are left with is just sticking various costume elements together to see what works. This character has a cowl. This one doesn't. This character needs to have some colour separation to keep from looking like a big guy in a green bodysuit, but since all you have is just a name like "Burk" then there's no central theme to tie anything around, resulting in just splashes or patches of color on the suit applied at random. This character needs to have a distinct silhouette, lets just stick a giant fin on his back or give him a ponytail just to make him stand out more. And so on.

Scarily, it was very easy to fall into bad habits with this one. I stopped correcting myself on a lot of visual errors, figuring that since Rob would do it, it would help without he authenticity of the piece. Unfortunately, that also mean that it was easier to be lazy with this image, and I feared that those sort of shortcuts would follow me onto my other drawings.

Description

America's elite fighting force. Led by the futuristic cyborg Warcry, Battleforce is made up of some of the most powerful and dangerous individuals alive. The invincible Titan! The powerful telepath and telekinetic, Psyche! The deadly ninja master Wyndstryke! Gun totting mercenary Rook! The armoured warrior Cybermax! And the bestial Squatch. Together, they defend the planet against the worst scum possible!

Yes, folks, it's bad to "Da' 90's!!!" I kind of thought I may never return to this series. But after I bought a trade paperback a few weeks back with early 90's Rob Liefeld art, I was "inspired."

This time around, I decided to try and really ape Rob Liefeld's style even further. The last time I got part of the faces right. But this time I really wanted to capture the weird eccentricities of Rob's style that he seemed to get away with. The feathered hair that was the exact same on every single character, male or female. The lopsided eyes with no eyes that didn't line up. The weird mouths. The horrible, horrible anatomy. The grasping mandible claws instead of hands. The fact that characters holding swords don't actually hold swords, Rob just drew fist then drew the hilt and the blade around that without bothering to connect the two. And so on.

I also wanted to really capture the rather lame character designs from back then. And when designing them, I actually understood how easy it was to fall into some of those traps. When you design a character without a strong focus on what message you are trying to send with them, it can be hard to come up with any sort of memorable design. If all you are going with is "Big, strong. Has guns," then that is kind of hard to tie a central image around. And without a central image to work with, all you are left with is just sticking various costume elements together to see what works. This character has a cowl. This one doesn't. This character needs to have some colour separation to keep from looking like a big guy in a green bodysuit, but since all you have is just a name like "Burk" then there's no central theme to tie anything around, resulting in just splashes or patches of color on the suit applied at random. This character needs to have a distinct silhouette, lets just stick a giant fin on his back or give him a ponytail just to make him stand out more. And so on.

Scarily, it was very easy to fall into bad habits with this one. I stopped correcting myself on a lot of visual errors, figuring that since Rob would do it, it would help without he authenticity of the piece. Unfortunately, that also mean that it was easier to be lazy with this image, and I feared that those sort of shortcuts would follow me onto my other drawings.