PUMMEL o7 - 'Darksiders'

Latest round in the monthly PUMMEL one-on-one competitions at Penciljack, this month the topic (chosen by my opponent) was the recently released 360 game Darksiders, from Vigil Games. While I have not played the game myself, I was somewhat familiar with it because the Creative Director at Vigil is one Joe Madureira. I like his work.

I pulled some ref drawings of Mad's from the archives at IGN and did what I could. As usual I ended up starting this at the last minute, so very little time was spent in composition (or studying the anatomy of horses, sorry 'bout that). As a result I got some poor bits I just couldn't work around, but overall I'm happier than I expected to be with the results.

Call it about 6-7 hours over two evenings, all in Manga Studio EX v3 on the Cintiq. Tried to set aside my usual attempts to bash against one of my weaknesses and instead went back to doing what I feel strongest at; straight inks, black and white line art. It's my comfort zone.

The text is drawn partly from Revelations 6:3-4, and partly from a notation on one of Mad's design sketches, all rewritten to fit. I like to do my own lettering, but it's murder on the hands after a while.

Feel free to crit the shit out of it. For those of you who have played the game and are more familiar with the character design than I am (which wouldn't take much), let me know how close I hit it. I had to make up some bits in the end, and I worry that some thing which are specific to the design (like his proportions, the left hand in particular) aren't going to read as anything more than mistakes.

Oh, and for fun, two logos hidden in there. Might be hard to find 'cause they're pretty stylised, but that's part of the game, right?

If anyone is interested in coloring it, I'll probably post a larger version for Download later on. Just let me know when you post it and don't forget to credit.


--EDIT--

I let some peers over at PJ convince me to make an adjustment to the text composition, kinda dig the results. And I've posted a 1600-wide version for anyone who wants to use it as colors practice, just click "Download" along the left there, have fun with it and let me know when you post your results!