Faction Leaders: Supreme Commisar Laika

The leader of the Soviet Systems Alliance takes the form that you would immediately expect a leader of a communist space empire would: a hyper-intelligent psychic dog in a large mech suit. It's a no brainer really.

Having been sent up into space in 1957 on a scientific mission from which she was to not return it was though that Laika died as her small capsule began to overheat. Alas, as it turns out this was not the case, near death the small mongrel entered a state of transcendental meditation. For over 100 years Laika communed with great star spirits and the entities of higher planes learning and evolving, she returned to Russia in a fireball to lead her people to victory and glory.

The idea of giant mech overlord came before the dog-in-a-mech idea for me. My first idea was for the Soviets to be lead by some sort of Soviet Computer AI but this quickly scrapped in favour of a psychic dog. Working in Photoshop I tried to develop a nice range of soviet-inspired mech suits.

  Whist the designs of the suit part varied quite wildly the dog-in-water-tank aspect stayed constant. I don't really know why she's kept in a water tank but it looks the part. Next to concept was Laika herself sans suit. Spoiler alert: I can draw dogs to save my life.

I got through three until I thought "F*ck it, the third one'll do".

And so it did.

With an idea for suit and do formed I started my line work.

Small legs, big torso and big gloves. Perfect. A few hours of painting later and the result was:

Glorious Psychic Space Dog, complete with bestarred red and chrome mech suit. The flowing red cape and glowing, all-knowing eyes completes the bill.

Of course, looking at those cowboy-feet, a little more work was needed just to polish the paint up off properly.

Laika, highlighted, colour corrected and de-cowboyfeeted (?).

Faction Leaders: Admiral-President Trumbo

New term, new stuff. No more ship stuff for a while it's character time, more specifically the faction leaders. Taking on board some advice from my last round of feedback just before the Christmas holiday it thought it would be a good idea to expand on the aesthetic and explore it through the designs of the two faction commanders.

The first leader, the one detailed in this post, is the leader of the United Systems of America. He is a completely original character, not in any way, shape or for inspired by or based off of a certain sitting President of a certain western superpower. I assure you that any resemblance that can be seen is purely coincidental and that I most definitely did not go out of my way to lampoon or satirise the appearance or personality of any world leader especially not the 45th President of the United States of America Donald John Trump... because that would be absurd...

I began my initial concept work for Admiral-President in my sketch book exploring different costume designs and personality driven poses for the Admiral-President (as well as outlandish quiff designs). With a fairly rounded feel as to what the character was supposed to be like I began my line work in Photoshop.

Squat, rotund. bequiffed, besceptered and kitted out in a military inspired uniform of appropriate quasi-dictatorial design, I felt like I nailed our smug little wannabe-emperor. 

   A few hours in Photoshop later and this was the end result... At least it was until it was pointed out to me that his left leg was a tad janky... and the colour a little washed out. A wee bit more work was needed for the final result.

Muah. Perfecto. Brighter, cleaner, nicer to look at Trumbo-2.0.