Project Description

INKTOBER 2023 Day #18: SADDLE.

“I seem to be finding a lot of excuses to incorporate elements from my graphic-novel-in-the-works, ‘Revery’, into these prompts. It’s obviously a sign I need to spend more time working on it, but in the meantime, I can do a little world building and play around with some visuals and concepts during Inktober.
Here, PMD has saddled up a Panda Beetle, but doesn’t quite know how to get it to go where he wants it to go. Panda Beetles are one of several unique, symbiotic forms of transportation used by the Cobblies in the story, predominantly by The Rogue Dream Squad. The beetles have more legs than seems reasonable, and they are incredibly fast. The slightly stressed out Cobbly in the background is Adarax, one of the main characters. He doesn’t usually ride a Panda Beetle, but I felt like drawing him. I don’t remember exactly how I first came up with these critters, but visually they are a bit of a nod to the giant Ohmu bugs in one of my all-time favorite graphic novels ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind’. I’m still refining the visuals and concepts for the story and world, which includes the riding saddles and harnesses and such for the Panda Beetles. I spend a lot of time thinking about functionality and materials, but also culture and art for the Cobbliverse. I also need to give some thought to making things look used and maybe a little worn. I will probably wind up putting together a ‘World of’ type of book for ‘Revery’ detailing all these kinds of things at some point.”

Are you enjoying these monkey-filled pen and ink illustrations? Would you like to see even more of them, and be able to hold them in your very own hands? Then grab yourself a copy of my Inktober art book INKLINGS: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733734716?ref_=ast_author_dp