Let's face it. Vampires are f'n cool. Even the glittery teen ones in the books and movies, that I haven't read or watched. Ok, so they appeal to some people. And those people think they are REALLY cool! Seriously, they are obsessed....uncomfortably. Alright, that's enough of my thinly veiled insults. (I'm just teasing! No angry emails!)
So, I wanted an old school vampire. The old Count Dooku....uhhhh...... Christopher Lee type. Nicely dressed, big cape, suave mutha #*@!
I decided to focus on Strahd, from Ravenloft. The story was pretty cool and slightly different from good old Dracula. I wanted to do something kind of conceptual, not just a cool guy in a cape.
These are the early, early ideas. Just putting things down as quickly as possible. This is just a couple of the pages. I do alot of thumbnails. Every time I think I'm too rockstar for that, the image doesn't turn out as good as I think it could. Sometimes, I nail it with the first sketch. More often than not though, I will find something better by pushing it until I'm out of ideas.
Once I have a couple of ideas I think will work, I flesh them out a little more.
I decided to focus on the Tatyana aspect of the story. After all, it's why Strahd became a vampire, and her reincarnations consume (get it? consume? ba dum chh!) alot of his free time.
So anyway, I gathered some reference and some inspiration.
Got some feedback from the studio mates. Changed the layout a little.
I drew out a bunch of different screaming women on tracing paper. Scanned them in seperately so I could arrange them inside the cape.
Want to know a benefit of working in a studio with other artists? Check out that head. I may have noticed that he had a little squished head, before I called it done. More than likely though, I would have noticed it a couple of days after I showed it to the world.
Re-arranged the faces, and made some color adjustments. Tightened up his face a little, and then called it done.
I just wish that I could claim that I planned this antithesis to Twilight so perfectly. That would be some genius planning. Just dumb luck though.