Capitan Benezuela (Spelled with a 'B') XD

The original doodle of Captain Venezuela was done while waiting for a bus in a coffee shop in Edinburgh after my partner in crime Juan Carlos De Abreu asked me to sketch a Venezuelan version of Captain America.

In complete ignorance and with only a couple of reference images on a phone this was sketched. 

The idea of the character stuck with Juan and after he recounted a couple of dozen ideas he had for the character we decided to take it forward as part of our Honours Projects. Our projects allow for this as Juan is looking into cultural differences in storytelling and mine is about transmuting writings etc to visual media.

The story is being written at the minute and will be fully fleshed out over the Christmas break. Once it is all worked out I will elaborated on it. 

In the new story Capitan Venezuela is one of the most renowned Luchador in Latin America, wearing the colours of his home country on his outfit. Juan and I agreed that we didn't want a ridiculously ripped, roid case. Juan wanted CV to be a "naturally big guy" like Roy "Big Country" Nelson or Mark Hunt of the UFC's Heavyweight division but with a bit more definition. So the initial consideration was his build.

Big Country (upper right) Mark Hunt (lower right).

With this in mind I began to produce silhouettes, figuring out the character's build, what kind of outfit he will wear and how to tie in the colours and iconography of Venezuela. 

Juan explained that the most important elements for him were the colours and stars from the flag as well as incorporating the horse into the uniform. On the current Venezuelan flag there are 8 stars, one was added by order of Venezuela's current president Hugo Chavez. This among other changes to the Venezuelan coat of arms such as changing the direction of the horse were not received well by Venezuela in general Juan told me so he requested that it only has 7. 

Capitan has a tattoo across his chest reading "MUCHO GUSTO" meaning "much pleasure", a response to old style wrestler rants from the old WWF wrestlers of the 80's and 90's. The other element is the horse graphic on the side of his mask. 

These will come in handy when redrawing Capitan for panels as the edit tools such as Warp and Distort tools can be used to apply them to him and blend them in as part of the art. This will help with the overall consistency of the art.

I feel that this is a design that is both pretty striking thanks to the bold pattern of his outfit and should prove to be easily reproduced from panel to panel in the comic.