Componato De Luche Libre

While painting up the pages I have noticed that there is nothing on the ring canvas.

Like some of the elements of El Capitan and White Skull's costumes the logo will be laid in the ring as well as on one of the screens as Brucito is announcing the match.

Page Layouts

 These are the page layouts I will be moving forward with. The boxes represent the main characters' placement within the scene and will serve as reference for perspective as well as a rough guide for values.

These have been reviewed by some of my peers and though it's pretty abstract at times, make sense when read in tandem with the script.

Panel Renders

Using the 3D model of the arena, block outs for the panels have been rendered in Maya. These will all be cropped, compiled and arranged to produce the base page layouts.

These will serve mostly as guides rather than final compositions. Adjustment will most likely be made to overall compositions of each panel, for example; the top middle panel will be tweaked to make the character more imposing as well as give more room for dialogue within the shot.

Arena Blockout

As part of the production process of the preview issue I will be using a blockout of the arena. This will aid in speeding up production as complex perspective will not need to be drafted up by hand as well as establish light sources.

The set will all be painted over to get rid of the "3D model" look before assing characters, screen displays as well as any other features I may find that crop up. This was a process that was utilised recently in the Alien MMA Fighter Character Design Challenge and proved to be effective however these pages will be far more polished.

Capitan Benezuela Intro Script

The scene from the comic featuring Capitan Benezuela, El Gigante and the ring announcer is complete and over the next 2-3 weeks I will be producing the pages that will make up this part of the story. I am giving myself extra time to produce these pages in case of any unforeseen challenges that may occur during the production process.
This will serve as a bit of a test run for the production process of the pages, highlighting any issues that may arise.
As I am doing this Juan and I will be working on a script for the other part of the comic I am going to make. At present we are leaning towards the idea of an "issue 0" which would serve as a taster for readers, giving them the opportunity to see what the story is prior to release. This is a practice used by comic companies such as Top Cow Productions to introduce their new IP's to their audience.
When carrying this out I will be trying a method similar to Iain McCaig's process which he outlines in his Gnomon Workshop feature, "Visual Storytelling with Iain McCaig" which involves sketching up story beats in order to build the story up.

Test Run Support Characters

The script for the test run on Capitan Benezuela is complete, checked by my partner in crime (Juan) and ready to go.
As part of getting ready to move forward with the test run I needed to design 2 of the support characters which will aid in introducing El Capitan.

The first of these is El Gigante. This character was to be a towering 7 foot 2, 380 pound muscle bound wrestler (steroids, TRT, he's on the lot, JUICED!!!) inspired by the larger than life wrestlers of the WWE and their famous rants.

The second of these characters is the Ring Announcer. Being a big fan of MMA and the UFC I could only think of one man who we wanted to influence the design of the character, the best in the business, Mr Bruce Buffer......

......or at least.... his long lost latino, 5 foot 2 tall cousin.

I will do a quick 3D blockout of the arena as this proved most useful when carrying out the alien MMA fighter task (this can be seen here: Alien MMA Fighter Task).

As these are support characters for this particular scene The design process hasnt been as in depth as with El Capitan and The White Skull, however there is enough information here for me to move forward.

Sketch Dump

As Juan is giving me more info about the series bible I am sketching up initial ideas for elements of the story. 

We were playing around with giving a couple of the other characters animal companions. I like the idea of giving them mythological or fictional animals such as the Foo Dog for one of the Japanese warriors and the "Hare Tailed Haggis" Scottish fighter.
I have also started writing the script. Aiming for around 3-4 pages which can be used as a preview issue for the series.
That's me for the holidays so I will get back on this in a coupla weeks. Merry Christmas!