Artist's Confessions > The Secret of Gobekli Tepe - Behind the Scenes

I didn't think I was going to get into confessions  when I started writing this post, but ... a few came out, so ... be prepared. Might you be disillusioned as to where my character designs come from? I'm going to reveal the actual document you can turn to to find them. How about sloppy mistakes in this particular scene? I'll show you exactly where to look to find them. 

But before all that, I admit, this is a neat moment in the story where I'm returning to a location I designed way back at the beginning of the story, and it's an interesting time to look back at how the story looked back then.

It's fun to revisit, and it shows how far things have come stylistically. When I was drawing these pages back in 2010, I couldn't imagine how long it would take to get to the end of Act III. I wasn't confident in my artwork at the time, I was unsure how do the lettering, and the framing and pacing were all still being developed on the fly.

The rough page of 170. I HATE drawing trucks.

Designing on the fly fine - - this entire project has been exclusively for the purposes of learning more and gearing up for future projects. I knew back then, too, that this was going to take a long time - - and I was fine with that because it's a hobby I'm eager to pursue and in the end, when it's all said and done, it'll definitely be something of substance (if to nobody else, at least it'll be substantive to me).

Rough page 171 ... Miller looks bad-ass on the right side there, eh!?

There's a new character in this scene, and I'll tell you a bit of a secret on character design. ... Man, I'm reluctant to do this, but .... basically... I have this National Geographic magazine, just one, that I've been holding on to for years because I keep meaning to read this article on Caffeine (which I still have only started, but never finished) because, like anybody else in media and publishing, I'm dedicated to drinking coffee like it's the cure to what ails ya.

The National Geographic is right here, one sec, I'll grab the date and title. It's January 2005, "Why We Love Caffeine." Anyhow, there are a series of ads and articles, as you'd expect, with pictures, which National Geographic is famed for. I honestly flip through the book and pick a face that sort of fits what I'm planning, and copy it.

I think the final draft of this page turned out really nice. That's just my opinion, I haven' t heard anybody else say anything about it to the contrary.

It was a similar process when I designed "The Turk," who appears for the first time in the tomb beneath the ruins of Gobekli Tepe. Though, admittedly, I used a MacLean's magazine at the cottage instead of my trusty National Geographic to design him. The Turk is a silent 6'5" behemoth who, like Mugabe, has a sorted past that led to his recruitment into the employ of the Sadducees. I only call him "The Turk," probably because he's from Turkey, but also because it has visual and audible connotations to "The Hulk," sort of.

One other little Easter Egg for anyone interested in the "Blooper Reel" in the making of the Tomb of the Undead, on page 171, in the final word bubble, I'd accidentally accredited the word balloon to Ma'Aseh instead of Miller, so in the "post-production" when I do the lettering online, I had to do the editing to redraw and fix the word balloon's tail.

Can you zoom in and see the difference? I usually draw the balloons and then fill the lettering in online, but the word balloon had to be erased and then replaced with samples that were stretched and twisted so they looked like they were for Miller.

Cool, thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions about the project, that I'll be happy to answer. It's coming to a conclusion I'm certain will be unexpected. I promise.