Crowd Sorcery Sketches: The Villain Khaos

It's time to reveal the last group of character development sketches I did for Crowd Sorcery: Khaos!  

 

The Villain: Khaos

Created by Brooke E., age 11

“The spirit of a wicked sorcerer who was killed in a huge battle that wiped out his monsters, he lives in a huge, ancient cave—a shrine for worshipping Mael-Koth, the pagan god of death.”

Khaos actually appeared in the very first part of "The Girl Who Writes the Future" but not in his "true" form. He was described by his creator as "disturbingly handsome" and Fred tells us that he has "dark hair...slicked back from a face so handsome it might have been that of an angel –– except for its cruelty." I had my work cut out for me! Help me, Ayami Kojima.* You're my only hope!

When I talk about designing characters I discuss how I work on the face first so that I can feel like I know the character better before I continue the design. I usually start sketching from my imagination, but if I get stumped, or even if a face is going in a direction I like but I want to make it more distinct, I will sometimes turn to reference for inspiration.

Round one of Khaos sketches.

I did this first round of sketches from imagination. I already had a general idea of how I wanted Khaos to look and I was exploring attitude and expression. But I wanted to draw more tangible facial features, so with some reference of faces in hand I refined the character design. I also fixed his bone crown so it'd look less like it was made of french fries!

Round two, taking features I liked best from round one and refining them.

Artists often have a sort of default face that they draw. Although our characters may be distinguishable from one another, there's a shorthand many of us tend to use when drawing facial features. To break away from the reliance on those stylistic tropes it's good to look carefully at real facial features from time to time and concentrate on the way faces are made up of an interesting variety of shapes.

The final drawing for the illustration of Khaos with his creepy crawlies.

"The Girl Who Writes the Future" by Frederic S. Durbin has just concluded its run with Part Six in Cricket Magazine's May 2015 issue. To follow the adventures of these characters pick up some issues at the bookstore. If you missed the earlier chapters of the story you can now read the whole thing online on Cricket's Chatterbox message board or follow the instructions for downloading the digital editions here.

*Ayami Kojima draws and paints what one might describe as disturbingly beautiful people. She is well known for her art for the Castlevania video game series.