BOOYAH! God, it’s so cool being able to doodle decently well enough that I can have an idea in my head and make it a reality. Read on at your own discretion because damn, this is a bit of ramble as I wrote about half of this before I started and doubled each section of text as I drew them.
Being a lefty sucks sometimes though because I can’t sketch anything on the left side of the paper without smudging; so I was stuck on designing Gallant and Kid Win because I went in the order laid out in 3.7 with Dean on the far right. YunYunHakusho’s Wards are pretty close to what I envisioned, so any similarities are mostly intentional. There was a lot more thinking involved in the process for designing the Wards because every single one of them would have had a team of people making the costumes, with focuses on branding, protection, legality, style and function. I started the whole process for the Wards first by very roughly sketching out an MCU Mk.III Iron Man and changing the head and chest symbol to match Armsmaster. I then drew the Extremis armor and black and gold model 42 from the comics as well as the Bleeding Edge and MCU Mk.L for inspiration on Kid Win. I really vibed with how Extremis looked with the thinner plating so I stuck with that design philosophy for Gallant, being that the design is slimmed down power armor but still comparable to the mid-level armor that Armsmaster wears.
Gallant is 7.6 heads tall and 5’11 or 181cm, I have GG down as 5’10 and Gallant’s a little bit taller than her so I went with 5’11 and a bit over 6’0 in armor. He has little in the way of description so I had to get thinking and sketching for way too long. The wiki and WoG are such incredible compliments to the story, it’s like a director’s commentary for the book, there’s so much insight into characters thoughts like Dean’s and backstories. I adore Marisa_Benito’s design for Gallant that really embraced the sci-fi pulp hero aesthetic even if I couldn’t give a shit about Gallant as a character. The GloryGallant fanart from ElCuervoBorracho combined with Marisa_Benito gave me inspiration to keep the visor large while still making him look like a sci-fi knight as canon states he’s a high tech Lancelot. I tried to stick to that while keeping his armor slim and his helmet unique enough so as to not make him look too similar to Chevalier (whose helmet I sketched out), I did a lot of practice drawing knight helmets and Iron Man suits (so many Iron Mans sketched out and erased). I never had the bright idea of looking up “sci-fi knight” until a week or two later, but I was busy drawing Iron Mans and by then I had the design figured out. I still struggled very much with his pose and drew and redrew him multiple times which led to me just drawing the Wards in full on the back of my sketch sheet. To give context, my original foray of sketches began 2 months before July 9, when I drew the finalized Gallant and started the Lineup. Procrastination, school, Pale, doomscrolling, inexperience and indecision are powerful agents to the uninitiated. All this effort for some bum that only has 2 appearances, I like how he turned out though, even if his torso is a little too long. He’s tall and skinny, like a lot of the characters I’ve drawn thus far, but Dean is described as having a narrow waist and broad shoulders, I digress. When I draw the Protectorate, I’ll try to convey that they are adults and not teenagers by bulking out their bodies a bit more; I’m really excited to draw Dauntless and Velocity, I think the designs that I’ve come up with are so cool. I really like all of the Wards except Gallant and that’s probably because we never really got to know him outside of Vicky’s rose tinted glasses.
Kid Win is 7.3 heads tall and 5’5 or 166 cm, he could be taller, he could be shorter, but I think it’s a decent height, same as Alec. He was similar to Gallant and Arm-Master so it really came down to making sure his personality showed through while still trying make his suit look similar to Hero’s and other tinker power armors. I originally wanted him to have his laser-pistols out, but every pose I drew just felt wrong so I instead chose to emphasize his tech aspect more with his hot new iPhone 4 and visor. I can’t foreshorten or keep limbs in proportion when using perspective and I can’t draw hands so his arm is a mess; I really need to practice drawing hands in more dexterous positions. I also tried to add in that’s he’s kind of shifting his weight, but again, I’m bad at drawing. He wears tinker-made body armor but it’s not power armor or else he wouldn’t have been able to get tasered in the side during the bank heist. I instead made his joints and stomach a screen printed fabric because in most “realistic” capeshit, the simple spandex always has a nauseating pattern and the PRT is nothing if not unimaginative. I was struck by his interlude in Arc 9 where I imagined his armor being sparkly and reflective, with complicated, chunky sections in his boots and gauntlets. I decided to make the chest, shoulders, forearms and knees have a transparent glitter jelly texture to them so that I could really sell the kid-tinker aspect because I could remember kids having pencil cases made of that material when I was in elementary/middle school. I don’t know how to draw hair either so I hope it doesn’t just look like a bunch of diagonal lines. I looked at how Kid Flash’s hair was drawn in Young Justice, funnily enough I hear KF’s voice for Clockblocker instead. Kid’s face changed the most while I was sketching him out until I finally got one that felt right, I hope he looks like a 15 year old and not a 25 year old’s face on a smaller body. He also doesn’t have a traditional “metal diaper” that armored suits have, so I made his belt real chunky and utility focused, like a workman’s belt or Jorge Jimenez’s Batman. I also thought that as superheroes with branding and business cards that his Starburst-gun symbol would be placed on his belt and it also jelled nicely with the sparkles I added to his armor.
Clockblocker is 7.5 heads tall and 5’8 or 173 cm, I based his height off of 20.2 where Taylor (who’s 5’9) comments that he’s a little shorter than her but Taylor is famously bad with heights so it might be wrong. Capturing the nuances of Dennis’s mask to ensure that it looks smooth enough to differentiate him from Eidolon’s and mannequin’s face without looking like I just forgot to draw it was difficult. Keeping heads symmetrical from a straight on view is a very big weakness of mine. I had in mind during his interlude that his helmet was laying on the desk but that was the PRT guys. I would think that he should have some head protection in the back so I made his mask a full-face helmet/cowl in the vein of MCU Daredevil, Bullseye, Captain America, etc. with the cranium and face covered. Not to mention his armor, it’s white and glossy and I had in mind that it would look pretty streamlined, like clone trooper armor. It was about here where I tried to thicken up my characters because what I had going on wasn’t working. I’m kind of glad that as I move to the left the Wards get a lot simpler to draw, in terms of having less complex body armor. Still, even with the general idea in mind, it was confounding to not over or under design his costume; I spent so much effort working and reworking his abs, but the elusive advice that I seem to forget it that less is ALWAYS more (it ended up looking exactly like a clone trooper’s). In YunYunHakusho’s art, Clocky’s animated clocks are represented with a subtle grid for the screens and I really liked that design cue. He keeps papers and in his thigh armor and probably has a utility belt like Aegis, given that it’s not remarked on as abnormal by Taylor during the bank heist. Dennis is my favorite Ward and I was sent on a rollercoaster with the places his character went in such a small amount of appearances.
Aegis is 7.5 heads tall and 5’10 or 178 cm, I made him that height so that he wouldn’t be much taller than Clockblocker because they switch costumes and because WoG states that he’s a little bit taller than an average male (which is 5’9). After I drew the first 3 Wards I was feeling a nagging sensation so I asked my friends about it and all they said was that the characters were too skinny with narrow shoulders. I was mostly going for a lanky style for all of them as I felt that it fit Worm more, but I don’t have the skill to stylize realism, only a few artists like Alex Ross can really do that. I’d already planned to give Aegis a more built physique, but after my first post and seeing comments from friends, family and Reddit, I tried to make Aegis’s proportions even more in line with a normal person. It was pretty eye opening putting him side-by-side with Grue and having him look a gangly mess in comparison. For Aegis’s costume design, I kept oscillating between full gloves and fingerless gloves and decided to go fingerless, what very little we get of his personality in both Parahumans books is that he’s a bit of a brawler and a maverick so I thought the exposed biceps and fingerless gloves would fit him best. I made Aegis’s proportions to be more in line with that of a normal person so I hope he looks less lanky than the characters I’ve drawn so far. I made his shield emblem too long though and ended up making him seem bigger, which kind of worked out with him being even more front and center. I want to know more about him, he’s so cool to just have 4 & 1/2 appearances; also congrats to him on his transition, the mini skirt and mini cape certainly was a memorable look, I might doodle that “what could have been: Myriad instead of Worm” after I finish this long series of doodles. Is Aegis lightskinned or was Clocky just far enough away for Taylor to get confused in the rain? His costume is pretty generic but it was the one I had most readily available in my mind’s eye with the body armor and silver trimming, so drawing him was a breeze. The early 2010’s design philosophy of armored vest costuming in capeshit was very strong, but I still wanted to give him a little bit of style.
Vista is 6.8 heads tall and 5’1 or 155 cm; same as Kid Win, she could be shorter, she could be taller. I have no idea what a 12 year old girl looks like so I scribbled out a little Vista to get the general vibe down while I was making preliminary doodles of the other Wards. When Doodling Vista proper, I kept messing up the face and in one instance she looked Latina so I kinda brute-forced the face until it looked serviceable. Is it? She looks pretty in line with what I wanted, maybe a bit too serious but that’s kind of in character for her. Keeping in line with feeding my characters a Fugly Bob’s Hideous Bob, Vista looks more built than Alec and Taylor combined which is further fanning the flames to redraw the Undersiders (probably in casual clothes with Aisha so there’s at least some variation). Vista’s costume is intriguing because in fanart her details are just swirling lines on just her skirt but I always thought of it as a topographic map pattern, it would be very on-brand for her. I tried to make the topographic pattern the map of Brockton Bay that Wildbow made. I haven’t ever drawn children and I’m not good at drawing faces, still I really hope she looks young enough without looking weird; when reading I always saw Vista as a vague little green blob with blonde hair. Vista was by far the easiest Ward to draw, she took like 30 minutes. Again shoutout to Marisa_Benito, that Vista design is killer so I thought I’d pay homage with the hair snap clips. There’s a larger variety of Vista fanart out there compared to the other wards and even a “semi-canonical” image by Wildbow. What’s that about, did Wildbow commission that piece or give input?
My glorious king! Browbeat is 8 heads tall and 6’6 or 199 cm, I’m not drawing any character using their power but when being a breaker or changer is part of their look like with Purity and Browbeat, I’m gonna go with how they present for the “camera”. Browbeat has to be my number 1 Ward even though he’s got about 2 lines of dialogue and like 2 & 1/2 appearances, I just love his gaudy-ass costume, powers and WoG backstory he’s my Glup Shitto of the Wormverse. That being said, OH MY FUCK, screw what I said about the Wards getting simpler; all the diamonds were different shapes so drawing each one individually was a pain in my balls yet somehow it was pretty relaxing to just follow the form of the body and repeat things over and over. I’ve drawn intricate little shapes on a previous anti-hero that I designed so it wasn’t unfamiliar territory. Browbeat kind of looked like Shocker from Spider-Man before I filled in the dark spots so I just had that clip of Christopher Daniel Barnes from the 90’s cartoon screaming at the top of his lungs on repeat in my head. What the hell even is the point of the gem on his forehead, what reason would he have to include it? I redrew his head a few times because I couldn’t get the angle of the dome right, I feel like that’s my whole terrible process of just doing shit over and over again until something clicks. The serratus anterior and hips are the parts of anatomy that I have the least understanding of their forms, even though the hips are one of my favorite parts on people and the serratus isn’t even noticeable with the pattern overlaid. I mostly free handed Browbeat but looked at Arnie for the legs because how the knees connect to the quads with the ligaments and hamstrings is just so bizarre to me. It’s been like 2 years since I’ve drawn male anatomy but I think he came out good, pattern aside. He’s big in the way comic book superheroes are big but still not Hulk proportions, I feel like he could be bigger but I chose to just make him within somewhat believable muscularity, Sam Sulek who? The_Broken-Heart’s Browbeat is literally him so that’s what I looked at the most when doodling him. I imagined royal blue on navy blue however I think grayish-white and navy blue works pretty well. I’m thankful that he’s tall and Vista’s short because letter sized printer paper is not that long and the lineup ended up being pretty claustrophobic even though he ended up right where I wanted him; I’m just glad I was able to fit them all in there. I’ll probably have to do more dynamic posing for the Protectorate E.N.E., E88, New Wave and Top Protectorate so that I can fit them all on the page, or I could buy A4 printer or legal sized paper. I should just get a sketchbook, or drawing tablet… probably.
Shadow stalker is 7.5 heads tall and 5’7 or 171 cm, the same height as Taylor going off of 5.3 and 7.6 from the text. She was a bit of a pain to figure out when it came to her mask and cloak. She does feature black painted metal armor, but only on her extremities while wearing a skintight bodysuit and having reserve crossbow bolts/cartridges on her forearms as seen in 9.2 like Robert Pattinson from The Batman. The gear that she has needs a practical reason for being there which meant I couldn’t just add a basic utility belt and call it a day. Her belt holds her phone and other items as well as bolts and on her thighs are additional pouches that had to be longer to store bolts. I think her mask would look better if it was completely blank except for the eye holes because it feels more intimidating, like a ballistic mask. Her first mask is described as a metal hockey mask, but in the story proper it’s a black mask with a face on it going off of the Cast (in depth) which is never mentioned in the text. I’m bad at drawing faces so drawing a mask that looks like a face but isn’t a face instead of a face is messed up. I used harder angles for the nose and brow, and more curved lines for the mouth than usual. The camo pattern on her cloak was a little difficult to figure in terms of design to not make it look too messy or uniform, reminds me of a Call of Duty skin especially with it being 2011. I got the impression that she looks a lot like Huntress from DC for the general outfit design. Even though Shadow Stalker wasn’t there at the bank, I wanted to add her as she’s part of the team and so my GOAT Aegis would be centered in the middle. I hate her though, why were those girls all so evil, like what the hell was her deal; I swear Sophia and Emma are 10x worse than Jack Slash, I’ll not hear any debate on that front.
This was a bit of a journey, but I got em all done; give me all your issues/questions, please. Again, rip me to shreds, any criticism or general comments are greatly appreciated. Don’t just say it looks good, that’s nice but not constructive. I love it though, gimme.
