August, 2002 -- The Commission -- Scorpiens possess a thick, chitinous carapace that serves as excellent body armor, but prevents them from wearing similar man made protection. They also have a long, powerful tail that ends in a sharp hook which they use to strike painful blows upon enemies while in battle. We'd like for the scorpiens to have a sleek and deadly look.

Here are a few concept sketches...I'm mainly trying to pin down the face right now. Pick out what you like and I'll move more that direction.

He really likes the face on #4, and he absolutely loves the body on scorpien2.jpg. He is wondering if you can make the top of the head a little more spiny like a cross between #3 and #2 but keep the face style of #4. He doesn't actually want the horns, but he likes the spiny crest on #2 and #3.

Here's a version of the carapace. I imagine them using fairly small weapons, arm-blades or the like, in order to make best use of their tail in combat.

I love the muscles showing on the carapace. It looks great. The scorpiens only use their tails in combat very rarely because there isn't actaully a poison sac anymore. (The mages who created them took those out somehow.) They actually tend to fight with swords: a longsword or a scimitar usually.

Here's a head that's a combination of the ones you liked. And here's the basic pose I have in mind...something from the side so the tail is visible.
This is the pose I'd like to go ahead with. It's not as much of a profile as I had originally planned, but I decided it would be better to have an emphasis on the musculature of the carapace. I haven't decided on whether to have him holding a weapon yet.

"That looks great so far. I love the pose and the exoskeleton. I think we were talking about curved blades as weapons, right? Something slightly exotic looking would probably be cool. As for the color, I think that a earthy tones would be good. Black, brown, reds.. whatever you think is best."

Here is the pic done in black and white. It's scanned in and ready to colour.
I've layed down the basic colours, using a multiply layer so the pencil still shows through. The next step is to add some variation and highlights.
Here's what it looks like after working the colours for a bit, minus the pencilwork. I'm going to add a bit more colour to rough it up a bit, but really only the texturing and background is left.

Click to see the final version

© Eric Pommer 2002