Varulv Concept Art 1-4-11

Hello and welcome to another edition of TURN OLD CONCEPT ART INTO A BLOG POST. I say another despite this being my first go at that sort of thing on this blog... But who cares? Let's get started!

About two years ago, a concept came to me of the most ridiculous variety... and like all ridiculous ideas that pop into my head, I immediately pushed everything else I was doing, aside, to sketch it out. The idea was simple -- werewolves! And not only werewolves... viking werewolves!

I drew the image you see to your right. --->

Before a story can form in my head -- a real story and not just some characters who share a singular setting; I have to draw some of it out. It really helps in visualizing characters, backdrops (which, the way I was taught, you should treat as characters, anyway) and the capabilities and limitations of each. This is because I suck and I like to work backwards on everything.

More sketches followed... I started to conceptualize the werewolves themselves. The character that would later be called Kjell, retained some of his tattoos in his transformed state -- most notably the one over his eye. Ragna, my troll girl, would keep her horns. I later scrapped both of these ideas.

My first instinct on Kjell as a human was to make him much younger than he ended up being. I caught myself before, once again, I wrote a story centered around a young character growing up before the audience's eyes. For fun only, I'd been writing some more complex stuff over the past year: Multi-faceted plots with characters who didn't always grow up and didn't always make it out alive -- thank you, fanfiction! I think I wanted to try something less predictable for that reason, so I scrapped "Young Kjell" here, post-haste.

My next attempt was much edgier... In fact, it was way too edgy. Still dig the eyepatch, though. And I kept the chinfuzz.

I would put the project on the backburner for a few months, go to a couple conventions, and scope out what my peers were doing with their own books. Over time, it was decided between my manager and I (mostly by her, at first) to go forward with the idea, but to make it more kid-friendly. Not Barney and Friends, but no worse than what kids were exposed to during their 12 hours spent playing World of Warcraft each day. She told me the concept was good, but with everyone under the sun putting out blood and gore comics these days, it wouldn't stand out and might come off more than a little stupid. She also reminded me that things catered to young'ns often end up in the hands of their parents, so my scope would be broadened if I could make it good enough for all ages. Then she stroked my ego and told me I was very good at what I did and I decided to continue on... Because now it was my idea to do a young-adult book, and I was good at what I did. She earned her 15%, that day.

Anyway, I bought a WoW account, watched a lot of Disney's Gargoyles (one of my favorite shows ever) and went back to the drawing board. I came up with these:
Now my wolfuses were wearing clothes and didn't have to be naked, all the time. Cool! Eventually, I did these...

And then I made a logo... Three times!
And that's just about where I am with it all, now. It was enough to get me started, and I'm happy to say that I've got quite a few pages in the works...

That handsome monster's name is, presently, Jame Hetfield.

Yes! Jame...

More to come.