"Oak and Thunder" part 2 - The Look?

(in the second post about OaT I will be talking visual style and a feel of the stories, as well as influences and inspiration)

TL;DR: I don't know what it's gonna look like yet, but here's some stuff I like.

I haven't done much sequential art. Most of it was in grammar school, nearly 10 years ago.
For this reason I'm planning to start with a self-contained short story, with a bit of everything. To try and train myself to do more.

Style

Right now I'm trying to figure out how stylized I want the art be. It's definitely going to be ink and tone, probably not in colour. I really like (for example) the detailed and "realistic" style of Thorgal, but I'm not sure I can pull that off.

A more stylized look of comics like Una the Blade or Silk&Gold (http://silksifandrahil.tumblr.com/) is also great, but I've never dabbled in cartoons, so I'm not sure I could draw like that either.

I'll just have to draw and draw, I'm sure it'll settle on something viable eventually.

(You can see examples of ink artwork I looked at for inspiration here: http://www.pinterest.com/janpospisil376/project-oak-inspiration/)

Other Inspirations

A huge one is definitely Darkness over Cannae by Jenny Dolfen.

http://darknessovercannae.com/

A beautifully illustrated historical novel about Hannibal's famous battle, done in her signature watercolour style:

Another is Vinland Saga - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinland_Saga_(manga) 

I enjoy that it's a historical story without any magic added, a story about Vikings in a Japanese (!!) manga. Awesome action and reasonably historically accurate.

 I'm surrounding myself with tons and tons of art and media that may be relevant somehow, that have a spark of something interesting. Since I took these two photos of the books on my desk, their number roughly tripled. *sigh*

The closing sketch for today will be the other main character, the girl-from-yesterday's best friend. 

(that thing he's holding is a spindle)

Return to Cooldahar

With the Kickstarter for Project Eternity (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity) almost over, I've been thinking about the previous Infinity Engine games and the wonderful nostalgia I associate with them.

And by accident, I came across this piece of concept art for Icewind Dale 1, which I believe was painted by Jason Manley.
http://theartdepartment.org/faculty/jason-manley

And it hit me. I used this as reference, completely without realizing it at the moment. Icewind Dale, released in 2000, me painting a halfling druid in 2010. Ten years later, this image was firmly embedded in my brain.

It's not even a good copy! :D

Not a very deep or inspiring blog post, just something art related I noticed. Here, have some Jeremy Soule and his wonderful music for IWD!