Concept art from my new superhero comic 'Gods'

[Michael Anden]

A rogue swordsman discovers that freeing his son from a mountain-weaponizing portal will trigger reality's destruction.

In a world where science and occultism unite, the fugitive remains of a near-defunct government supersoldier program face the onslaught of their successors, the Overlords- dark worshippers of a titan, weaponized mountain that has long remained hidden from human perception. I will be sole writer-artist on this one.

Concept sequential pages

Summit of the villains' stratoscraping garrison, Point Forge.

Forcefield projector station within first layer of mountain fortress interior.

Hyperion battlecruiser concept (side view)

Hyperion color study

Battlelord 'Straaken'.

Remember when you saw the trailer for the Spielberg 'War of the Worlds' and caught a glimpse of the tripod pilot aliens, and thought they were gonna look frightening and cool?

When I finally got round to doing a rendition of what I thought I saw, this was the result: still nothing like what I thought I saw.

But I kind of like him anyway.

"Hell's he looking at us like that?"
"Ain't me he's looking at... sorry, Dyler- you're on your own!"

 

[Michael Anden]

Concept sketch of Gods druid Halsen Archard

'Actually, I think you'll find this is exactly the right time for one of my lame parlour tricks.'

Concept sketches and paintings of battlesuit for Gods antagonist 'Nargun'- an incorporeal demon from the planet Aldar's Dark Age. Interesting note about the lined note paper- most of these babies weren't really whipped up for public consumption or intended to be formal concept art, just side scrawls beside my script notes- but hopefully they're interesting enough for those who are big into pre-production stuff.

'No-one conquers death. Death conquers you.'

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[Michael Anden]

Some more sketches


Cade Cyger's battleblade is enriched by sorcery, enabling it to be 'sawmilled' in the direction of incoming debris or enemy artillery, providing a defensive canopy of whizzing metal.

Odds n' ends

Infirmary med vorg; Cade Cyger's Diamondback Interceptor; Light Council twin-engine Skyraider; Slayer Rayken Shorde (close-up); thumbnail study of Theeldoran Library lobby.

 

[Michael Anden]

Final design and four prelim roughs for the 'Jackal' tank bikes that will feature in the second part of the Gods British comic book trilogy. These all-terrain attack vehicles feature two elongated, tilting treads that sprout climbing crampons, enabling their riders to storm even the sheer cliffs of the titan enemy mountain 'Ryzar'.

"They'll get you where you need to go, alright. What'll be left of you, anyhow."

 

[Michael Anden]

Early test sequential, pretty rough and ready- more a colour study primer for the following page (the third image in this thread). Has its charm, though, I guess.

 

[Michael Anden]

Early concept promo painting

 

[Michael Anden]

The Overlords- fanatical disciples of the mountain fortress lord Ryzar - have at their disposal a league of flying and ambulatory attack vehicles with which to rout the almost completely unprepared populations of the planet Aldar and the wider Gods cosmos...

 

[Michael Anden]

Slayers of Valdor, Capital nation of the planet Aldar.

 

[Michael Anden]

More vehicles

"Yeah- I know nothin' can survive in hyperspace! So will somebody tell me what the hell that is?"

 

[Michael Anden]

Time-faring Voidernaut Trooper

"This is a temporal quarantine zone. You will take these explosivests down the line to eliminate your earliest know ancestors... or stay and face the arrival of your final known descendants. We strongly recommend the former."

 

[Michael Anden]

Q9-R- TAC (Terrestrial Armoured) Counter-personnel vorg (automaton)

Cade Cyger and Nargun (on the same side?)

Aldarus Orbis Terrarum- International map of Gods' primary planet Aldar

Concept for Theeldor City as seen from cave of Mount Ryzar.

 

[Michael Anden]

GDR Landstormer Armored Attack Vehicle

Janya Cyger- wife of Cade Cyger, has sided with Ryzar's denomination, having resigned herself to the certainty of the entity's imminent mastery of all existence.

Global Defense Restitution (GDR) Jyrad T-S14 Copperhead Class Interceptor

Gurat-Holt NX-115 Hammerhead Gunship (lead interdiction craft Ryzar's Siege armies)

Lt Kara Flynn- wielder of the Scythedriver- or at least she will be come her revised uniform (second image)

Granger-Orbach G-3S Hummingbird Medical Freighter

 

[Michael Anden]

Mountain fortress interior: Interspatial corridor conducers; courtyard; underpass

Mountain fortress: various engineering antechambers and tactical bays

Mountain fortress interior: power regulator hall

 

[Michael Anden]

Concept sketch and painting of Gods' Lord of the Dead, Dargoth

"It may well be true that death as a fate is nothing to be afraid of. But Death as a person..."



Mt Ryzar power chamber

"I'm getting the feeling this 'free energy' supply isn't so free."


Thumbnail sketches of Nargun, Cade Cyger and some Mt Ryzar fortress interiors

Gods' protagonists' leader is the Scryer, Elder white witch of the ancient so-called Council of Light. Now relegated to spectral form, her holographic projection rune allows her to command the field of battle from her lieutenants' gunship the Cerebus.

"'Thread that crossfire,' she says. Like she's got a body to lose!" - Cerebus Captain Lloyd Raines.


Assisting the Scryer is her triune of druidic adepts, the Light Council- borne in their shuttle Lazarus

Ryzar's Grand Vizier, Dr Jelial Quaril.

"The first rule of psychological warfare is to realise we're all our own worst enemy. Let the enemy to frag themselves up."



Close-up of Fortress superstructure

 

[Michael Anden]

Cade Cyger and Nargun

"On wings of fire seek fleshbound realm, 'tis sight profane face thy gilded glare."


Starstriker First Officer Bovasso- Reya Systems GR-1 FRAD Class Navigation Vorg.

You just flytipped the spent core into one of the holiest known relics ever, you nork! I coulda squeezed another half parsec outta that!"



Theeldor City overlooking Lake Jarede

"Barricade's history- we need to fall back to downtown!"
"Downtown? Where in hell've you been, Thompson?"



Dargian Leviathan Class SST-12 Battlecruiser.

"So much for the face your saved with all your bridge-burning, Tieron!"
"Ah- Commander Strathern- Dargians astern! Battlecruiser- and it's with the President!"
"Yeah, well 'scuse me if I don't break out the party poppers, Walden."


Rangar Pejoran- five-foot Kestarian psionic spy from the Breslen system.

"Ghan vok rankri smon dastra"
"Let's see if he flies as well as he spills his guts to incursors."
"Rang, how 'bout you just sit this one out okay- I got this."


Another promo pic

Captain Rayken Shorde of the fighting freighter Starstriker. A notorious industrial saboteur-for-hire and freebooter, Shorde nevertheless throws his weight behind the Hold's plight against the incursion of the Dark Gods into his adopted realm.

Shorde was condemned to be encased in his battlemask from birth, yet he remains oblivious that his mentor- for not entirely altruistic reasons- recently impanted his false memory that the 'casket' is but a recent and voluntary affectation.

Shorde's true identity could spell salvation or damnation for the besiged worlds of the Gods universe.

"Oh- uh... Hi, Ray. Didn't, uh- didn't see you there. Guess, uh- guess you need to get going, now that old jalopy of yours's good to hit sky, huh?"
"Be a while yet. Your mother's well?"
"Huh? Oh- yeah. Yeah, she's ok. Bit of chest infection, third this year so she's a bit down... plus what with this whole end of the world deal'll n' all-"
"Good. Good."

 

[Michael Anden]

Court martialled demolitionist Dannick McQ is nobody's idea of a hero, but nobody could ever accuse him on not following through on an assignment.

"I know. But, see, working back from my list, seems there's still this thing hanging over everything since Outpost K. Kind of embarrassing, really- hate to even bring it up, but more than that I hate loose ends. 'Specially when it comes to someone's failure to discharge his duty..."
"Fragging hell, Dan- are you serious??"

Fundamental to Ryzar's conquest of the universe's oldest surviving planet is the lifeforce-shielded, endless labyrinth of rock encasing the dark god's Command & Control Centre. Every shard-laden turn among its stratosphere-scraping mesas leads to a warren of searing defense mechanisms and spectral sentries with which evolution never intended to burden the world.

"You have no cause to hide. We know you want peace. We seek only to bring you that gift."



Much of the ubiquitous and seemingly homogeneous debris roaming the cosmos is abundant with bounties of which man knows nothing, but the war machine of Ryzar's Black Legion knows plenty.

Ceremonial regalia adorning Mt Ryzar's processional avenue halls.

Gaunt processing chamber- from the realm of life, to the Great Beyond.

"The inside... is the same as the outside. There's nothing to separate them except our insistence. You understand?"
"Uuuuh... no."
"I really have been carrying you all these years, haven't I Drayton?"



Bax Harriman... reptilian scrap iron dealer- in truth, a sideline to the his sidearm dealing.

Since he won't let anyone else test his merchandise, he is very proficient with them- and very lucky... and hence not a lizard you want to cross, especially when you've got an army of undead fascist shocktroopers on your back.

Bax is is himself on the run from Arch Deacon Lest Radan's order of psychic monks, who have not taken kindly to a missed shipment of motor-razor mines needed to protect their monumentally valuable cache of Lost War relics.

'Hold' sharpshooter Stengaard Pasha can thread a bullet through the eye of a needle a mile off in a hurricane... but has still to sight a decent barber.

The Scryer, chief druidess of the Lightlord Council and leader of the Hold resistance against the millennium-gestating- and now full blown- Great Incursion into our dimension.

"You've lost it Scryer- it's force that'll win this war- not whatever peacenik hocus-pocus you've been cooking in your little hidey-hole while the world's burning!"
"A lot going on in there, isn't there, Major Cyger?"




The Incursion makes no bones about targeting and trapping fleeing civilians to boost the numbers of its Gaunt legions.

Ryzar's Tomb Palace

The Door of Dementia

GDR (Global Defence Restitution) nuclear drill boring attempt to infiltrate the Mountain fortress from below.

Those who 'successfully' resist being Turned by the Gaunts are swiftly deposited into the deeper pockets of Mount Ryzar's catacombs, where a possibly worse fate awaits them...

 

[Michael Anden]

Lt Kara Flynn's overtures of diplomacy are blocked at every turn by the forces conspiring to return Ryzar to the world. Once the being is rendered manifest, she becomes less conflicted about taking up arms against them... but secretly using Cade Cyger's son as a decoy in order to conscript old- and soon evidently suspect- allies, soon begins to eat at her.

"I know feel bad about the kid, Kar, but you do know the saying 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'"
"Well maybe that'll slow up everyone tearing strips off each other for five seconds."


Overlord Nargun's battleblade Hailstormer is rather more open than other 'charged' weapons about where it draws its power from.

Rager on the hunt

Sequential inks

Ryzar's Sphinxes - fifty-foot tall walking bunker busters - are themselves able shrug off all but the most concerted aerial bombardment.

Dogfights in Battlespace..

Loosening up sketches

Mountain Fortress - recessed meridian staging city

"Two inbound on the south wall, Lord Nargun. "
"Then they're running out of ideas."

Wraith Queen.

Ryzar, ancientmost of the Elder gods, has been long in bed with forces steeped deeper yet in darkest prehistory.... a pact whose nature the being should have perhaps scrutinized more closely before undertaking a war dependent on their unquestioning obedience.

"Heed them raise their peaceful hand.... now I take my knife... fill the night with scare..."

Some of you may have noticed a bit of a horror vibe from a few of the images, but I figure the Mundar yaks are- unintentionally- the most disconcerting of this thread's menagerie of characters.

 

[Michael Anden]

Rayken Shorde head studies.

"Cyger- I need you to put that... fruit... down."

 

[Michael Anden]

"Nothin' like a good shoot, huh, sarge?"
"Shuddup, Nichols!"

 

[Michael Anden]

GDR (Global Defense Restitution) Shocktrooper

The Global Defense Restitution governing the planet Aldar fail to get the ragtag pockets superhuman Slayers on message over plans to tackle the Great Incursion.

With swathes of the population already scoured or Turned by the enemy, the claims of the 'battlefield'-suited renegades that the enemy's defenses include an all-destroying, impassable failsafe go unheard.

Not to be outdone, the GDR troops dig up a slew of old heavy plant long consigned to history for a reason.