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Explore the stages of designing Raze!
In the ever-evolving realm of character design, the road truly is long from concept to creation.
Join us as we embark on an exploration of how we created Raze – the dangerous Z-Kron bacterium from the BIOWARS comic book — and witness as his design unfolds from initial sketches to full-color renditions, and finally, the immersive depth of 3D design.
The Genesis — Sketches
Raze is a genetically enhanced gram-negative bacterium and he carries a deadly virus within himself.
He’s dangerous because his exoskeleton is covered with poisonous pili spikes and he possesses razor-sharp talons on both his hands and feet.
Like all Biowars characters, Raze’s features are based on real-life biology, and his design reflects that.
The initial designs of Raze were black-and-white sketches.
Our lead artist, Goncalo, started off by designing Raze’s exoskeleton and talons. Then he made Raze’s head more fearsome and enriched the body with spikes:
Designing a character is usually a long process that involves a lot of experimenting and re-designing.
For example, we tried several designs of Raze’s face:
After he created the initial sketches, Goncalo then began to tweak the size of Raze’s body parts, including his head, hands, legs and muscles. He also gave Raze a tail:
Although we liked Raze’s initial looks, we wanted to enhance them and make him look scarier. After all, the guy is pure evil.
Goncalo made Raze’s body bulkier, with powerful arms and legs that look like the big guy hasn’t missed a day in the gym since who knows when.
Let’s not forget that we based Biowars characters on real-life biology, so in this phase, we gave Raze pili, like E. Coli.
We also broke his tail into several parts, again, to resemble the look of E. Coli:
We liked the direction in which we were heading, so we continued to tweak Raze’s appearance to make him look even more fearsome.
Goncalo changed Raze’s face and gave him a bigger mouth and sharper teeth.
Since Raze carries a deadly virus within, we wanted to make that even more obvious so we made that middle part larger than before.
Goncalo also added more spikes to Raze’s body, removed some pili and changed his tail:
The Inking Stage
Once we were happy with Raze’s sketch, next came the inking stage.
While adding the inks, Goncalo wanted to make Raze’s appearance even more vicious.
He toyed a bit with the size of Raze’s teeth and changed the look of his eyes and head:
The interplay of darker and lighter inks and the electric-like details gave Raze depth, complementing his deadly nature.
A Splash Of Life — The Coloring Stage
Next came the coloring.
At first, we kept the colors quite subdued, with burgundy hues occasionally interrupted with some firey orange shades:
Since Raze is deadly and vile, we then decided to play with neon green hues and combine them with deep burgundy shades.
We colored his body in dark shades and added splashes of neon in the spaces between Raze’s exoskeleton:
The Leap To Three Dimensions
The climax of Raze’s journey arrived with the leap into the dynamic world of 3D design.
In the third dimension, Goncalo managed to bring Raze to life and give him more depth, making Raze’s design all the more immersive.
Just look at him:
As we conclude Raze’s visual odyssey and his transformation from sketches, to inks, colors, and, lastly, 3D designs, we invite you to continue to explore the other Biowars characters came to be.
The visual journeys we share with you are a testament to the boundless creativity within the artist’s mind and a great insight into the way characters come to life!
