Monday, April 27, 2009

Jaegers! Final!


Jaegers! As I mention in the other image, these guys are the goblins, orcs, ogres, and so forth of Nightmares in the Dark. They're the mythologicals not based on animals, the dark half of the Fey (generally the 'bump in the night' sort), but they also serve an important purpose, they're the Host of the Wild Hunt, which in-universe is actually a regular event held to flush out and destroy demons. This is how I get their name, Jæger means 'hunter' in germanic languages.

This is also my most extensive exploration of this character style, which draws on recent trends in action cartoons, most notably Sean 'Cheeks' Galloway, who's done character designs for Hellboy Animated, Spider-man, and is features on the covers of Teen Titans Go!

In this image, we have (clockwise, starting at the top):
Ogre (Big guys related to giants)
Troll (Related to ogres, but more bestial)
Hobgoblin (Small, often-helpful goblins)
Orc (Not so well-sourced in mythology, but I had to have them, so I found a reference to black-skinned berserker-warriors who serve Odin. It helped pull together some of my mythology.)
Goblin (Near-human, Goblins are the most common kind.)
Dark Elf (Arrogant elitists, they are the most naturally gifted in magic among the Jaegers.)

I'm working on getting this design developed to put on a T-shirt, though I'm not sure how it'll look yet. (Two main options are greyscale versions, either using white-and-shade before colors were added, or doing a force-to-grey version of this, with a lot more color levels. This gets pricey, tho, so I'll have to figure things out. I could do full-color, but again, price is an issue.)