Character Design: Captain Shard

This post is originally from our tumblr from 2017

Captain “Shard” of the United Planets of Earth ship: Enigma is tasked with carrying out U.P.E interests in the frontier. At the beginning of our story this amounts to stopping a group of rabble-rousers from the colony world STR1-FE who were recently mandated to begin wearing Helix Earrings. Shard is ruthless and cold-blooded. 

Work on Captain Shard continues. These concept sketches were illustrated by Juan Angel. I think what drew me to Juan was the dark, gritty and otherworldliness of his character design skills. Captain Shard is the main villain of our story and I needed something in the character design itself to give it an edge and make him scary. Some of our earlier readers said they pictured Shard being young, reckless and definitely out to prove something to someone. Many people also have said they see psychopathic tenancies as he seems utterly without empathy.

I’m really happy the direction Juan is taking with the design as he seems to me completely capturing the character while adding something that makes him seem… almost like a real person…. maybe thats why this character art scares me so much. I can believe a man like this exists.