Ok, its been a few days since my last post, and as page 3 is still half drawn (Its been a really busy week, but its now 50% done.) here is a teaser of things to come. Although they won't appear till page 5, here are the designs for two of the Cadian Kasrkin who will be characters in Chapter 1 of Blades of the Emperor. To see all the tiny details here is the really, really big version [link]

For those who don't know, the Kasrkin are the elite of the Cadian Imperial Guard regiments, which are themselves viewed to be the single most elite regiments of the Imperial Guard throughout the entire Imperium. Selected at a young age they are trained apart from their peers in the Kasrs, mighty fortresses on Cadia and surrounding worlds throughout the sector. Their training and skills are such that they actually outperform the elite Stormtrooper regiments of the Schola Progenium and fill the same role seemlessly that Stormtroopers normally do at odds with their patron units. Their armor and weaponry is some of the best available and their equipment is very high tech for the guard. All told they are just about the best soldiers in the Imperium save the mighty Space Marines.

Allow me to begin by mentioning just how incredibly difficult it is to actually draw their armor and wargear, there is just an absurd amount of really awesome details. Though I tried to make them look almost identical to the models I took some liberties with the designs and gave them some hybrid modern US Army gear (The chest holster and modular pouches, plus the straps, and a few others too.) as I want them to look very well equiped and elite. As for the weapons I again tried to keep them looking just like the pictures of said weapons, just with a few bits of my own style added in.

Oddly I used two completely different methods to draw them. Kasrkin 1 (On the left) was done in the usual way working from the skeleton up, adding flesh and then layering the armor onto it. It came out pretty bad to be honest, so I fixed it after I did Kasrkin 2 (Process of elimination says...). For Kasrkin 2 I originally just drew the helmet and from there just expanded the drawing from head to foot drawing the armor first and adding flesh beneath it. Despite the odd method #2 actually took less time for a much more detailed and realistic, and also far more naturally posed, picture than using my normal methods did for Kasrkin 1. As I said I fixed him later so you can't really tell the difference.

I would also like to draw attention to the Camo Patterns on the uniforms, I finally have gotten Camo Patterns down patt!!!

Oddly I was trying to come up with names for them all (there will only be about 6 or so.) and I decided on a whim to give them all the last names of those artists and writers who have inspired me to make this comic, here is the list:
Kopinski
McNeill
Blanche
Abnett
Dainton
Mitchell
King

The only problem is that most of them will get killed most likely, so in a sense I'll be killing my artistic heros!?!?!?!