Flaky Pastry design sketches: Baliver

Some chaos is in order!

This guy has recently shown up in Flaky Pastry, and I'm having a lot of fun drawing him. However, like MANY new characters (or new costumes of old characters), I sort of waited at the last minute to design him. I had no idea he was going to look like he does, just a few weeks before his first appearance. For that matter, for the longest time, his name in my head was Balor, like the irish mythological figure - that's why he continues to have only one eye showing. I changed his name to make him really separate from that guy, and just my own character.

Anyway, I went knowing I wanted a tall dude with a cape, and not much else. I made a bunch of sketches to see if they led anywhere... pretty soon  I decided I wanted demonic spiral horns. I figured I could shape them into a kind of jester-cap look, but give him enough armour to still pass as a warlord, or at least someone dangerous. From there it quickly tumbled into something I was quite satisfied with, especially the face that is like 50% grin. That's more grin than even Zintiel herself! The smile/frown theatre masks as pauldrons just came up with themselves. Overall his outfit is really simple, but that's GOOD - I'll be drawing him a lot (like any character in a comic) and his horns are already hellishly complicated. The only thing I changed from that last sketch was the proportions (longer legs, smaller head, you know... taller-looking!)

As for his colour scheme... I didn't even decide on that before I coloured his first appearance in the comic. Predominantly red, but with as many other colours as possible... grey metal, green and gold, mostly-blue but chaotic/glowy cape interior... black eyes with white pupil because that always looks evil. And dark red tips on the horns because CREEPY.

Hope you all enjoy him!

Also: Flaky Pastry now has a Facebook page, if you guys are into that!