APRTN prep work 23 - Field alchemy tool 01 (Patreon)

 Heya!!! 

 Yes..... part 01.... This little fella gave me  a bunch of trouble to design!! And as you could see in my first pages for this project, it appeared pretty early on. 

 So... I had no choice besides trying as hard as possible to find the solution!! Otherwise I couldn't start the comic. It was pretty stressful really, but it was a nice learning experience I think.

 Initially I went where I always go whenever I think of gimmicky gadgets - power tools and tokusatsu/mahou shoujo toys! Made a moodboard so I could start getting the feeling of it. I've thrown other aesthetics in the middle to help out with the conception! (I made other moodboards but I ended up didn't saving them!!)

It was a field alchemy tool so it had to, essentially, have the following characteristics:

• Portable enough to be carried around discretly;
• A recipient where the potion being brewed would be stored;
• A venting hole for smoke and fire to come out.

And, exclusively at this beginning:

• A slot to put solid materials in;
• Ports to insert vials with liquids.

So I started doing shape studies. I didn't need to know exactly how it'd look for now (wew, even if then I had no idea how I wanted it to look like), but I wanted the general idea and function to work with these super simple blobs. You know I'm very prone to unnecessarily complicated iterations when I can keep it simple, so I tried to exercise that!

 You can see here two smaller vials, the insertion ports, and another glass, an output port.

 From these shapes, I elaborated a bit more into it. Some of these are cool actually! but ultimately, not what I felt was... right?

Chop, chop, chop polish! Put some glowing vials to have a bit more of likeness to what I wanted it to function for.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm......

Don't know! Just so I can figure why I'm feeling that way.... maybe I should put them in the protagonist's hand? After all, it's his.

 Made a base out to work out the tests. I hadn't finished his design yet at this point as well, you can see he still had his extra cartoony look! Yeah... I had not even a glance of a solid grasp in BOTH of their designs............................................. IT WAS STRESSFUL OK.

 Ok, base done, let's put the boys I did before for the alchemist to use, right?

 They surely look....

 Uh.....

 ....

 ...generic?

 I was  having a bit of an aesthetic conflict. And these... they aren't bad you know? But if I looked up "steampunk gun" on google I'd see a sea of lookalikes, and executed better than I could.

 And I'm a proud lil guy, I WANT to do unique looking things, fun things, things that are mine mine mine!!!! oof With this little temper tantrum out of the way......

 Back to zero.......

 Let's iterate some more!!! I'm in hell already anyway. Here I started to focus more on a potion flask shaped contraption. As I wanted something that looked more unique, I pooled what I usually like to put on designs. Which are... chonky bits, glimmering gemstones and fun shapes!

 Also as to be more thematic, I started to research more on alchemy art, an extremely rich medium full of cool symbolism (which I love), which prompted this moodboard. Keep up an eye for it in the upcoming part 02 for this post okie!!!!

 A recurring thing I noticed on these was the image of the "scepter" and the "dragon".  I wanted the contraption to be handheld... and it belched fire and smoke, just like a dragon would. So uuuummm.... why not???

 I swear, sometimes you don't find the design you want, it finds you. I hate it! 😂😂😂

I noticed the dragon was the path. I particularly don't enjoy dragon motifs for protagonists but HEY.

At this point.... it was starting to take shape!!!!!!!!!!! Very slowly, but surely taking.

 Prototype Nigredo!!! 🖤

 Let's go back to the start of this post, shall we. One of the things I "thought" were necessary were....

• A slot to put solid materials in;
• Ports to insert vials with liquids.

 But here's the thing... 

 My inspiration was...

 Tokusatsu, anime and cartoons.

 You know what these all have in common?

 NONE OF THEM ARE BASED IN SEQUENTIAL NARRATIVES WITH STATIC IMAGES.

I didn't set my priorities straight!!!! I feel so stupid when I can't get these fairly obvious things right away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But the important part is that I did, eventually.

Every time I wanted it to be used, the character would have to get each ingredient, insert each of these things in their respective ports, prime them in the tool, activate the tool, execute the process, get the vials out of it somehow, unscrew the potion and drink the potion. 

 That had to be streamlined!!!! It's too convoluted. How that could look cool and flow nicely in a comic?

 Let's check it out in the upcoming part 02!