Marco and Silva - WIP

Like the title suggests, this is a work in progress.

Firstly, I must apologise, it's a photograph, not a scan. However, given that this is an A3 drawing, and I have an A4 scanner, scanning in a work is something of a chore. It has to be done in two parts then stitched together in Photoshop.
Given the effort of doing it properly, this was much simpler.

I don't know that I'll get into WIPs regularly, but I figured I'd do it this time. This particular one gives a crude idea of how I work.
Those of you with keen eyes can probably just make out the pattern of the 2cm grid under the page, used for proportion and vertical/horizontal reference.

This is actually why I work forwards from the back of an artist's pad. I draw the grid on the very back page, then I draw on each page up from that, taking them out when I'm done. This means the grid and page can't slide separately.
I lose one page per pad, but that's hardly any great concern.

Marco on the left is being sketched out. There's quite a lot of work to be done still and I'm going to need to change several of the lines several times until his proportion and anatomy are right.

Silva, on the right, has the basics of her line work mostly done. Obviously, her feet and face aren't done, but most of the rest of it is roughly in place.
To those familiar with my work (few though those people are) will notice she looks different, with quite a lot more muscle and a change in the design of her bionics.

The change in bionics, although something I'm hesitant about, is a fix to try and deal with the issues that could occur with the original designs.
The first problem being that they couldn't be drawn in certain positions, the second being that they weren't quite correctly jointed, and didn't move quite the same way as a regular arm, which could make some pictures look odd.

Still, even with their moderately changed design, the pattern on them hasn't changed, which is something I'm proud to be able to say has been identical since day one. All however many pictures, all with exactly the same pattern. Got to have some consistency.

The muscle is something that probably doesn't need to be drawn, but something that I'm going to anyway. I'm one for subverting a few unlikely clichés, so as she's supposed to be a serious action heroine, she gets some muscle - think Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.
Canonically (if I'm allowed personal canon), she weighs nearly 300 pounds - mostly due to the extensive metal parts, but also partly because she's 5' 11" and the fact that the rest of her musculature has had to develop heavily to deal with the weight of the bionics. Suffice to say, weighing that much, she can't swim very well.

Still, in the end, I think the changes are largely done - she's settled into being a character where all her traits are more or less set in stone.

Character discussion aside, and on artistic notes, in the end, I'm looking for this to be a colour piece in the same kind of "comic book" style as Excessive Force.

My experimental colour work turned out quite well, so I'm trying it in other styles. How well it will work out is obviously something only the future knows.