He-Man/She-Ra – Heroes – He-Man and Allies

Did I use "whom" correctly in this post?

~ J.Ho ~ 4 Comments
This illustration was for another re-design challenge at the He-Man.org fan-art forums. The parameters of this contest were a little different–instead of re-designing existing characters from the He-Man/She-Ra canon, the goal this time was to redesign an unused concept drawing from the He-Man toyline. The concept drawing in question depicted two different versions of an unnamed female ranger-type character. The two concepts looked distinct enough that I thought each one deserved a full-fledged character design. My post is here, the whole thread (including the original concept drawing) is here. Voting thread is here–I placed third.
click above for larger view

You may or may not notice, but the inks on this sketch are much cleaner than anything else I’ve posted so far. This is the result of a few factors:

  1. My natural tendency towards the anal-retentive style that I have referred to in the past (ironically, drawing loosely requires more conscious effort on my part).
  2. The relatively small size of the original pencil sketch, prohibiting a certain degree of looseness.
  3. Female subject matter–whom, if drawn with an excess of sketch lines, can begin to appear harsh even if that is not the intended result.
  4. More design work than usual–the more I have to design a character’s costume elements, etcetera, the tighter I pencil. The tighter I pencil, the tighter I ink.
The coloring this time around was a bit difficult for me. Because I had no pre-existing colors to go off of, I went through several different color schemes before settling on what you see here. The trick was that the image needed to capture the bright, saturated, primary colors that I associate with the style of the He-Man universe. My first few attempts were done in subdued earth tones and olive-greens that were more befitting forest rangers in the “real” world. However, the result was that my redesigns simply looked like generic Dungeons and Dragons types rather than characters that looked like they specifically belonged in He-Man’s world. With that in mind, I adjusted the colors to try and capture the cartoony feel of He-Man as best I could. I think Trakka’s color scheme is more of a success than Rayn-Ja’s.

Here’s a brief profile that I whipped up for the two of them (oh, and the cheesy names were completely created by me):

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TRAKKA (an Eternian “human”) and RAYN-JA (of the Tree People) are expert foresters and sworn sisters. They patrol the wilderness ranging between the Eternian capital and the ancient home of the Tree People, guiding travellers and merchants, apprehending poachers, and negotiating disputes between various forest-dwelling tribes. TRAKKA’s skills in archery are unparalleled by any villains that the Horde or the Snakemen have to offer–only Skeletor’s henchman Ninjor has ever equalled TRAKKA’s deadly aim. RAYN-JA uses her MOON STAFF to channel potent druidic powers that allow her to shape and communicate with the wilderness. They frequently ally with Moss Man, and the matching hunting knives that they carry were given to them by King Randor in honor of their heroic deeds.

* * *

BONUS POST: "I got an Orko." "What’s your Orko got to do with me?"

~ J.Ho ~ 2 Comments
Every two weeks, the art forum at He-Man.org holds an character re-design challenge. The subject is almost always an obscure character so as to inspire a bit more creativity. This particular sketch of mine is the first piece of art that I posted in the forums (this was just a few weeks ago, in mid-December). You can see my post here. The whole thread is here, and the voting thread (where members of the forum decide which re-design they like best) is here–my entry landed in 3rd. A bronze isn’t too shabby, right?

Dree Elle is the girlfriend of Orko, from the He-Man cartoon. And if you don’t know who Orko is, I honestly don’t know what to do with you. Fine, fine, you can read about Orko here. Anyways, Dree Elle is basically a female version of Orko, but she’s more competent, and she has sexy bedroom eyes. Frankly, I think she’s got it going on, girlfriend. *snap*

click above for larger view
My version of Dree Elle has just a few modifications–I swapped the colors around a bit, making her gown lighter than her hood rather than vice versa, and added some bracelets and gold trim on her cuffs. The purpose of the shawl/cape was to give her better defined shoulders, and I changed her scarf to a veil so that we could see the silhouette of her slender neck. I felt that this emphasized her femininity just a touch, so that she wouldn’t just look like Orko in drag. As for the caption, Dree Elle and Orko both belong to the Trollan race. And apparently, I was mistaken in hyphenating “Dree Elle,” which is actually making my borderline OCD brain a bit crazy.

Fun Fact: The original title for the this post was “Nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got something to say/But nothin comes out when they move they lips/Just a bunch of gibberish/And m*********s act like they forgot about Dre (Elle)”