Luke Swanson

A four page comic created with original characters about the day in the life of a candy shop owner. While his morning starts out with his putting in his new gumball eye, this will be the best moment of his day as he\'s plagued by an eye-collecting bird that leaves him unprepared for the threat that visits him every breakfast: the Ankle Biter. Finding fun layouts of the panels to lead the viewers eye through the story and thinking of extra jokes and details to add brought me so much joy that I made this double the length I planned. There\'s a cute octopus hidden in one of the panels, and I couldn\'t help myself from writing a poem to go with the ankle-biting fiend. Poor candy man didn\'t have it coming. At the end I complied page of some of the early concept sketches!

A map for a storm of a story I\'ve got a brewing in a world where they say a dragon died protecting its home and became the land itself. To your left you can see the western land, the supposed dragon, and to the right the east, the land it would have died for. I loved filling it up and creating lore and monsters like Bonko the Clown on the spot in addition to what I had planned! each Inked on an 11x17 inch paper traditionally and colored digitally. At the end is concept art for the capitol, Drakonback City.

Currently I\'m working on visual development on a Howl\'s Moving Castle (book and movie, as both are wonderful) inspired-story. Here I have my initial exploration, character variations, character turns, and character personality poses made to be my \"Howl.\" This character appears in my comic project and would live in the world depicted by the map I made. I reimagined spells in this world as being related to cooking and baking, or in this case, candy making. My version has thus turned him into an inhuman candy witch, who masks his cowardice and insecurity with showmanship and flamboyance, but true kindness and generosity is at the core of his lying heart. My character will need to take on the theme of \"beauty\" by showing his beauty through poise, confidence, and bold fashion choices.

How to best describe the Sunman... perhaps a fever dream? He was born of the idea of a happy place gone wrong. I was given the prompt of happy place, and thought of kindergartener\'s drawings with smiley face suns watching over from the sky. I proceeded to ruin that. The Sunman also relates to my attempt to create the worst version of the polytheistic myths in which a personification of a sun such as Apollo or Helios flies across the sky to light the day. Instead, it\'s this thing sprinting across the world with the light of day at his side. He ensures everyone wakes up on time. He doesn\'t like to speak, preferring modern sneakers and kittens to conversation partners.

Bramble is a made up children\'s book I outlined and digitally made a book cover for inspired by old fables in which the protagonist is often highly flawed and hurts other characters around them. So my character Bramble leaves his bramble bush to go on an adventure. They latch onto birds and other animals on his way who usually don\'t seem to mind, but ends up hurting their new friends along the way. The story aims to teach children about empathy, but to keep respecting their goals and needs as Bramble learns how to finish their adventure with both fun and kindness. also teaches them about one of the best words ever, bramble. Fun fact: I accidentally drafted 5 other children\'s books while outlining this one, and would do it again!

An anatomical diagram of a manticore drawn and written like it\'s a page from the bestiary of a researcher studying mythical beasts. While the manticore is in myth described as having bat or dragon wings, I decided to use crow features instead, also giving it crow feet. studied the anatomical structures of lions and crows closely to make this project work, especially in determining how the wings may connect to the body and be able to flap. Manticores are known both for having human faces and for being able to swallow even their largest prey whole, so I had to determine how that\'s anatomically possible. Following some research, my solution to this was to redesign a human skull with ligaments like a snake\'s so the jaw and face can expand around its prey. Because the human face is only a facade, I made the back of the skull the same size and shape of a lion\'s, and took inspiration from the great white shark\'s jaw to give it near infinite teeth. This was originally made traditionally, but finished are relined digitally. It uses both the original paper texture as well as a texture I made from my hot chocolate stained boots.