Featured Artists-Holly Freeman Collection

Holly's Sketches-Poster1

(Sketches below)

I sent a picture some characters that inspired Crovax - Thanos for Posters 3&4 and some pictures of Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts to go with Aria: but it's more for poster 4.... Those actors sort of inspired the look of those characters.

Please note that the D'Kullia drawing and the picture of Angelina Jolie go together, as well as the pictures of Halle Berry and Umi... The Egyptian/African Art inspired Velexa's look: I remember my mom and dad had this beautiful abstract carving of a man and woman that had rather elongated faces and bodies.

My characters' physical features are all based on real people or other comic book heroes, slightly tweaked. Umi is inspired by Halle Berry; D'Kullia by Angelina Jolie; Crovax was inspired by Thanos. Even some of the creatures in the adventure were inspired from other resources such as D&D or Magic. I try to be inspired or influenced by them and not copy them. I also try to use the imaginations and descriptions of my friends for their specific characters.

For Velexa I sort of went with the guidelines presented to me from various SW source books but I also thought of some statues I had seen before of Egyptian or African origin.

I did a sketch of Brezzic Mar from a b&w drawing from the book A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy (extreme left), UMI ROM, and behind her is her estranged father, JAKMON. My character Umi went on the MACAAB MISSION to retrieve an enzyme from the giant mushrooms in that rain forest (see http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Arzid). There was a slight problem though: Ikcin fell from the top of one of the gigantic fungus and Stormtroopers came and stole her away. Our secondary mission became to rescue her. There is a rudimentary sketch of Darth Vader, and D'Kullia (extreme right). D'Kullia was someone recruited from the Alliance to assist us on our mission.

Lt. Fawn (or Phaun) was a character in the book A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy; I adapted her a bit (she was just a b&w drawing), but still managed to may her look evil, yet skittish of Darth Vader. On the bottom I was playing with the idea of Ikcin, fallen on a spider web. But I also wanted to intertwine the spider web with the Imperial symbol (that's the one normally seen on an officer's hat). So I rejected that idea, and went with more of a Hulk transformation idea instead. So as you see below, I placed the syringe with the enzyme/sap that we extracted from the mushroom between the transformation. When Ikcin is under extreme stress or threatened, or angered, she can take the form on the right: she turns into what appears to be a larger, bulkier, hairy/furry and horned being. I also played with the idea of a sort of "Charlie's Angels" idea, but the whole idea seemed a but cliche for me, so I scrapped the trio together of Velexa, Umi and D'Kullia, and spread them out more in spacing so I could have them doing different actions. This appealed to me more because it was less static and more like the movie posters that interested me the most.

Umi's father had some unfortunate run-ins with Black Sun, and therefore it also made her own life a lot more interesting than she really needed it to be.

For the Arachnor, I used the picture from the book The Essential Guide to Alien Species. I did tweak it a bit, and the illustration was black and white, so I added my own colours. I was also playing more with the Jekyll/Hyde of Ikcin and Lt. Fawn with or without her Imperial standard cap.For more info check out A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy p. 94-95 or http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Emperor.

In the end I actually kept the web and Imperial symbol the same, but turned the spider around so it was attacking D'Kullia. At first I wanted to show Velexa saving D'Kullia from the spider, but I changed my mind. In the final version Velexa is rescuing her little friend she names Vishna from the semi-sentient wolf-apes known in those parts as Forest Brethren. They were using the little sapien as bait for larger prey and were enraged when Velexa saved him. They raided us and stole one of our blasters and made things tense for quite a while! but I spaced out the forest critters a bit more and to create the illusion of more depth, I placed them along a receding line into the background on a branch. I like the finished version of the Forest Brethren, they look a lot more threatening in their postures and facial expressions. I kind of liked how this poster was pretty much divided in two: the Lightside and Darkside of the force pitting against each other made for good tension in the drawing.

Click on the thumbnail to see the larger picture!

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Inspiration

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