Monday, August 6, 2012

Alphadonjon: L is for Lothar, Luxor, and Lublino

My six-month love letter to Trondheim and Sfar's Dungeon comics continues with this week's Alphabooks entry, showcasing three characters from "Night of the Lady-Killer," the fourth volume (in the American editions) of Dungeon: Monstres.

L is for Lothar, Luxor, and Lublino. They basically appear only in this one volume. (Lothar has like a walk-on cameo in the second Early Years collection.)


Lothar is an enforcer of sorts for Dr. Hippolyte, who brings a lot of stray monsters into the castle that will one day become the Dungeon. (This volume is set during the same time period as the Early Years volumes.) All we know about Lothar is this: he's "faithful and devoted ... so long as you give him a deer every day to devour."

Lublino (the pig) and Luxor (the rat) are among Horus's classmates in necromancy at the college in Antipolis when Alcibiades arrives there. They're both pretty unsavory, to tell you the truth, and they probably deserve whatever Lothar has in store for them.

There wasn't a lot of "process" with this drawing. I didn't give myself much time to think about it. I wasn't planning to put Luxor and Lublino into the drawing until I realized I needed for Lothar to be doing something. It's easier to come up with a pose for these drawings if I have someone else for the character to interact with.


One thing I messed up between doodle and pencils, as I can see now: Lothar should be a lot broader than he is in my finished drawing. Maybe shorter, too, but definitely broader.

Next week: two of the most important and most dangerous warriors in the whole Dungeon series.

3 comments:

MiriyaB said...

That pig is strangely arresting, and it reminds me of some other illustrated pig(s) I have seen (which unfortunately I can't place right now; I don't think it's Frank Woodring's Manhog, but maybe something about the expression is reminiscent of something in the story "Gentlemanhog"?).

Thinking about the width of Lothar brought me to wonder if his legs are narrow? Is he topheavy?

Finally, I'm really liking the way you've been making choice use of little shadows here and there. I'm guessing there's a kind of transparency or translucency trick in Photoshop to lay down the same grade of shadow over a number of different color fields without having to select a new tone of shadow for each field?

Mike said...

PS That's not really MiriyaB; I have borrowed her computer, and apparently she is logged in to her Google Account already. I will try to correct my identity before any further posts or comments hereafter!

Isaac said...

Lothar is so topheavy, in fact, that he looks like one of the Wild Things.

And yes, there's a way to do shadows in Photoshop as a separate layer that blends with the color layer, darkening everything you put it onto. I didn't figure that out until just a couple of weeks ago, though—maybe when I was coloring the gents for H.

And I agree that there's a spot of Manhog in my Lublino.