Justin Gerard

Martians of the Month

Added 2025-02-07 15:05:18 +0000 UTC

This month for the martian sketchbook, I am working with Squids!

The mainstay units of their invasion fleet. I have been looking forward to working on these characters for a long time. The squids were one of the earliest factions I designed, and the one that I have probably had the clearest vision for overall. Not sure why it has taken me so long to post them! I've got about 15 other units like these that are already drawn, I just need to clean up and drop into the section four layout. Next month will hopefully be "The Stranded" units.

They were born out of some life studies I was doing at the time, which formed the basis of the design their little pilots and their mechs.

Next, a bonus creature for this month. The very strange, "Carpet Creeper":

These sort of aliens are always the most fun as they mostly arise out of stream-of-conscious freewheeling creativity and feel like a challenge of pure shape and character design. There are no real "wrong" answers since they are of course, strange alien creatures formed in some strange and imaginary alien biome, and we can explain essentially anything through that. But yet, even with this freedom, we have to produce something that feels visually interesting, yet balanced, real, and possible within the laws of universal physics. It's a fun challenge and I never really know where these ones will end up when I start drawing them.

And I'll leave you with another little chapter opener sketch. "One of these shipping bays is not like the rest..." I really want to do a full painting of this one, but I'm not sure whether I'll have time or not. So for now I am just sharing the concept art.

More next month!

-jg