Athanasius was as hard to nail down as Mei Li. Here's
the first hint of a design:
This was scrawled on a notepad
taken from a hotel somewhere. When I drew this I was thinking of Vincent
from the Cowboy Bebop movie, who was a perfect bad guy, largely due to his
menacing scruffiness. I was trying to capture this here, but kind of
failed. The name Athanasius was already set at this point, and you can
see that some notes have been written here. Most sources agree that
"Athanasius" is Greek, meaning "immortal", although I had one source that
said it meant both "immortal" and "death", which seemed perfect. Apparently
there was also a St. Athanasius, who was the bishop of Alexandria in the 300's,
but this is unrelated to Hard Underbelly, and not something I knew when I
named the character. Those who are really into their Christian history
should not see any connection, and should see this as simply a completely
different person, also named Athanasius. Also above his shoulder is
a quick sketch of his symbol.
The second attempt was a major step backward:
It's just a terrible drawing. For one thing, he's way to short, and
he looks stupid, which doesn't work for a heavy that's supposed to be cunning,
brutal, and highly intelligent.
Here's the last design before he appeared in comic:
I was very close with this one. I decided the scruffy look wasn't
going to work for him. Designing a villain is very important. The
bad guy of the piece has to be scary, but you can't really just make them
a monster, because there's nothing that interesting or original about that.
Athanasius was a tough cookie to crack, in that he had to look both
ancient, but modern, so that people could understand him better. If
he was just some petty tyrant from the dark ages, he'd be just like every
other vampire bad guy, a caricature as opposed to a character. You'll
see here the two designs for his coat. The first one, on the right,
looked flimsy, not really villain clothing at all. The second was a
lot more angular a cut, and looks like it could have some weight to it. Of
course, like most of the characters, there were still a few changes made
by their first appearance, and Athanasius was no exception. It
wasn't untill the Athanasius heavy comics in the fourth chapter that I felt
I really had the character down.
Back to Characters
Back to Hard Underbelly
This was scrawled on a notepad
taken from a hotel somewhere. When I drew this I was thinking of Vincent
from the Cowboy Bebop movie, who was a perfect bad guy, largely due to his
menacing scruffiness. I was trying to capture this here, but kind of
failed. The name Athanasius was already set at this point, and you can
see that some notes have been written here. Most sources agree that
"Athanasius" is Greek, meaning "immortal", although I had one source that
said it meant both "immortal" and "death", which seemed perfect. Apparently
there was also a St. Athanasius, who was the bishop of Alexandria in the 300's,
but this is unrelated to Hard Underbelly, and not something I knew when I
named the character. Those who are really into their Christian history
should not see any connection, and should see this as simply a completely
different person, also named Athanasius. Also above his shoulder is
a quick sketch of his symbol. The second attempt was a major step backward:
It's just a terrible drawing. For one thing, he's way to short, and
he looks stupid, which doesn't work for a heavy that's supposed to be cunning,
brutal, and highly intelligent. Here's the last design before he appeared in comic:
I was very close with this one. I decided the scruffy look wasn't
going to work for him. Designing a villain is very important. The
bad guy of the piece has to be scary, but you can't really just make them
a monster, because there's nothing that interesting or original about that.
Athanasius was a tough cookie to crack, in that he had to look both
ancient, but modern, so that people could understand him better. If
he was just some petty tyrant from the dark ages, he'd be just like every
other vampire bad guy, a caricature as opposed to a character. You'll
see here the two designs for his coat. The first one, on the right,
looked flimsy, not really villain clothing at all. The second was a
lot more angular a cut, and looks like it could have some weight to it. Of
course, like most of the characters, there were still a few changes made
by their first appearance, and Athanasius was no exception. It
wasn't untill the Athanasius heavy comics in the fourth chapter that I felt
I really had the character down. Back to Characters
Back to Hard Underbelly