A Little Wrath of Khan Comic Book Sketch

[Firebird]

I've challenged myself this year to do at least one sketch or full drawing every week in an effort to rejuvenate my creative energies, after the pandemic and all the related stresses kinda put a damper on my creativity for much of last year.

For my sketch this week, I decided to get a little ambitious and try to do a comic book-style page depicting the first moment Khan appears on the Enterprise viewscreen, following his first attack on the Enterprise in The Wrath of Khan. Though I had explored drawing faces in a more realistic style earlier in the year, I've found it more comfortable to do a mix of anime & stylized realism to get a better feel and more expressive look. I purposely avoided worrying too much about where any dialogue balloons would be placed, but still tried to frame the closeups in a way they could be added without blotting out the artwork too much.

I'm already thinking of trying to do this with other movies in the coming weeks, because this was immensely fun to put together! There is a scene in Lawrence of Arabia that I believe would look good as a splash page...

 

[Rekkert]

Looks very cool! I like the style.

 

[publiusr]

DC never did a tie in. I like the manga look.

 

[ashleytinger]

DC didn't but I thought IDW did a comic adaptation.

I love this. Can even hear the dialogue in my head.

I cannot help but be touched.

 

[Firebird]

DC didn't but I thought IDW did a comic adaptation.

I love this. Can even hear the dialogue in my head.

I cannot help but be touched.

I've got the IDW adaption, and I've never been too crazy about how they drew it. Part of me wishes they'd have tried to emulate the style of the old DC comics instead of what they went with.

 

[publiusr]

DC did do Khan...but it was a flashback scene. Kirk is kicking Kruge, who dream morphs into David—and then Khan.

They drew him evil!

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ Yep, that was Chris Claremont's "Debt of Honor" - probably my all-time favorite graphic novel in the TrekVerse. Brilliantly designed story and artwork.

 

[Firebird]

Decided I had to give another moment from Wrath of Khan the comic treatment, and did a splash page for Spock's final moment with Kirk in the Engine Room:

At this point, I'm having to talk myself down from wanting to draw the entirety of WoK as a comic... but it's getting way too tempting.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Well done. Definitely captures the emotion of the scene.

 

[publiusr]

Placement of characters is all important

 

[Firebird]

Placement of characters is all important

I spent a while doing thumbnail sketches in order to get this one laid out in an effective way. The first draft had Kirk's face in the first couple frames, but then I figured out the hands would tell the whole story. Ended up aping the final shot from the film of Kirk slumped against the glass in shock in the last frame - the earlier versions I tried weren't artfully laid out and looked too stagey.

 

[publiusr]

That’s what makes Issac from The Orville lively... the hands...

 

[Psion]

...
At this point, I'm having to talk myself down from wanting to draw the entirety of WoK as a comic... but it's getting way too tempting.

Yesss! YESSS! Give in to the temptation! Yield to your ... desire!

 

[Firebird]

Well, I knew I couldn't stay away from this project for very long. Not long after finishing Spock's death, I quickly sketched out rough drafts for three pages of Spock's funeral. I only was up to doing the final linework and shading for one page this week, but that's mainly because I kinda burned myself out spending the week on character design concepts for the main seven cast members.

Anyways, first up is the first page of Spock's funeral:

 

[Firebird]

And here are my sketches to nail down my designs for the characters. For some reason, Kirk's likeness was the biggest pain in the ass to capture in my quasi-manga style. It took me a few hours to go through all the sketches on that page, and of the 11 I did, I'm really only happy with a few of them.

Conversely, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov were relatively easy. I managed to get their likenesses in fairly quick order. Spock and Bones took about the same time as Kirk, and then the rest of the cast I was able to draw out in even less time than that.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads with this project now. I'm probably gonna step away from it for a few weeks or so, because I got myself pretty close to burnout with all the effort I spent on the concept sketches this week. Giving myself a little distance will hopefully refuel my passion to keep it going.

 

[Rekkert]

Absolutely in love with the anime style you're using here, the practice in the last few posts really shows! You managed to capture the likeness of each character perfectly while keeping the aesthetic and even without the use of color.

 

[Firebird]

Absolutely in love with the anime style you're using here, the practice in the last few posts really shows! You managed to capture the likeness of each character perfectly while keeping the aesthetic and even without the use of color.

Thanks! Truth be told, I had somewhat dreaded working on the concepts, because I was worried I wouldn't be able to make Kirk and Bones look differently enough from one another, as well as translating everyone into this medium in general. Honoring the feel and vibe of the original cast was a paramount concern as I worked on these sketches, and I was pleasantly surprised the final products came out as well as they did. Although, I'm still having a helluva time with Kirk - getting that Shatner twinkle behind the eyes is a challenge!

 

[Firebird]

After a couple months away from this little project, I decided to finally revisit my Wrath of Khan manga adaption with part of the scene between the big three in Kirk's cabin following the Genesis Project demonstration video:

For an added bonus, I wanted to also post the extremely rough first draft I initially sketched up when I started laying out the page, showing how much things changed as I drew the final version:

Haven't decided if I'm going to do further scenes from Wrath of Khan as the year goes on, but I'll never say never.

 

[Kaiser]

Very awesome work please when you can do the entire film + ST 3-4

 

[Firebird]

Very awesome work please when you can do the entire film + ST 3-4

I nearly burnt myself out on this project entirely just doing pages of character concept sketches a couple months ago. Pretty sure I'd need to institutionalize myself after completing ~150-200 pages for the trilogy...