22 August 2008

Ahsoka Tano from Star Wars: The Clone Wars

(As they say 0n the introwebnet, click to enlarge.)
I like the Ahsoka Tano character from Star Wars: The Clone Wars so much that I drew this up. It is just pencils and photoshop. As a dad of a six year old girl I am painfully aware that there are very few female action characters a girl can be interested in so Ahsoka is pretty cool to me. Other than Kim Possible or Hermione there isn't much adventure for girls once you outgrow Dora the Explorer. I really like Ahsoka's character design and the color pallet. I like that she looks like a girl. If American mainstream comics artists had designed her she would have huge breasts and would not appeal to young girls in anyway.
I thought Ahsoka was probably the coolest thing about the Clone Wars movie (well, Obi-Wan was pretty freaking cool too) and I'm looking forward to the TV show if for no other reason than my daughter will have a girl character that she is interested in other than Hannah Montana and Barbie.
This drawing is a bit of an experiment. I'm often disappointed in my inked pages and find myself lamenting that the pencils looked better. On this image I'm playing around with just using the pencils in photoshop. It's not quite there but there is potential. I'm not very happy with the lightsaber. When I was a kid I loved the monthly Marvel Star Wars comics and each artist would draw the lightsabers in their own way. Now in the Dark Horse comics everything is "on model" and the sabers always look the same. Granted, they look right and I'm sure that is what most fans want but I like the idea of mixing it up. That being said, this lightsaber is a bit of a mess. I wanted to show it like a huge broad sword in a big sweeping motion but it comes off more like a baseball bat or a giant lollipop. (Not to self: Invent girl manga character that fights the bad guys with a giant magic lollipop. Get rich. Rinse. Repeat.)
Here is a look at the pencils before I started the photoshizzleing.
Hey Star Was fans (especially the kids) you can get your very own free sketch of a Star Wars character (or anything else) by playing MailCon. It's free! (Sort of.) Click here to find out how!
Exclamation point!
Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

2 comments:

Paul F. McDonald said...

Wow, that's some really bitchin' artwork. I remember when SW.com started selling Ahsoka t-shirts. I love the action pose.

Shano said...

Thanks! It was fun to draw. When I draw lightsabers I can't help but make the vwoooosh sound. I've decided to draw more things that cause my inner child to make my outer adult emit odd noises.