Loxy & Lio

Inspirations, Sketches, and Thoughtsby

Jackie Landreth

Loxy & Lioby

Jackie Landreth

Loxy & Lioby

Jackie LandrethInspirations, Sketches, and Thoughts

Dedicated to my mother for her unending support.

Char

acters

Whether you love them or you hate them, every story has to have a cast of characters. Some might be good, some bad, and some in the middle. While a select few characters are in every scene, some are in one or two to enhance the plot and transport the reader from cover to cover.

So, before we go too deep in our ocean of a story, let’s look at our actors.

The main cast of Loxy & Lio, ranging from devil monsters to animal-based creatures.

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CharactersLoxy

5Above and right: Images showing Loxy’s character design develop-ment, including prototype sketches and more refined sketches.

Loxy, a Fox monster, is one of the main characters seen throughout these illustrations. She is responsible for holding little Loki. She is very fond of her job and protective of the baby that she is tasked to deliver.

At three and a half feet, Loxy is not very tall for a monster. She is characterized by her purple hair and skin along with her bushy, foxlike tail. Lio is her usual team-mate and best friend.

Lio6

Above and right: Images showing Lio’s character design development, including prototype sketches and more refined sketches.

Char

acters

Lio, a Gazelle monster, is one of the main characters seen throughout these illus-trations. He is responsible for being the muscle in the group and defending Loxy and the baby. Also, he is the holder of the record book that is signed before and after every delivery.

Like Loxy, Lio is not very tall and also measures around three and a half feet tall. He is characterized by his teal hair and skin and he has an obvious overbite. Loxy is his usual team-mate and best friend.

CharactersLoki

7Above and right: Images showing Loki’s character design develop-ment including prototype and vector sketches.

Loki, a newborn Blackbird monster, is one of the main characters seen throughout these illustrations. He doesn’t do much as a baby other than sleep and occasionally yawn. Throughout the story, Lio and Loxy are tasked with transporting Loki to his future parents. Loki has very normal charac-teristics for a Blackbird mon-ster with grey skin, black hair and wings.

Nyx & Hypnos8

Above and right: Images showing-Nyx (in black) and Hypnos’ (in blue, holding Loki) character development.

Char

acters

Nyx and Hypnos, monster witch twins, are two characters seen in the beginning of the story. Through their magical powers and inventions, they are in charge of the creation and death of the Dream-world inhabitants. In the story, they give baby Loki to Loxy and Lio to trans-port to his future parents.

The witches are very tall com-pared to Loxy and Lio and measure about double their height. The are classified as Devil monsters in addition to being witches due to their horns.

CharactersMonochrome Widows

9Above and right: Images showing an earlier sketch of Minevra Widow.

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The Monochrome Widow Clan (Minerva, Matilda and Mildred) are a treachous spider family that love to prey on other monsters. They are assisted by smaller Spider monsters called Monobytes that helps them build their webs.

These Spider monsters are relatively large in size com-pared to the other monsters and all have a monochromatic (black, white, and grey) color scheme. They have six legs on their abdomen and two arms, making them true Spider mon-sters.

Azura & Horatio10

J. Landreth © 2011

Above and right: Images showing Azura and Horatio’s character de-sign development.

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acters

Azura and Horatio are two monster travelers that Loxy and Lio meet during their journey to deliver Loki to his parents. The duo are the same mysterious pair that gives the other three monsters a ride in their carriage. Azura is another monster witch who casts spells with a wand, and Horatio is a gunslinger that sometimes wears a skull mask. Both monsters are consid-ered Devil monsters due to their horns.

CharactersOther characters

11Above and right: Images showing the other minor characters and their character development as well as the environments that they inhabit.

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etches

Above are some of the sketches leading up to the final works of art. A result of brainstorming and doodling, these show the evolution from inital sketches to a fully developed scene.

Sketches

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Left, on opposite page: Sketches for the first piece of Loxy & Lio, “The World” from primary sketches to more refined ones.

Above and right: Sketches for the second piece “The Factory”. Many of these are rougher sketches and, like the characters, in need of more refinement.

Below: A sketch from “The Arrival” or the third piece in the series. The composition didn’t change much from the oringial sketch, but additional textures and elements were added once the sketches were import-ed into Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

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etches

Sketches

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Left, on opposite page: Sketches for “(Un) Wanted Dinner Guests” and “Detour through the Imperial City.” These are more primary sketches that I did to experiment with composition and character design.

Top and above left: The carriage from “Through the Forest.” This piece was the element that started this drawing. The other piece is another sketch for “(Un) Wanted Dinner Guests.”

Above right: These are some of the textures and materials that were incorporated into the final pieces.

Right: A sketch that lead to the last piece of the Loxy & Lio series called “The Delivery.” The basic composi-tion stayed the same except for the characters in the foreground.

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etches

Above: A set of sketches used to create a storyboard for an-other scene for Loxy & Lio. I used a “clockwork” method to count out the time with the characters’ movements.

Left: The first half of sketches for this scene. It shows Lio fighting a shadow creature called the Schatten. This scene was the first to be created to get the mood of the story but was dropped to make room for another set of scenes.

Nevertheless, the creation of these storyboards were a good way to get practice on drawing the main charac-ters as well as a way to give them more movement and emotional expression.

Sketches

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Above: Another set of sketches used to create a storyboard for the Schatten battle scene for Loxy & Lio. These sketches were thumb-nails for the storyboard panels here on these pages.

Right: The last half of the sto-ryboard panel sketches for this scene. It shows the climax of the battle between Lio and the Schatten with Loxy flee-ing to save Loki. During these sketches, I was experiment-ing with using blue and red pencils to create more refined and dynamic sketches. The arrows are used to show movmement and direction. The animatic video of this scene can be seen here on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBkNjAmMCVo

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rks

The World: The world of monsters (aka the Dreamworld) is very different than our own. It is made of little planetoids between which people have to travel.

After viewing the sketches in the last section, here are the final illustrations that resulted from my doodles. Each piece uses a combination of vector graphics and photographic textures to tell the story of how two monsters named Loxy and Lio delivered a baby Blackbird monster to his future parents on the outskirts of the Mushroom Forest.

Works

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The Factory: Monster witches, Nyx and Hypnos, are in charge of both the creation and death of their world’s inhabitants. Luckily, today is a creation day.

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The Arrival: Monsters, Loxy and Lio, arrive at the witches’ cottage to pick up a newborn buddle of joy, a Blackbird monster named Loki.

Works

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Turn Here: Unfortunately, Loxy and Lio forgot to ask the witches where the Blackbird settlement was, so they decided to ask a Bandersnatch couple for directions.

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(Un)Wanted Dinner Guests: Unbeknownst to the duo, they were being watched and were captured by the Monochrome Widow Clan. It looks like someone might be there to save the them though.

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Through the Forest: Loxy, Lio, and Loki hitch a carriage ride through the forest thanks to Azura and Horatio, a couple of traveling monsters.

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Detour through the Imperial City: To get to the Blackbird settlement, the group drives through the Imperial City, the largest establishment in the Dreamworld.

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The Delivery: Finally after a bit of travel, Loxy and Lio get baby Loki to his new parents -- a Blackbird couple named Hexgon and Jinxie.