The Blind Eye

When I made the decision to set The Blind Eye in a flooded urban environment, I knew I wanted an aquatic character to feature in the story – an underwater protagonist to patrol the dark depths of Port Typhon.  As I developed the backstory for this character, his persona, both in and out of costume, took on attributes of philanthropy and ambitious optimism.  Without giving away story elements that I want you to experience within the context and flow of the comic itself, suffice it to say that the driving motivation for this character became hope – for himself, his allies and loved ones, and for his city.  It was a short reach from there to produce the name Great White.  Great. White. Hope.  Get it?

Good.

So, Great White was born.  We had a name.  We had a personality and a set of motivations.  Hell, by that time, I’d even established his relationships with the other characters (stay tuned for those revelations…).  In terms of actual time, we’re talking about May and June of 2009 here.  What we didn’t yet have was a look.  I knew I wanted him to be sleek, streamlined and aquadynamic.  I just fabricated that word…go with it.  The process of actually creating that look was not as simple as just telling Amanda what I wanted and having it appear on the page, however.  We’d created together long enough by that point that most images could go from my brain to her pencil with some measure of liquidity.  Great White, though…he was a special case.

A brainstorming session to throw down concepts for him produced a…ahem….variety of different looks.  Basically, we were going for a sleek, almost ninja-style bodysuit adapted for underwater movement, all beneath a shark-themed helmet.  There were – obvious – difficulties securing the right shape of the mask/helmet and dealing with the mouth.  Even I sketched a potential shape for the mask in an effort to spit out the elusive picture of the character that was doing backstrokes in my brain.  It looked like a dolphin in one of those Hitchcock silhouettes!  Believe it or not, though, that was one of two things that got us moving in the right direction.

The other factor was the epiphany I had for positioning the teeth.  I can’t tell you what gave me the idea, other than that I did not want Great White to have a mouth on the helmet – I decided he should have a solid facemask, again somewhat ninja-like, but we did want to include the teeth in the design.  So, I proposed arranging the upper teeth beneath the chin of the mask and placing the lower mandible and its larger teeth on his chest plate.  Amanda completely got what I was talking about, and the resulting effect created a menacing look that included the illusion of a mouth in motion with variable positioning and movement of the character’s head in relation to his torso.  Beautiful.  Wicked.  Spot-on.  We’re happy with each of our designs, but none has gotten more widespread praise than Great White.  Scan through the gallery below – it’s basically a timeline of concepts and finished art for Great White, and the images and associated captions tell the tale, and let us know what you think!

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