I am very, very happy to announce that John Ayliff and I have started working on Freak Show, our very own comic.

John is the author of Belt Three, published by Harper Collins.

Before he became a full time writer, John and I used to work together at Jagex, where I was Lead Concept Artist and he was Senior Game Developer, one of the guys who wrote the storylines of our Runescape quests.
His story lines were always a pleasure to read. Deep, unpredictable, imaginative, exciting.
Every time I was told I was to start working on one of his Runescape quests I thought “oh, this is going to be good”, and I was never wrong.
My respect for his work is what prompted me to get in touch with him a few months ago to propose a collaboration on a comic.

I always wanted to try my hand at working on something as challenging as a comic book, but for one reason or another I never thought I was ready for it.
For an artist, it’s like the end-of-level boss, the Emperor Palpatine of our craft.
It requires complete mastery of perspective, composition, visual storytelling, anatomy, character design, plus a dozen other things I can’t even think of right now.
At the same time it’s a huge endeavour, it requires planning and perseverance.

A few months ago – I can’t remember what triggered the thought – it suddenly dawned on me:
“Hey, maybe now I can sort of do that”.
“Oh, and that”.
“Ah I can also handle that bit if I try hard enough!”

So, although I still had some doubts about my ability to do everything to professional standards (I’m not a professional comic artist yet!), I got in touch with a professional writer – John – who was happily willing to work on this together.

After a few months of email exchanges we came up with a plan, a name and a synopsis.
I obviously can’t share too many details about Freak Show yet, mostly because it’s still in its early stages and many things might still change.

Freak Show is set a few centuries in the future, where a social struggle is ongoing between “altered” humans (called Transhumans, those who enhanced their body through technological or genetic means) and “pure humans”.

On some of the planets Pure humans are predominant, so Transhumans are regarded as Freaks, held captive, and displayed in road shows, even forced to fight against each other.

The story focuses on a small group of characters, and how their story develops within one of these freak shows.

The concept below is the first design I made for one of the main characters.

Her name is Zaquida, and her particular augmentation allows her to interface with computers of any kind and gain control over them.
I explored different ages, and eventually we went for the third from the left, the 20-year-old.
My favourite was the 14-year-old, but the story needed a slightly older character.

For the next couple of months I’ll be concepting every bit I need for the first few pages of the comic: generic characters, spaceships, props, main characters, buildings and so on.
So you’ll see more of this in the near future.

by Paolo Puggioni

2 Responses

1. Totally Generic Person says:

   January 13, 2017 at 14:27

   Sounds interesting.

   What kind of release it’ll, supposedly, hit in the end? I mean, printed versions (may be even hardcover) are a possibility, right? The visually-inspirational bookshelf demands new good stuff to be filled with sometimes, y’know (hope the result of your work with John will be exactly that).

   Reply
   • Paolo Puggioni says:

     January 13, 2017 at 15:12

     Definitely printed, although it’s still very early stages so we don’t know exactly in what form.

     Reply