Netheus New Sketch

Here's a new sketch of Netheus I drew from my Zheph Skyre series. I am very pleased with the latest changes to this design of him in this form. I have decided to simplify certain details in his armor and his wings as you can see from a previous design of him. I decided he doesn't need as much armor as I had originally intended because he is quite agile in my concept of him. As you can see, I have replaced some of these weird shoulder/head pad things with spiky hair and I believe that would work better with the wings. It is much more clear in this sketch that the blades on his arm can turn. I decided on this concept to allow him to change his fighting style during battle. The color scheme will also be different here. Netheus will mostly be composed of white with subtle parts of red for now.

Netheus Redesign

I have been redrawing my initial concept for Netheus, one of the most important main characters in my Zheph Skyre series. I looked up some pictures of lions, eagles, and oxen in order to draw forth ideas for this sphinx. I know the top sketch of him was just a quick one, but I am glad the bottom picture turned out very goodin my opinion.

Here we have a picture of Zheph and Netheus together. I will use this sketch for part of a final picture soon, most likely the title. I think this picture really shows how the relationship of the two are at the beginning of the story.

Netheus II

This is a drawing I made of Netheus a while ago. I inked it by hand and colored it in Photoshop, but this was before I knew how to use the tablet properly.

Unfortunately I could not make it clear about how his blades work by this picture. His blades come out, but can also turn so that he can fight "Wolverine style" with two blades or he can slash sideways as if the two blades were one. I realize now that I would have to show this feature on both arms by a specific viewpoint. There are other things I desire to change about this character's armored design. I decided at least to keep the armor off when he is in normal state. The armor can magically appear as if it is coming out of his body.

This was a card design I made of Netheus. I had printed out a whole bunch of characters from the first book and printed them onto these cards that I sold at Anime Boston. I know I can make better artwork the next time around.

Here are some head and arm sketches of Netheus. I am still debating to myself how this character is going to look. For a while I had this very complex idea for his armor, but now I believe I should simplify it.

Netheus

This is an early sketch of Netheus from my Zheph Skyre series. There is no simple explanation for this character...

Netheus started off as a lifeless invention created by Zheph. He was a large steam powered armored suit that he can pilot with various weapons and gadgets. Zheph was trying to make something that would protect him from whatever the city could throw at him, something that would show just how ignorant the city has been, and something that could make him seem larger than his actual short size. Zheph is really uneasy about being shorter than Vanessa.

Zheph had been working on this invention for years and was nearly completed by the beginning of my first book. It wasn't until certain circumstances that forced Zheph to try to come up with a way to make his suit even more powerful. Certainly it was powerful compared to anything in Corthon, but he witnessed something dreadful from the outside world that made him uneasy. The suit's weapons weren't powerful enough, it wasn't fast enough, and it couldn't fly high nor long enough for him to face this particular challenge. He ends up stressing over trying to improve his invention, but he just can't figure out the technology yet.

He ends up finding a spell written on a scroll to enchant the thing with life, which he is skeptical at first, but he realizes he is out of options. Zheph uses the spell and it makes Netheus come to life as a creature. Zheph wasn't expecting that and now can't figure out what to do with him. Seeing how Zheph is now responsible for Netheus, he takes him with him to face this challenge.

I was thinking of making Netheus into a sphinx, as I had not included that species in my story at all, and he seems to represent a sphinx most of the time. I decided this armored form will only appear when Zheph is joined up with him. As you can see, Netheus's main weapons are two blades on each arm. They can be used like Wolverine's claws or they can turn and slash in the opposite direction as if they became one blade.