Who is GuanoLad?

In the header of this page is an image of two weird looking characters I created. I have been an artist all my life, and even tried my hand at comic books for a while. One day I was asked to contribute a regular weekly comic strip to a student newspaper, and I chose a superhero parody, PigeonMan.

I really enjoyed working on those stories, they were fun and silly and got a good reaction from people. The characters stuck with me for ages, and I never really wanted to say goodbye to them. When I got to a stage in my 3D art where I felt competent enough to try, I decided to build 3D versions of the characters.

I had never tried character modelling before, I had stuck to hard-surface objects like buildings and vehicles because they seemed relatively easy to get to grips with, as they use variations on simple shapes like cubes and spheres. Character modelling requires a more organic approach, using a method known as subpatch. It was a big mystery to me how to even begin using this method, but I decided to get stuck in and see what happened. It surprised me how easy I found it, and it turned out to be more fun, and more challenging, than the hard surface modelling, and now I absolutely love it.


The first character I tried was PigeonMan, and then having learned a lot from that experience I tried GuanoLad soon after. I want to be able to animate them into a story also, but I'm finding that less enjoyable than the modelling, and a bit of a struggle to get to grips with. But I will persevere and hopefully get something done eventually. It's a career I would like to pursue, so it's pretty important I achieve something from it.

PigeonMan is a classic example of a superhero who knows the ins and outs of what it takes to be world class - rescue citizens in distress; fight evil-doers, directly, and preferably with his fists; wear a sharp-looking costume; pose a lot in front of dramatic landscapes.

GuanoLad, his sidekick, however, prefers superheroing with a more analytical and methodical approach. He thinks crime should be solved using technology and intelligence, and not all this unwholesome violence business. To him every crime is solveable from logic and evidence, and not by striding into places and shouting at people until they confess.