12 Months of Dogs Of War - April (Peter)

Yes, as you can see from the date on this picture, it's an older one. I don't think I've put this one up on my blog before, but rather my Tumblr.

Oh why oh why did I name this character after myself? Ego? Well, he's not entirely named after myself, but the damage has been done regardless.

So this is Peter Edgewood - the character who I have developed more back story for than all the other Dogs Of War characters combined, to the point where I've even developed a prequel series that follows his origin story. Pete has gained way too much favouritism from me over the years. He's the smartest of all the characters, the best soldier and the best dog breed (Border Collie, naturally). Many episode story-lines have revolved around him which has been annoying - Stylene's supposed to be the central character so if anything the focus should be more on her.

Pete's the outsider whom the Halo Blades Squadron find early on and recruit into the team. He's the one that provides all their high tech equipment (including the battlesuits as you see here). Pete was subjected to a cliche at a young age (ie orphaned) and other misfortunes which has left him wary when it comes to making friends. Though over time he does warm up to his team mates and becomes a potential love interest to Stylene.

12 Months of Dogs Of War - March (Josh) 02

Josh ended up a bit skinnier here than he's supposed to be. Oh no! Don't tell me I'm regressing to how I originally drew these guys!

Anyway, here's Josh donned in his battle suit and with his machine gun weapon of choice. He does on occasion use a rocket launcher, but is most often found with his MG.

I have sometimes wondered if  the Halo Blades' (that's the name of the good guys. I don't think I've mentioned this on my blog, probably because I fear the name sounds a little silly. But I'm not changing it, so there!) suits should be different colours for each member. When they have their helmets on, it can be tricky to identify who's who. I have tried to distinguish each member by having a special emblem (which you can see on the left side of the breast plate) but that may not be clearly visible in the heat of battle. Having the suits different colours might make it easier, but I would be limited by a restricted colour palette (ie colours practical for camouflage, etc)

When I was first coming up with battlesuit design, each member of the Halo Blades (screw you, that's what I'm calling them!) had a completely different suit design to each other, both in shape and colour. Becoming increasingly tired with having to come up with a new design for each character, I decided to standardise it and colour it grey.

They did start off being completely clad in rigid armour (the grey bits) but was later altered so the midriff section was the more flexible kevlar-like fabric (the darker bits) as well as the shoes. This was mainly to make it easier to animate.

12 Months of Dogs Of War - March (Josh)

I had planned to post my Dogs Of War characters in rough order of their rank within their teams, but realised it's more prudent to do it in the order I created them, as often describing the development process of one character may require referencing another character, which would be harder if we haven't seen them yet.

Anyway, here's Josh Cyril - the big, tough, slightly immature archetype of a character. Josh was the only character (other than Stylene) that was brought into to the Dogs Of War fold during the early stages of development. Back in the year 2000, when I was playing around with my characters, I thought of the idea of having them in a school setting - an idea inspired by the Warner Bros animated series Detention, which was been broadcast locally during that year. Of course, the only characters I had at that time were Stylene and one other (who didn't make it into DoW) so I needed to come up with some more. Grabbing myself the book 'How to draw dogs, Puppies and Wolves' by Christopher Hart, I came up with a bunch of additional characters, Josh being one of them. Josh had initially been planned to be the love interest to Stylene. Back then, the size difference wasn't as substantial so it wasn't an awkward paring, but over time the idea of these two being in a relationship fell out of favour. As mentioned last month, Sledge then became the love interest for Stylene, later replaced by Peter Edgewood. However several times in my DoW scripts I have had Stylene and Josh teaming up and it was something I felt worked really well. I realised that this was because their differences complimented each other perfectly (I've posted a blog entry in the past that covers this in more detail).