CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Character Development

Before beginning the finished pages, I developed the principal cast through character studies, costume exploration, and lineup drawings. Because the series is set in the 18th century, the designs needed to distinguish the characters clearly while remaining grounded in the clothing and visual language of the period.

Designs were submitted to writer and publisher Steve Tanner and refined in response to his notes before being carried into the sequential artwork. That process helped establish a cast that could remain recognizable across multiple issues, costumes, environments, and dramatic situations.

From Script to Sequential Art

Working from Steve Tanner’s scripts, I translated written scenes into visual sequences, breaking action into panels, establishing camera placement, controlling pacing, staging characters, designing environments, and reserving appropriate space for dialogue and captions.

Although I was not responsible for the final published lettering, I placed working dialogue during production so that composition and storytelling decisions accounted for the eventual lettering. Final lettering was completed by Bolt 01. Writing, acting, composition, environment, and page rhythm could therefore be considered together rather than as separate stages.

Historical and visual reference supplied with the scripts provided a starting point when appropriate, while I conducted additional research whenever a scene required more information or a different visual solution.

Selected Sequential Art

Across three issues, the series presented increasingly varied storytelling challenges, from establishing characters and environments to extended action, dramatic performance, and more complex page compositions. The selections below trace that development across the project.

Book One

The first issue established the visual language of the series and its cast. These pages combine period environments, character acting, architectural drawing, and action while introducing the visual approach that would carry through the later books.

Book Two

By the second issue, the established characters allowed the storytelling to move more aggressively into action and confrontation. These pages show my approach to staging movement across multiple panels while maintaining character continuity, spatial clarity, and readable action.

Book Three

The third issue contains some of the strongest and most confident sequential work in the series. The selected pages emphasize dramatic staging, character performance, action, and the increasingly assured use of composition and black-and-white value structure that developed across the project.

Expanding the Story

Book Three also required adapting to changes in the larger publishing project. Material involving the Clockwork Cavalier was incorporated as plans developed for a crossover within the broader Flintlock property, requiring the story and page count to accommodate the additional sequence.

That kind of adjustment is part of professional sequential storytelling: the artist isn’t simply illustrating isolated scenes but solving new narrative, pacing, continuity, and production problems while keeping the finished book visually coherent.

Historical Research & Environment

The 18th-century setting required research into architecture, clothing, weapons, transportation, interiors, and other period details. Reference supplied by the writer was combined with my own research as needed, allowing historical information to support the storytelling without overwhelming the characters or action.

The resulting environments range from domestic interiors and estates to roads, ruins, carriages, and wooded landscapes, giving the characters a consistent world in which to perform.

Developing a Sequential-Art Process

Lady Flintlock became an important stage in the development of my approach to long-form sequential storytelling. Across three issues, I refined a workflow built around research, character consistency, page composition, environmental construction, acting, and clear visual continuity.

I carried many of those methods directly into later projects. The process became more efficient and my figure work continued to evolve, particularly in proportion and anatomy, but the underlying approach to solving narrative problems on the page remained consistent through Pirate Blood and into more recent work such as Suzy Samson.

Credits

Written by Steve Tanner
Sequential Art and Character Design by Anthony Summey
Lettering by Bolt 01

Published by Time Bomb Comics