DEMONSTRATION
THE SMUGGLER CREW

Their ship may be small, and their paydays may be few and far between, but the Smuggler Crew is scrappy, resourceful and darn good at what they do. They act more like a family than coworkers, with plenty of easy banter and good-natured ribbing, and if any one of them is in trouble, you can bet the others will be there to bail them out. They know how to work hard and how to party hard in their downtime.

1 SKETCH THE SPACE

Start with a simple room layout. Include a few tables, chairs and the bar. Draw “X” squares where you’ll place columns. The room may actually be bigger, but you only have to plan out the section you’ll use for the picture. Go ahead and indicate the rest of the area with a broken line.

2 PICK AN ANGLE

Get a sense of the space in 3-D and start placing the large pieces of furniture in the room. Set the bar in the back, tables in the front, chandelier on the ceiling and columns where you drew your “X” squares on the layout.

3 TRY SOME PERSPECTIVE

Use a simple, single vanishing point perspective. The room is almost a box, which makes it very straightforward, but when you’re finished, it will be full of people, and you can liven it up with the characters.

4 FLESH OUT THE SETTING

Make sure your perspective is properly in place, then add some points of interest to the tables, chairs and chandelier. Work in some larger pieces of wall decor or light sconces, and start sketching where the people will go. Keep it rough for now and just use circles and a few lines to suggest a person’s form. At this point, you’re just making sure they’re all scaled properly in the setting.

5 ADD DETAIL

Now you’re ready to start putting details like expressions and movement into your characters. Try to create little vignettes involving smaller groups of people, so as you look around the drawing, you catch different things happening and notice the interactions.

6 CLEAN UP AND REVISE

This step includes the last of the work you’ll need to finish before you ink your piece. Make adjustments to the costumes and poses, and add more detail to everything from the characters to the room decor. Now that you’ve dialed in the framework of the scene, it’s time to refine it.

7 INK IT

When your art is cleaned up, ink it for that final polished look.

8 ADD COLOR

Choose the sort of colors you might find in a western saloon. You’ll want to reinforce the genre here, so go for brown, camel, burgundy and gray. Color the setting in the saloon colors you chose. Your characters might branch out from these colors a little based on their personal palettes and the outfits you selected for them, and that’s OK.

9 ADD LIGHTING AND BLEND THE STYLES

When you’re finished coloring, add a futuristic vibe with the lighting. Think of the purples and blues of a modern club and really aim to give it a brighter, more modern feel. Go ahead and work in some hologram screens to show the level of technology.

When you’re done, blend the two styles together until the picture is a cohesive whole. You should be left with a combination of looks: traditional Old West set off by the unexpected lighting and technology to show that you’re looking at a space western.