Hello everyone, and welcome back to Troop Spotlight, the blog series where each week’s post focuses on a different Troop from OgreWare’s Calling All Heroes. This week wraps up a sort of subseries, actually – this week we are looking at the last of the “entry-level” Troops. From here on out, things get…interesting. Epic. Heroic.
But for right now, we’re still in the early Troops, and the last of these is the Magus. This little guy is named after a somewhat obscure term for a wizard or sorcerer – the root word, I believe, also gave us “mage” or “magician.” If he were a Tarot card, he’d definitely be The Magician.
Oh no, now I want to make a Calling All Heroes Tarot…
But that’s an aside. Back to the Magus.
When I was designing the Magus, I was torn. On the one hand, he’s the first humanoid Troop, and therefore could be drawn as a really epic magician/sorcerer type. But OgreWare made it clear that he was to fit in with the rest of the early Troops, most of which I’d done with a more American-cartooning style. So I decided to mix up that style and the chibi style popular in anime and manga – genres that I already draw a lot of inspiration from – and throw a hood over his head, and bam! The Magus was born.
Once we’re through the roster of the initial entry-level Troops (i.e. when we get to next week’s Troop Spotlight and onwards) things get a little more interesting, a little less cartoony, and more epic. And while they’ll still be more on the monstrous side than the traditional “good guys,” they’re still some of my favorites. You could even say they’re my…Heroes.
That’s about all we’ve got for the Magus. Tune in next week where things get a little scaly.
~Admin Julian