W.I.P.: Oberyn Martell

Back in July, I was sorting through old images and posted an image which I wanted to franken-update at some point.  At first I thought it was going to be the hawk that got the royal treatment, but it turned out to be the face from the main image.

My favorite character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series (along with Arya, to be honest) is the Red Viper of Dorne, Oberyn Martell.  I really wanted to do a drawing or a portrait of him at some point, and looking at the image in the old post I felt I had the basis for the image.  The original face had to be reworked a lot, but the general look I was going for was already there.

Here is the initial work in progress:

It is no coincidence that his pose mimics a certain beer commercial character... 

At this point, it looks as if the armor (the flat grey will become scale mail), neck and skin tone are going to be my biggest challenges.  I have been wanting to do this pic since reading Storm of Swords, so hopefully I can do the character justice and crank out the finished version sooner rather than later.

Misunderstanding "Cochlea"

I recently had the chance to go uber-meta in a comic strip, all thanks to the word "cochlea" and all of the possible NSFW penis jokes our dirty minds can come up with as a result of how it's pronounced.  The highlight for me was also being able to pull the NSFW rug out from under the joke and create possibly the corniest punchline I have ever devised.  The level of geekdom is strong in this punchline as well.

Since the joke is merely abusing the word "cochlea", without further ado, here is the punchline:

Cochlea: What did YOU think it was going to be a picture of...hmmm?  ;)