First Puma Personnel Concepts

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, my next step was to draft up some concepts for the Puma 'officers', and here's what I've come up with for now. I chose to work in black and white for this piece because I wanted to focus on working at my textures and value ranges. Most of the PMA equipment would be black or grey anyway so I figured it would be a good occasion for it. I'm also trying to work on my speed, and I'm aware that these are far from perfect illustrations but I'm trying to draw slightly rougher and avoid zooming in to a pointless degree as I have a tendency to do (though I still did far too much of that here).

 It might be hard to tell from the image quality on this post, but I've also managed to incorporate the PMA badge (2. from my PMA banner concepts sheet) in the designs. It can be found on both shoulder straps of example 1 and the chest of example 2. My main goal with these character designs was to achieve an intimidating and disturbing appearance while using a combination of police/riot gear and a few more improvised elements.

My initial concept for example 1 was to create a brutish, heavy archetype that wields a shield and heavy protection. I wanted to create a unit whose primary role within the faction would be clearing out infected zones, in order to flesh out the faction as a functioning group. The protective gear and visored helmet in this example are a lot bulkier than that of example 2, favouring staying power while greatly limiting agility and combat proficiency, reflecting the unit's role as a wall against the mindless infected. Sheer bulk aside, it's unlikely that this setup would be all that effective against skilled, human fighters, and so its use during night raids targeting other survivors would be rare. In this particular example, the officer is wielding a sharpened rod of construction metal as his primary weapon, with a police baton at his side in case it falters. I decided on this setup in order to show that even within the most well provisioned of groups, there isn't enough high quality equipment to fully kit everyone out, and so some solutions have to be improvised using whatever can be found. It made sense to me that the most improvised weapon would fall to the shield bearer, as his primary role would be to soak up the onslaught of infected while his other, more offensively equipped patrol members take advantage of the bait to dispatch them. In-game, the player would most likely have to deal with this enemy time when having the misfortune of crossing paths with a PMA patrol that was dispatched to deal with a cluster of infected.

The equipment of example 2 is in many ways polar opposite, favouring agile and uninhibited movement, while still providing formidable defence next to the average, unprotected survivor. This particular officer wields a fireman's axe, as well as a combat knife, for which a chest holster has been custom fitted to her protective gear. She also has a pistol holstered at her waist, which indicates a high status within the faction given the scarcity of firearms. Officers of similar status might also carry smoke or stun grenades on patrol, though these would be in limited supply. The equipment archetype on display in example 2 would be the most common during the Pumas' night raids, although this particular example represents the pinnacle of such setups. The vast majority of lower status prowlers would have just one or two melee weapons, and no firearms, and their protective gear would most likely not fit as perfectly or be in such good condition. Other PMA melee options might include knives, hatchets, improvised machetes and other blades, as well as blunt weapons such as bats and hammers. In this example the officer is also equipped with a gas mask, indicating that her patrol covers potentially spore infested areas - but not all patrol parties would wear masks. Example 2 (and other similar setups) also does not feature a flashlight of any sort despite the fact that the PMA are mostly active at night, which reflects their use of darkness as cover when stalking the streets.

In my next post I'll either be exploring some more PMA personnel concepts, or I'll be beginning to explore concepts for their settlement - I'm undecided for now but the post will come soon.

Thanks for reading!