Worldbuilding

World building is a very important part of a comic, specially if it’s fantasy. Here I give some examples of how I worked for Black Wings’ Hell.

1. Map

To construct Black Wings’ Hell I followed some steps; first of all I documented myself about different points of view of it in different texts, mostly old but some also modern, for example Dante’s inferno, Enoch’s Book or wikis about demons and mythology. After it, I thought of how the demons and characters of my comic would build it and make it grow according to their ideologies, likes and history. I named all the places (in demonic language) and thought about the real countries I should use as inspiration or the aesthetic I wanted to give them.

Every one of the countries is ruled by a demon prince.

2. The Language

The comic takes place in Hell, which is filled with demons who lived before the earth was even created. That’s why I had to create their own language, demonic, which is a derivate from angelic. So I checked a lot of ancient languages and alphabets and created it.

3. Keesfirim (example of how I construct a fantasy country/city)

As an example of how I construct the countries, I’ll tell you about Keesfirim, the country ruled by Mammon in Hell. It appears for the first time in the third chapter of Black Wings’ and is the hottest place in Hell.

It originated from the idea of a desert that was described in Dante’s inferno and mixed with the idea of Mammon being an Egyptian deity – that’s why most of the country is based in Egypt. It lead me to the idea of cats being sacred creatures. That’s how Keesfirim, the Country of Gold, was born

So I asked myself «How would a country ruled by Mammon look like?» And I automatically knew it would have gold and animal print everywhere.

The golden pyramid in the middle of the picture is Mammon’s palace.

When I was a kid I went to Egypt and one of my memories is being shocked by a big street market we went to, so I decided to introduce a similar place in Mammon’s land.

Here are also some pictures of Mammon’s Palace. I always imagined it looking as a fancy old hotel, where people is gambling and talking about money and expensive things. It would have endless rooms with Mammon’s collections and possessions, and, even if I still haven’t drawn it, it also has two entire floors that look like a cat city!

In Black Wings most people who work in a prince’s palace live there too, so it’s normal for the place to always be filled by demons and humans, casually having a walk or maybe working around these spaces.

Here are some more pictures of Mammon's palace

4. Important buildings and structure planning

After showing you how I created Mammon's country and Palace, I'm going to show some of the building planning for Lucifer's palace. It has a lot of floors but I will show a single floor as an example here.