Namorian "Gladiator"

The Namorian Gladiator - a character concept obviously inspired by the gladiators of ancient Rome, distilled through a sort-of Atlantean aesthetic.

This artwork started off as an exercise, wherein I wanted to try my hand at designing an alternate version of a Namorian marine. The exercise itself was spurred by Matt Rhodes' design for Atlanteans in his Dead Gods series.

As I worked on this piece, I liked it less and less as a marine, however, I did enjoy taking inspiration from Roman gladiators and seeing how I can apply that to my Namorian world.

The end result was a new idea entirely - gladiators in Namoria. I'm still working out the details of how that fits into the larger Namorian world I'm developing, but this is a fun first design for that concept.

The Namorians are a fantasy seafaring civilization that I'm developing as a personal world-building project.