Synopsis and recent sketches of Mythic pirates

Synopsis:

My Mythic Pirates are going to be settled in a fantasy world based on Greek mythology. In this world Gods play with people like toys and treat them like bugs. The main hero is from a small village by the sea. All areas by and in the sea are being threatened and ruled by the power of Poseidon. Poseidon is like a dictator and manipulates people to do whatever he wants. At one point he destroys the homeland of our hero and this is the biggest mistake that he could ever do. Our Hero is smart, intelligent and very agile person. In order not to bring bad luck for innocent people he becomes a pirate rouge and starts acting on his own to defeat Poseidon and bring peace to the lands around. Since this point he travels a lot, collects artifacts to defeat his enemies and finds a lot of friends to help him out.

Project:

At this point of project I just started sketching and doodling my hero. I want to clearly define his facial and body features. He is supposed to be strong and agile at the same time. I'm not sure about the hair looks yet at all. Right now I want to make him a bit younger - around 20 years old and give him something more to recognize. Earrings and scars is something necessary for him. I also considered making him into a cursed victim. Usually cursed people in Greek mythology would become into humanoid creatures, but I just couldn't find one that could really fit him, so I'm sticking to a simply strong and good looking character image. Another thing is maybe to use more cartoony style to make more characteristic images, but I haven't decided yet how I should do this.

Influence Map:

My biggest influences came from Simbad, El Dorado, Prince Of Persia and God of war. I chose Simbad because he is the most iconic pirate character. Agile, strong, twisted and smart is something that I can not resist for hero characters. Prince of Persia is also very similar. This one is a kind of outlaw because of the curse that he has and he have a lot of guts never to give up in order to reach his goal. Prince of Persia has this interesting time traveling thing that allows to see his destiny and maybe change certain events. At some point even if everything looks pointless and impossible he still manages to find some strength to keep trying to change his own fate. This kind of character is extremely charming because of that eternal fight of not to loose the last hope. God of War have very similar story to mines and it is absolutely based on Greek mythology. It has stunning Imagery filled with brutal strength. El Dorado is the lightest of these stories. It has much more comic situations, but still doesn't loose this constant adventure feeling which is exactly what I'm looking for. All in all I still will try to find the best style for my thing and mainly use these just for inspiration.