Designing a hydrobike - part 1

I decided to design a different version of the hydrobike that's in the comic.

I figure Gina, as a courier, would be riding a street bike, battered up and past its prime but possibly well tuned all the same. I was thinking here I'd try to design a sports bike version, something she'd aspire to.

...first off, scribble out a bunch of bikes. I have sketchbooks full of this stuff, most of which is garbage and serves only to discover what I don't want to pursue. Eventually something half decent emerges.

I decided on this sketch as a starting point. It has a bunch of elements that keep cropping up in previous sketches, but also seems ergonomic enough to be feasible. Most importantly though, it looks aggressive and sporty, which is good...The next step is refining it further in Photoshop.

 ...this is a mix of kitbashing source images and some loose brush work, just to define the volumes and lines and work in some mechanical detail to help as I model it up...

I'll get into some 3d stuff in the next post.