Inspired by repeated listening to Sodom's 'I am the War' and looking up the Sergio Leone's Duck, You Sucker!, I felt like drawing a character inspired by the villainous Colonel in the latter. I wanted to depict him standing near an armored car, in reference to a scene in that movie where the villain is standing in an armored car at the head of a column of Mexican troops (looking not too dissimilar to a WWII German Panzer commander).

So, this here is a depiction of Colonel Rüdiger Lissauer, an officer in the Imperial Mexican Army during the Great War, and his second-in-command, Major Carlota Salvador, standing by their Renault-Ocampo armored car somewhere in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains south of the Texian city of Monterrey, inspecting friendly and hostile emplacements in the surrounding area. Lissauer is a professional officer, having served in His Imperial Majesty's army for over a decade while Carlota was a conscript, drafted in 1914 shortly after declaration of war against the Central Powers. She quickly rose through the ranks due to her superb administrative skills, and her superiors believe she has great promise as a staff officer; Lissauer, on the other claw, is an aggressive and ruthless commander, preferring to lead from the frontlines than from far behind. Salvador, named after former Empress Carlotta, was assigned as Lissauer's SIC in order to reign the Colonel in, the German having already caused controversy for atrocities committed against bandits, natives, and Texians that had been reported in the Mexican press.

Man oh man, did I remember this being a pain in the ass to draw and research; the former because it was tough trying to scale Carlota right so that she would be taller and still fit into the picture. The latter because it was hard finding exactly what I was looking for, pictures of the pre-Revolution Mexican Federal Army under Porfirio Diaz; all I could find was either depictions of Huerte's Constitutionalists and the miscellaneous rebel factions, or the Mexican army in earlier times (like the Mexican-American War or the French Intervention). I eventually just went with using French uniforms, which still gave me trouble as I couldn't find the right reference pictures of officer leather gaiters that I wanted. Rank insignia of this time was also difficult to find, so I went with the rank insignia of the Mexican Army seen in Red Dead Redemption.