Character Design is something I put off for a while now. My process is still kind of ineffective and thus feels tedious especially compared to the more painterly practise I have done lately. Nevertheless, my Elephant Lady deserves a visual so I set out to make one:
The Design itself took me 4-5 hours. I agonized over the color and pattern of that over-the-shoulder fabric quite a while, too but all in all this was a lot of fun and good practice in terms of breaking loose from references. Outside of some visual reference on Elephant anatomy I freehanded this sketch.
And with that down moved to a more finished picture for her, that was loosely based on some pose reference:
The two features I knew I wanted for Mio when I started to think about visuals was: dark skinned and androgynous. And because I was especially unsure how I wanted that last one to turn out i started to look around for references online and found this piece by someone far more talented that I am:
That was the direction I wanted to go in so I started with a sketch in the same pose, heavily referencing and then working out some differences I wanted to have in there:
One of the first things I knew I wanted to change was the hair, mainly in the sense that I was looking for actual volume. That lead to the second change pretty much immidiately which was to make almost everything a little rounder, softer, pushed just slightly more to the feminine side of things. I looked around for some ideas for clothing then and ended on some gravity defying fantasy style poofy pants and a wrap top, which makes a nice modular clothing setup for a practically oriented character. Add some scars and voila…
Mio wears no armour and that is unlikely to change even though it would probably benefit them mechanically. After this first Design attempt I also ended up changing the nose shape into something a little more distinct, but for this one this is how things stayed when I moved on to colors:
Early color layout
Eventual color sheme
I found that what I fits had there was to close to the reference though and eventually landed on a result that I got when adding a certain opacity of multiply and burn layer of the same colour on top of it. And because I was chatting with people while drawing I also got tempted t give them a tattoo with a very cryptic meaning behind it. Lastly, it wasn’t yet official what kind of climate we would be starting in with these characters so I got thinking how I might get a warmer version of this outfit to work and ended up with a wool cloak that can double as a belt.
So this was Mio design iteration one… After that it was time to get this away from the reference and make it my own which is when this picture came to be:
It solidified some of the distinctions I wanted Mio to have and helped me to break loose from the similarities in general. I also have a prober character sheet for them planned out, but have so far not gotten around to tackling that.
In the wake of trying out some more ambitious things I had set my mind on doing one of those fancy Party composition pieces for my DnD Campaigns. As I was setting up the Composition Collage style with some stand in References I came to the conclusion that the 4-people + 1 pet Meridiem campaign looks a lot more managable than the 8-people + 4 pets Verden Campaign. So this one came to be, while the other is still waiting to be finished some more motivated day… or week… or month… we’ll see.
During Verden Campaign’s first big downtime there was one little occasion the crew got back together. Something we all in- and out-of-character had been anticipating ever since we were invited: The Fairy Ball held by the Winter Court. A Masquerade under the theme of ‘Creatures of the Night’. Thus of course everyone needed to dress up! And whether in words or picture all of us presented a new Outfit for our characters. Here’s what I came up for Gen (in a very last minute drawing spree, after agonizing over decisions too much):
The big event of the Ball was a Murder Mystery that kept us busy for most of it. We had friends to talk to and not so friendly faces to avoid… But after we solved the Crime and presented the Winter Queen our answer to be awarded a favour from her, we got to the calmer portion of the night. Dances were had and ever since out dear Dungeon Master had described that our Summer Fey Liaison had also decided to dress up as a Raven I had this picture in my brain that I needed to be a reality just because *aesthetics* !
And it happened. And then I was happy. And I still am even though it’s just a sketch.
About 3 years ago a bunch of strangers met on the dndbeyond forums united by the wish to play DnD and tell a story together. Many Forum threads never make it past that point but as you might be able to guess what ever luck (or fate =P) brought us together stuck around and we actually kept our group running. The story is to long to sum up in a short tale, we’ve dealt with Mindflayers and Dragons, befriended and antagonized some Fey, travelled through time and space and stumbled into places we had no business being in. So far only one of us died in a more permanent sense. But those are stories for another day, for now and in the spirit of sharing a bit of my art journey, I want to introduce my character: Gen. Here is the first design I drew for him:
small correction the age would be ~19.5 for a human
We started at Level 1. Gen and Fen, twins born to a big family of shifters in a magical forest, had been separated by Gen’s sudden magical giftedness and his will to explore it. He had gone to the Lazuli Archive, a school and library, to study magic and had graduated and taught there for a little while. He was about to leave for Skalvik when one day his sister just showed up and they decided to make that journey together. Shortly after arriving there, on a job that could have been like any other, they met the rest of the bunch and their adventure really started.
After helping our Druid, Ciccerek, find his mentor and then help him find his father, we all were bestowed a Dragon Boon… In Gen’s case: A fey Familiar. Much like himself, in a way, shaped like a Common Genet. On our way back we learned that Skalvik had started a war with the Mindflayer infested Kornear, and we decided to join the effort, one way or another. We plundered an abandoned lair and as we left stumbled into an ambush… unwilling to give up what they wanted from us and unable to come to a decision, Erazil hurled himself and the attacker onto the Astral Plane and left the party running, unknowing whether he was alive or not.
Erazil once gifted Gen a silver dagger, a reminder in the effort to get him back.
It was a long journey to get Erazil back, one that brought all of us to the Astral plane, in a circular line of events of cause and effect. Gone for barely 3 days we skipped half a year into the future and soon after had to say goodbye to Ciccerek who had his own journey from now on. It wasn’t long until all of us split up but before that, we me a new ‘friend’ and old acquaintance of Gen: Divination Wizard Illya. And as luck (or fate =P) would have it, we met her again as most of us reunited at the fairy ball, held by the winter court, everyone dressed up for the occasion of a Masquerade and its theme: Creatures of the Night. But that one is a Story for a different post. A few more months passed afterwards before another inciting incident would reunite us all again. And as is appropriate for a big time skip, I sat down and drew what is the most recent and most elaborate Character Sheet I have done so far:
This captures Gen as of Level 10. His familiar and the then Arcane Focus he was using: A Wand of Magic Missile (a gift from his Mentor back at Lazuli) with a Feywild Shard attached to it (itself a gift from our Summer Fey contact, Aurora). During the time skip Gen travelled a lot, he stayed in Lazuli for a little, visited his sister in the magic forest not far south of there and then, accompanied by party mascot, sabre-toothed cat, Tom and a horse he bought for the journey, made his way to the castle, they had been gifted and that had become home and lair of adopted dragon Ciccerek, up in the far north. There he tried to find some connection to the source of his magical abilities.
A lot of thing have happened since but they will have to wait for another post. What I think is apparent is that I have learned a few things over time, that the only minimally changed design of my dear Gen show off quite well. But I’m sure there is more to learn… and another Design update is not far away as the story progresses.
