Seven of Wands - Seven Brothers WIP

 

✨💫🔪✨🔪✨🔪⭐fucking betrays you⭐🔪✨🔪✨🔪✨💫

EVERYTHING IS COMPLETED AND DONE-ISH!

Eightenate Character, Sword prop, and callout sheets are completed!

 

 

 

 

I can finally move on to finalizing her character model in Blender and adding her sword as a model, too. But before that, I need to work on some 3D animation and hard surface modeling practices, which might take most of March. The completion of the character model itself might be around June or July.

For anyone who was here when I started on this saga last year, remember that this project was to create a style guide for future World of Relics 3D comics. I know this model, the first of three characters for the style, took about a year to get to this point. This is mostly because I'm relearning a lot of things related to 3D character design for NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) styles, including building my own shaders, style matching between 2D and 3D, sculpting and retopolgy, UVs and texture baking, and so on. So, yeeeaaah, kinda taking a long time for this style guide.

The good thing is that the more I learn, the faster this 3D character creation will be. Also, most of what I learned will become second nature, so no like three or four weeks of learning how to do proper topology so the model won't look weird if shaded the wrong way (no I'm not kidding). I still have 3D (and 2D) animation, advanced character sculpting, and character rigging to learn, however. This year will be all learning!

I have no start time (aside from a trello reminder for 2027) for starting my Rise of Relics comic. I'm thinking about while developing the character models, just start traditionally with drawn characters and environments. Then eventually added the 3D characters and environments as I go along, especially for more complex scenes.

Anyway though, this was an enjoyable process. Hope to have Eightenate's character model completed soon!

Credits for the stock images used in the above callout sheet:

1. Photo by Alex Suprun on Pixnio
2. Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash
3. Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
4. Photo by PDTillman on Wikimedia
5. My own example of a crystal blade
6. Arpit Sahani from Pixabay
7. Photo by Andreas Haubold on Unsplash

OOOHHauuuhhhhhhhhhhggggghh perspective hard

 Fixing and correcting old sword design to updated version.

 

Old version

 

New WIP update

 

Cleanup stage 2

Thank you so much Krita for the perspective tool. I'm not sure if this is correct buuut yeah.

 

Callout/Reference Page for Eightenate

 One more WIP page for my character Eightenate! This will show a callout/reference sheet for textures needed and design notes for Eightenate. I should have done this before working on her 3D model, but that's okay, I'm learning!

Happy Valentines Day!

 I don't have anything special for Valentines Day, but to answer a few unanswered questions about my World of Relics objectocs:

• Yes, you can date them, if you can survive the miasma they emit that turns you to stone.
• No, they cannot eat candy, they only eat the materials they are made of.
• Yes, my objectocs have a wide assortment of genders, all based celestial changes and motions in the sky - you must know your astrology!
• No, that is impossible and possibly dangerous, you know who you are.
• Yes, they'll love your (very breakable and flammable) gifts.
• No, you cannot lovingly gaze into their eyes (you'll enthrall them and possibly have a stroke while they pummel someone).
  
• I don't know, unless you have good magic and fire resistance, good luck dating Wands or Torches.
• I do not recommend hugging anyone that is a giant Sword. Or anyone with spikes. Or anyone made of glass.
• Are you sure you want them to join your reality show?? That's not romantic- oh wait, Bachelor shows are a thing, lol.
• No, you cannot wear them or use them as tools or weapons. They are too big and heavy for any use for any human.
• Addendum to the above: some Apparelkind don't mind being worn as long as you ask first. Just know, they are a bit oversized.
• Additional addendum: some instruments might like being played (platonically). You could make a band if you want!
  
•  Objectkind have no concept of the fragility of humankind...or the fact humans can't be revived at all after death. So, just be careful.

Calderian Earthenkind ages and sizes

 

Made a rough size and age sketch sheet of my Calderian Earthenkind, with a human (5'4") to show scale. Upper section shows Eightenate's size at age 25 due to her stunted growth next to an Adult Earthenkind around the same age. Bottom section shows normal growth over years.

Eightenate Character model Progress!

 So, over the past year, I've been working on Eightenate character model for a World of Relics style guide. The goal of the style guide is to help develop a consistent aesthetic, themes, style, and visual worldbuilding concepts for the overall look of the setting of World of Relics, and its sub universes, Rise of Relics and The Mundane Realm.

 The goal of the Eightenate model is to test out how my designs translate to 3D space, while keeping my 2D painterly/comic book style. This means months of learning NPR styled shading and modeling, from Anime-styled renders to Arcane and Spiderverse styled shading. I'm still learning most of this stuff, as a lot of this style of 3D art and design is still new and developing. But once Eightenate's model is complete with body and facial rigging, with a plan on how to keep Appeal of my 3D models intact for comics, the process of asset creation of my future comics will go by faster.

Currently, the status of Eightenate's character model is the following:

 

Original 2D design

There are a few corrections I need to do for this model before moving on to rigging:

•  Finalize Shaders and Textures
•  Fix right scar over eye taper shape
•  Once that's fix, repaint scar to be close to reference
• Reshape holdout geo over right eye and scar
• Fix tassels shading to be closer to reference 
• Complete cape with two holes from reference and improve shading (Look up Arcane Cloth shading)
• Make sword after learning hard surface modeling
  

Eightenate sword updates and upcoming character sheet corrections!

 I made corrections on Eightenate's sword, shown here in a previous post. Check it out:

 

The reason why I went with this design was due to the environment that Eightenate lived in was incompatible with the original hooked sword from her previous sheets. The original sword design was for breaching and bypassing the armor of war-fitted objects like war-torches and other polearms and fighting against swords by using the hook to redirect their swings.

But Kingdom of Calderia is largely populated by Earthenkind made of multiple layers of solid stone, which includes Eightenate - despite her stunted size. I don’t think that hook design will survive long in this setting. So I went with a thick stone sword with a wedged blade, designed to still breach armor and stone, wedge between exposed cracks, and act as a tool for breaking through barriers or aid in climbing. And some additional traits like punching with the bolted hilt or stone pommel.

Also, there’s a bit of an additional worldbuilding note for Eightenate: because of her stunted growth, she is unable to grow spines on the underside of her arm. While most adult Earthenkind (of stony variety) grow spines upon coming-of-age at 20, Eightenate was five years late in that growth and lacked the additional offensive and defensive benefits she would have gained from them.

This sword was a gift given to her by an elder Earthen, who took care of her shortly after the lost of her past Guardian during her curiohood. The sword, once used in a higher position before Calderia’s downturn just years ago, was in poor condition and took a long time for Eightenate to take care of it. After some time, it gained a similar hue as Eightenate’s own chrysocolla core.

 Next to be updated:

• Correct textures on Expressions and Pose Sheets.
• Update Sword Design on Pose Sheet.

Future use of this blog and my socials yay!

Making a note to reorganize a few things between my socials.

First, make Blogger my archive, which means making all future art progress posts must be made there first before anywhere else. This will help with keeping track of projects more easily in one place. Once posted on Blogger, these posts will be copied and mass posted to all my other socials via Postybirb (with relevant edits if needed).

At this current time, I'm active on (in matter on priority for future posts):

• Archive: Blogger
• Career related: My Portfolio, Linkedin, Artstation, and Cara
• Youtube (soon-ish) - Speedpaints and Project Journal
  
• Ko-Fi
• Newgrounds
• Bluesky
• Tumblr 
• Reddit
• Instagram - Family
• Toyhouse

Debating where I stay active or not:

• Furaffinity - Alt aside, not sure if I feel comfy about posting there as my main. IDK, there's a few professional artists I like there, tho, so it might be okay as long things are kept separate.
• Deviantart - AI bullshit
• Artfol - I keep forgetting
  
• Pillowfort - I keep forgetting

Anyway, in a few days, on Tumblr I will retro-post a lot of my past art so the older stuff get more views on them. Moving forward, this will be only done once a year, with future reblogs/reposts to be made once every month. On sites like this (Blogger), just do a reminder post once a month, and have Bluesky and Reddit reposts once a month.