Welcome to Big Dead Turtle City
It's dead and a city at the same time!!
And maybe an empire oh no :D
I post my art and stuff! Please bookmark or RSS my site! Art by Amari Harkness - @Penwrythe | Not for the purpose of generated AI Art or NFTs
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!
Fixing and correcting old sword design to updated version.
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!
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:
There are a few corrections I need to do for this model before moving on to rigging:
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:
Totally forgot to post her pose sheet a few months ago, but here's Eightenate's pose and expressions sheet!
Pyrrhus’ (he/they) redesign is coming along nicely! Since it’s been a while since I last drawn him, he’s now 29 yrs old! Original art 2021 below the updated art. This is also a test (for timing and style) for future commissions.
Quick note: Pyrrhus is a daydream character of mine that I have a strong fixation on. Please do not draw fanart of this character, thank you.
I just completed this concept of my characters,
Eightenate, Inga, and Gwenny, for a future project to create 3D models
for a World of Relics 3D test comic. For these character models, I want
them to best match the original style presented in this image.
First up will be Eightenate🔮
Decided to explore Grim's CHR design again! I gave them a more naturalistic look with two afro variations. I haven't developed more updated lore on them yet, but I like the idea of them being an immersive daydreamer like myself. They were Plural/System (system origin is unknown) in their old lore, but I don't think I'm equipped with the knowledge to handle such a sensitive topic for a character. Maybe with more research at a later time, I will explore this for them again.
Removing their original monster design changes their old lore a bit. They live in Astoria, a place where stories come from. Characters in this world are in a never-ending search for a story to fit in. Grim is studying to be a protagonist, but they are a glitch character, a character that fits in no genre. Their old design has parts implying they are a combination of different characters. They look human but still had monster traits. They look genderfluid and can be interpreted as either male or female. They mostly see themself as non-binary and consider themself human.
The important theme in their old story was that all characters must find their one true story or else they fade away. To do so, they must be in a strong community, participate in stories with other characters, and keep developing themselves. For Grim, they not only need to do all this for themself but for their headmates as well. They and their headmates must work together to find their story.
Here are the old sketches of them from last year:
Some sketches and thoughts for a character redesign for my old character, Grim.
If you are Plural or a System, let me know what you think of this character!
Speedpaint below!
Working on Sylvania the Elven Ground Staff #WIP!
I was inspired by a sponsorship ad in Lifering’s exit interview episode I have seen a while ago on Youtube.
Her
war-object design is based on Sylvania of the Spirit Keep. I
incorporated a few elements from her elven design, such as her chest
plate, hip guards, and pauldrons, into her staff from the game.
I
had some troubleshooting on her staff design. Polearms usually have a
blade at the end for a long-range strike, like halberds, spears, or
tridents. The blade-like protrusions on the head of Sylvania's staff
don’t look like they are made for striking from the side.
A short mini-comic about Gwuenevere casting her first spell at 32. It did not go well.
Ink and ink wash for the majority of this sketch. Acrylic paint and ink for the crystal.
And a special blurb that inspired this below! Warning, it's a bit rough, so mispellings and typos abound! CW for self-injury, body horror, and near-death.
I sketched out their facial and head anatomy. I like a naturalistic style with my object characters, so I added a slight curve on Pyroblast's head. I also gave them a fuller pompadour bristle style, too!
Wing anatomy was something I was stuck on for a bit, mostly because I was bouncing between robotic wings vs a more naturalistic bird-like wing. While designing this, I realized that polearm war-objects like Pyroblast would need some protection on their wing joints and shoulder. So I added a pauldron over the should joint that overlaps with the start of the wing and a segmented couter(?) at the elbow. I also added segmented bands over the metal primary feathers of Pyroblast's wing.
As for the material makeup of a polearm's anatomy: Both flying and ground polearms are made of strong light metals and wood. The wings of a flying polearm are made up of aluminum/thin steel sheets (still researching this) enchanted with spells to strengthen them for combat, flight, and high temperatures. Pyroblast is a Heavy Class General Dread-torch, so their materials need to handle stress from high heat from their fire magic, extreme turbulence from the dynamic flight, and from any attacks from other Dread-torches.
Lower rank war-torches are mostly for aerial attacks on ground armies, while Dread-torches are castle destroyers. Castles would need defense against Dread-torches, either from using Dread-torches of their own (provided from their kingdom's capital, usually for heavily targeted castles) or using other means of anti-air defense.
I'm thinking about using this design for future flying polearms set in the Mundane Realm. For RFR, I might use a more simplified style to show how the first flying polearms still kept most of their original weapon shape before the Inversion Event.
....it's been a while since I been here and I am surprised that a few posts are still getting views on here.
Anyway, since I left Twitter (for personal reasons I will not mention here), I also gave up a platform for posting my rough sketches. I like posting on Tumblr, but I like to spread out my content on different platforms. DA, Insta, and my portfolio are mostly for my finished completed work or polished sketches.
So, maybe a possible revival here??? Just for the sketches?
Anyway, here's something I have done recently. I'm writing an objectshow comic about living object people living in a fantasy world. Here's the carrd for one of my stories set within it: Rise of Relics! Also, if you are wondering what the "Not for the use of NFTs" watermark is for: it's to hopefully slow the scrapping of my art by nft art thieves.
I do not support nfts nor have any intention to create or profit off them.
So yeah, enjoy my art! You can find me on other places, too! Check my about me page for more information!
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Rats |
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Yakmen sketch |
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Yakmen again with rat sketches |
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More rat sketches |
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Character sketch for Yakmen and his guardian form. |
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Nakim sketch and... |
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Nakim art for a class assignment in Computer Art Applications. This is my first time using Adobe Illustrator. It is very different from using Photoshop. |
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Cindercost Vulture |
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Venticardia |
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Me...I am awesome! |
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Cute little fox bird. |