Lady Blade Gwuenevere - Updated for Artfight

Very late for Artfight, but here's updated art of Gwuenevere with her magic Thread and her Woven Blade.

Gwuenevere prepares an attack with a flourish of magical splendor. Sprouting from her fingers are thin thread, flowing together into long cords of crystalized ichor which is then molded into a blade. Woven by thousands of magical Threads, the blade takes on a piercing shape. Like that of a sewing needle, it displays an eye by which Gwuenevere's Thread flows through.

It seems to be made with precise attention, but it is short and deceptively brittle. While Gwuenevere 's Woven Blade does not cut well, it is made to puncture. To quickly dart and dig into the enemy's core and out again. The blade carries her Thread into their wounds, which its strands then burst into a painful cluster of metal crystals. With their interiors made from Gwuenevere's ichor, these crystals bleed themselves deeper and grow more of themselves from within. 

A devastating sight to witness. Yet many witless War-Fitted would find themselves bearing ichor scars from their battles with Gwuenevere. Some, if very unfortunate, would face their demise by her blade. Those crystals creep deep, damaging the integrity of one's ichor structure, leaving a wake of destruction that corrodes throughout. 

A ruination that finds no cure by any measure.

Details update goofy ahhhhh

 

Colors progress! Trying to keep them looking both similar and different at the same time.

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

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.

Working on Sylvania the Elven Ground Staff!

 

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.

 

 

For something that looks close to her staff weapon in Raid, I was able to find the Fangtian Ji, a Chinese spear from the Song dynasty (960–1279AD), designed for striking opponents directly or knocking them off their horses with the spear tip or side blade. (see also the Dagger Axe for a better context of her design).

Sylvania does not do this in the gameplay footage in the ad, she just strikes the ground with an AOE attack. So, I think it’s a staff weapon for casting powerful magic.

In this design, I exaggerated the blades and lengthened the spearhead. It made her look very intimidating in my style. A powerful and high-ranking war-staff!

Gwuenevere and her First Spell

 

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.

Update on Pyroblast the War-Torch (Paintbrush II fanart)

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.

Sketching Pyroblast the Dread-torch!

Been feeling better as of late, so I started drawing my favorite character from Inanimate Insanity, Paintbrush, as a war-torch in my style.

 

I also wanted to explore some designs for my war-torch characters. Their hair/wick shape, chest and fuel tank armor, and overall anatomy are what I have been waiting to explore for the longest time. The chest armor was inspired by this Shaffron Horse’s Head defense armor and the head design was inspired by the roman helmet with cheek guards. The overall design of all my winged polearm war-objects was based on dragonflies and the shoebill stork.

In the Mundane Realm, Paintbrush would be Pyroblast, a former Dread-torch general of Janthizera who self-librated themself from the tyranny of their own kingdom.