Team Chow II :: Tall, Grande and Venti

[yoitisi]

Nice sketch Daest, though I was watching you make it Bit too cute maybe but I like it.

Sorry for not being around a whole lot yet, I'll post more stuff soon as I get home and got my business back on the rails. I was thinking of doing either a Merman/maid with tentacles or a Medic kind of type (should be interesting to do the evil version of that...) but I'm not sure what race that should be. I think we need an elf too huh?

[SunRoamer]

I really like it!
Hmm, about the cuteness... I agree with yoitsi that it may be a little bit too cute, it's really hard to imagine her as some kind of warrior-angel. But well, it's a cool concept anyway :>

[daestwen]

Yeah, I totally agree. I'll do some more sketches and make her a bit more bad ass and see if i can't get something working. :]

I think a mermaid/merman/tentacled thing would be awesome... maybe in the sorcerer/wizard vein?

We can always do more than 2 each if we really get the ball rolling!

if you guys can come up with some short characters stories (yoi and dished) maybe we can decide who's going to do whose opposite.. haven't decided if i want to do the good or the evil version of my angel yet - anyone else want to give her a try and do you have dibs on which side?

Dished, you said you might have some sketches for the angel, right? Post 'em!

[SunRoamer]

General:

if I write something like (xxx || xxx) the first thing describes the good and the second the evil version

• Name: ---us (nickname || surname 'divinus')
• Race: Human
• Gender: Male
• Profession: Spellcaster (Mage using some voodoo-rituals of sorts/power of nature || Mage warped by the gods, relying on purely divine/arcane magic), but well, I want to make it somewhat more complex (as to include Fighter elements as well)
  
  
• Height: around 185 cm
• Natural haircolour: Black (slightly curled)
• Natural skincolour: Mediterranean (suncrisped *fufufu*)
• Eye colour: Green, with brown/orange/red dots (depending on the light)
• Build: Quite muscular (not too beefy, tough...)
• Age: 34
• Miscellaneous: Maybe one or another scar... not too entirely sure right now (like, I don't even know if I want him to be somewhat handsome or not... and such^^); with the story update, he's lost his right arm ^.^ (originally right handed)
  
  
• Born as one of the nobility of Salvatio, capital of The Imperium; caring family, well-protected
• Started being tutored when he was around 5 years old; all his mentors say that he was a very bright-minded little fella; zealously studied The Imperium's history and their philosophy (regarding the Paradisus and the 'demons')
• When he was just 10 years old, his pater (32 years old) who served as an Tribunus militaris in the army was killed by 'heathens and their demon-allies' during a campaign; where once had only been a dislike out of loyality towards The Imperium now a real hatred toward heathens and demons alike began to grow, and fester
• With 13 years his practice to prepare him for fighting and warring duties started; he was both trained physically (body control, use of armours and weapons) as well as mentally (general tutoring, informations about defiant nations yet to be conquered, demons, strategics; later on he was taught divine magic)
• As soon as he was 20 years old, he finally started riding into real battle (somewhat akin to a Paladin, at that time); he helped defeat many other nations/tribes and seize their lands; if the people they invaded turned down the offer of being absorbed into The Imperium (and thus openly revealed themselves as 'heathens') or if any demons were present he was said to be one of the most gruesome and most ferocious fighters among Imperium's troops, due to the loss and grief he still felt to the untimely loss of his pater
• With 24 years he had already risen to the rank of a Dux militum and the next campaign would surely get him an even higher rank; however, before the end of said campaign his fate was not yet decided...

Good:

• It was supposed to be nothing more than a common mission, it ended up as a catatrophe: we ventured deep into enemy territory, wrestling their lands from them, 'freeing' those who wanted to be freed - or were to afraid to do otherwise, I suppose - killing those who were brave enough to refuse. Time passed, I revelled in spilling innocent blood until some day we were ambushed. Still drunk on the bloodshed from a few hours before, feeling myself soar high above those 'wretched pagans', as I used to call them, I didn't discover the appoaching enemies, and neither did my soldiers. In fact, we still would have had the superiority both in numbers and equipment, if it weren't for my bad luck... or rather, the enemies cunning. Seeing as I probably was the leader they mainly focused on taking me out first and, taken by surprise, I barely managed surviving the first strike. Though my life had been spared that moment, my right arm was not; rendered defenseless the only reason I'm still alive is that my horse panicked and dragged me along, eventually falling into the ruthless river that ran close by.
  
  
• Brief version for the rest:
  
• saved by elves or something else (main thing is he'd consider them enemies)
• stereotypically growing closer to his saviours, starting to doubt all his previous beliefs (good guys sure are boring, especially if they undergo stereotypical-(fantasy-)personality-changes :'D)
• new resolve (maybe some kind of a catastrophe in between to make sure he completely abandons all he was before, i.e. slaughter of his saviours)
• life as a rogue; rallying people against The Imperium, also change of what he relies on in battle (weaponry- and magic-change... no more d'vine stuff!)

Evil: (only brief summary, too tired)

• almost the same until the actual attack on him; he still loses his right arm but with less panicking horses and more going crazy instead. Power gushing forth from his severed arm as much as blood he slaugthers the enemy. The Gods then declare him Divinus, which makes him one of the most powerful man in the whole nation. They even bless him with a new arm => either gonna be ethereal or somewhere between technolyzed and arcane... (I never quite got those awesome Chronomancer-concepts (just scroll down a bit, I think you can't really miss the Chronomancer with their mechanic appearance, the strange lights and the sometimes floating body parts) out of my system, I guess... ;D)

[Dished]

swweeet!

anyway heres a couple sketches i did for a bird-like character. Not necesarily the anghe but could be a possible group of half breeds that were outcast and therefore hate the anghe. So they could possibly be a radical group against the anghe, so technically they can be evil. anyhow,

I was going for a more 'birdlike' look to them, so they look human,but i changed the eyes around a bit, made the forheads bigger, pointier sharp downward going noses and higher cheekbones.

Anyway i was also thinking of making my character a Druid. He'll be an either an or human,but he'd have immersed himself so much in that sort of magic that he'd sort of have certain features of the animals he likes to work with or turn into.And which animals he chooses to do his druidy things with would be determined by his alignment.

I do like that idea that there'd be one character,and the player would be able to choose his/her alignment. Reminds me of fable.


working on sketches of my guy right now

[trevor]

hey guys looking great so far
i was talking to dawn last night and offered a suggestion for you britt
would you guys be all totally bummed if i offered a few crits?

[daestwen]

No way, I would totally be hyped to get crits. :] Tear it apart, man!

[SunRoamer]

Crits are always more than welcome Like Daestwen said, just tear it apart! ^^

So, I finally got to sketch. Only a portrait, though, in three different versions:
First one is just the base (he got quite a lot of scars now ^^), for the second I added the Imperium's soldier's gear and the last one shows him in the evil version, as a Divinus. Well, his eyes glow xD Since we wanted to take the same moodboard for both alignments (just with switched saturation, so that the evil uns have saturated colds and desaturated warms, right?) I thought the bluw glow might come in quite handy :>

Well, it's nothing too special for now, I was mainly playing around and stuff... some things may look awkward, right now ^^

E:
some subtle changes made...

[daestwen]

Here... I'm scrapping this one but figured I'd show you guys my thought process in the meantime. This was a sketch that i was trying to work out some kind of mer person idea, based on a lion fish... but you can see it didn't work out too well. :] At least you can see where I was coming from on this one.

[yoitisi]

bluhblargh I'm back home enjoying my jetlag at the moment, but I should get to sketching a few things soon now

That's all for now, brain out...

[SunRoamer]

Well, I like it Daestwen!
The only thing that kind of stood out was the nose... it was rally very humanoid, and at the same time really broad. The kind of nose I'd expect on a dwarf or a halfling, but well, I think it doesn't really fit mermen...
Anyway, I made a quick overpaint of one of the other possibilities (just 2 little slits)
(well, it turned out quite more like a feline nose and it also doesn't really blend in with the rest, but well, it still shows what I wanted to show, I guess D: )

[SunRoamer]

So, I somewhat added a body to the head =O

Athough it's only the upper body... <.< Anyway, it's enough to show the clothing and the cultural influence:

So, the good one will be inspired by the Maasai, although the influence probably will only go as far as to the clothing. So, no shaved heads, no typical-Maasai tatoos and so on. Although I really love their traditional headdress, which would probably look stupid with such long hair :<
Right now the clothing's somewhat like this or this but I'm also considering such a style (so, more or less bare upper body).
On the other hand I already thought about doing something similar (=> bare torso) for the evil version; though that one will be more inspired by typical roman clothing. So, I thought about giving him a gladiator's gear (somewhat like this. Although I want to make it look less Village People-ish :'D) But well, we'll see, I guess ^.^
Eh, yeah, thats pretty much it :>

E:
for some reason, nothing was uploaded :/ Should be up now, however^^

[Dished]

heres a sketch of my orc shaman lady...

checking out some amazonian tribe costumes/accessories to add to it,but for now,sleep time.

[SunRoamer]

So I've been spending some time drawing a worldmap :>
Well, since it's fantasy the climatic zones are kind of extreme; the whole thing so far is definitely smaller than the whole of europe, still we got something like a pole in the north of the map and mediterranean climate in the south of the map; I guess fantasy worlds usually tend to be a little bit cramped :'D
Right now I'm thinking about how The Imperium expanded (so, like the whole history. This also includes already sparing some thoughts for the pantheon (nothing too concrete though) and also about my characters journey.
The original (rather small) Imperium will be located in the western part of the mainland and well, later on it'll be like almost everywhere. Well, at least except for parts of the swamplands where my good version stranded^^

[Dished]

Another update...

[SunRoamer]

I love it, dished!
Can't wait to see the other version's first sketches :>

So, I continued with the world map. Now you can see how far Imperium's spread. I'm even thinking of slapping together a little movie... to tell the story and such ^.^ It would be cool if I could include some environment-sketches as well :> *doing everything that has the chance of being labelled "unnecessary"*

Also, I further worked on the character design (even fixed some anatomical things, something unnecessary again :/), reworked his arm-stump, the tattoo and the accessoires.
(three versions: fullbody concept with clothing and everything, bare upper body to see the tattoo, bare upper body to see his bare upper body)

( ~(°A ° ~) )

And I also already have an idea for the final illustration, whereas for the evil version I only got the character design => I'm probably gonna do the good one 'cuz I like the idea, however I don't want to force my concept for the actual illustration onto whoever-will-be-doing-it

E:
dammit, just ignore his legs D: Anatomy sucks... xD

[daestwen]

hey guys! sorry i've been so out of it, hopefully i'll feel better tomorrow

loving the orc and i really like the map though i think we need a couple tiny pockets of hold-out among all that red... like tiny little towns that just *would not* give up and they simply gave up on taking them over and just went around.

maybe we could get some wood elves in there, sequestered in a forest that the humans have yet to enter and keep their lives? A fierce race dedicated solely to survival in the shadow of a xenophobic empire with no love of their kind...

also, the anatomy on the guy isn't just his legs :] right now he's about ten heads tall! if i'm feeling better tomorrow i'll do a paintover for you.

in the meantime, here's my current angel sketch... ignore basically everything save the armour, please, really haven't looked into those bits yet. Basically i'm going for some fishscale-style leather/dragonhide armour kind of thing...

[yoitisi]

Hey I finally got around to read all the post in here concerning the story and background. Kinda cool stuff, but I have a spot of trouble with connecting your character design to the idea of it being such a huge and powerful empire, Sunroamer.

My problem is that I have trouble believing a culture based on the Maasai, by being just a tribe and using fairly primitive weapons, they actually managed to conquer such a vast Empire. Looking at almost all great nations and empires in the past, I think all of them had a technological advantage over their opponents (and maybe some luck and a great army). I like the character write up you did of him, but can't match the culture you chose with the story really I'm afraid. I'd suggest either changing the side he's on (which would need some changes in the write-up) or change the character design so he looks like he's actually belonging to an advanced culture (could still be based on Maasai, just more advanced). Hope you don't mind my suggestion here.

Also, for the style of the final entries of us: are we still using the colour palette (warm yellows/reds vs. cool blues/greys or the other way around) as Daestwen suggested in the first few posts, as well as the classical painter style? I'm totally up for that, just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page with it.

[SunRoamer]

I really like your design Britt, but well, you know that already I guess ^^ Although it's actually mainly about the armour I really love the peacock/Bird of Paradise-tailfeather^^

loving the orc and i really like the map though i think we need a couple tiny pockets of hold-out among all that red... like tiny little towns that just *would not* give up and they simply gave up on taking them over and just went around.

Well, yes, why not ^^ The map was more to simply show how much Imperium has expanded, so I didn't think too much about possible resistance

also, the anatomy on the guy isn't just his legs :] right now he's about ten heads tall! if i'm feeling better tomorrow i'll do a paintover for you.

The upper body's anatomy's right, though? Right?^^ Well, about his lower body... Guess his feet should be somewhere around the bottom of the pic and not outside of it xD that means his kneecaps also have to be moved upwards a bit (a lot, in fact xD) Paintover would be welcome anyway, just to make sure it definitely gets right

My problem is that I have trouble believing a culture based on the Maasai, by being just a tribe and using fairly primitive weapons, they actually managed to conquer such a vast Empire. Looking at almost all great nations and empires in the past, I think all of them had a technological advantage over their opponents (and maybe some luck and a great army). I like the character write up you did of him, but can't match the culture you chose with the story really I'm afraid. I'd suggest either changing the side he's on (which would need some changes in the write-up) or change the character design so he looks like he's actually belonging to an advanced culture (could still be based on Maasai, just more advanced). Hope you don't mind my suggestion here.

Ah, I think you misunderstood something (or maybe, my explanations were not clear enough):
Imperium is a nation inspired by the roman empire. The Maasai-influenced people live in the swamplands which are not-yet-conquered; while the good version of my character grew up in and also fought for Imperium he later on was taken in by said people (when he had been wounded). He then realizes that Imperium isn't as good as he always thought and adapts to the people who saved him and now supports them against his own country.
More believable that way?^^

(I guess I'll still have to change the write-up to make sure there are no such misunderstandings... ^^" did you also understand it in another way dawn, Britt?)

[yoitisi]

Sunroamer: Ah uhm, must've been me I think. Would be cool if you could write that out in a single post with nice write-up Still, he'd have dealt with a culture more advanced than his own, so he's bound to have picked up a few things from them I guess.

I think what confused me is the fact that the Empire is evil but looks shiny, bright, golden and basically like the 'good guys', while all the others look like the evil side but are actually the good guys. This is something that is really hard to pull off I suspect, as then the designs have to be really subtle since the division between good and evil isn't really clear (as opposed to most High Fantasy worlds). Hmm..

[daestwen]

I think it's doable with body language and expression. Just think of the movie gladiator... joaquin phoenix definitely does not look like a good guy, even when wearing totally white shiny armour.

[SunRoamer]

I want to have him protect a little child or something in the final illustration, besides we also have the colour palette and such to help differentiate between good and evil... I hope it works out ^^"

[daestwen]

okay so after i posted that bit about elves i ended up thinking about them and here's a quick sketch i came up with... I was following up on the kind of african theme, tossed a bit of egyptian in there too... could even be a swamp elf, tie it into the human with a similar tattoo, etc...

[yoitisi]

Cool stuff Daest Hope to see that sketch worked out a bit more later.

Here's a quick sketch of mine. Decided to just jump into Photoshop and see what comes out before I start thinking it out too much. Ended up with a Lizardman that doesn't belong to any specific class yet. Pose is meh etc. but at least I'm getting back into the swing of things

[SunRoamer]

Nice sketches you two!

So, well, I hope the anatomy's more or less correct now^^ Feet are still awkward but I don't want to struggle with those for a simple sketch D:
Rather, I'd like to hear some opinions on the design itself. For example, I'm not too sure if I should give him some kind of weapon (I already thought about a mace-like thing and also about his tattoos kind of extending and forming a black, writhing mass that can be used to fight but, well, once again that would appear to be VERY evil xD That currently leaves me with spirits, only... [Maasai Guardian Spirit, for example] I guess I shouldn't restrict myself too much to the voodoo priest-like class) or well, maybe there are other suggestions for other things^^

[daestwen]

okay crit time

if he's from the swamp he needs shoes or boots of some sort so he doesn't get trenchfoot. he's not in a dry enough area to wander around barefoot. I like the waist stuff, but it's not reading bulky enough right now - too close to the skin. Need to flesh out the fabric more, give it some volume and weight. also, i think it's riding too low on his hips at the moment.

Liking the necklaces, but same thing with the clothes, get them a little less skin tight, especially considering how long they are. I like the tattoo...

There's something missing but I can't really put my finger on it right now.

[SunRoamer]

There's something missing but I can't really put my finger on it right now.

His left hand? D:

Aaaanyway, thank you for the crit :> I actually want some parts of the clothes to be clinging close to his skin, but well, I'll have to see (like the foremost guy on the right side also got it quite tight). The drapery on his left will be lose, however; maybe you meant that?
Necklaces will probably increase in numbers, and yeah, some time I was also thinking about the fact that they are like, REALLY tight... I just always forget about those things, I should probably write it down xD Same goes for the thing with the shoes

Thank you again

and it will take me some time before I can go online in Skype again, still have to eat and such things. Sorry ^^"

E:
the clothing needs some structure. Especially the hanging stuff doesn't make any sense at all :/

[SunRoamer]

Update:
Worked on his clothing
Added "shoes"
Necklaces should look less tight now

Well, not too much but the design for the clothing took me quite a lot of time. I'm always bad at designing not-completely ridiculous things D:
Some things will probably somewhat change in the final illustration (maybe too much... stuff hanging around right now?), but since I wanted to do the good version myself it should be okay, I guess^^ So, unless there are any things that definitely need to be changed in the sketch I'd move on to the evil one now

[daestwen]

wibble...

[JessiBean]

Sunroamer - I like how you are considering the costume and the patterned fabrics/necklace details/etc. I think it is missing some reality, tho... like what holds it up, how is it put together? Indications of things like stitches or laces, belts or sashes that tie the cloth onto the body - these will make the clothing design look more realistic and cohesive.

Nice work guys!