Team Chow II :: Sad Panda

[morgalahan]

I did some rough sketching last night. I like the idea of having the bad guys be undead corrupted shadowy thingies, possibly vampire themed possibly not I love vampires but we ARE trying to stay away from cliche.

I think what we need to do is just define our characters, get them down so that we can start sketching and painting them in different poses and good/evil versions. If you want to do the cleric may I do the female warrior hero elf? It's one of my favorite things to paint. Then you can pick either the sorcerer or the thief and design them and I'll do whichever one you dont pick. Then we can get those characters down and go ahead with the rendering of the final images. We may need to discuss styles when we get to that stage. You like an anime style and while I dont DISLIKE it, I prefer a realism style when painting, to a degree. But thats for later =P I'll try and coax Mr. Tiki Snakes into actually getting off his ass and working with us, or find out if he's withdrawn or not. Either way, I'll sort him out tonight

I've been going for a celtic theme, but I think just high fantasy is OK for now. If you want to add a norse vibe to it, or something similar, I'd like to see it

I think just to sum it up, the classes we're going for are Warrior, Cleric, Sorcerer, Thief

If you can come up with variations on those to create something interesting, all good. Create your own races or use pre existing ones. I like your elven cleric a lot, so how about changing it in some way to go from the standard clean and shiny elf from lord of the rings, to a more wood elf tribal cleric? Or something...hmm, trying to figure interesting characters is tough.

Oh well, I'll post my super rough lame sketch of the warrior...

Oh, and you know how some people on DA create 'character sheets' for their characters? What do you think about doing that for our characters? Just to make it easier to paint them all and stick to the same character. Something like this.

[morgalahan]

Hello fellow Sad Pandas! We have another new member as per my head hunting...sort of. I was originally looking for one or two more people to join the team, and I happily got the talented FalyneVarger to join the original team of Tiki Snakes and myself. Now we are joined by another new member, Mordus, who's sketchbook I have found by being a sneaky person

As it stands we are still in a very rough phase of work. I'm going to go art a bit now and try to nail some more sketches of character ideas. I shall update later with mah noo stuphz

[morgalahan]

playing with my chain mail brush. And a fur brush.

[Mordus]

Ok. IM in now, so id better get something done. My first target is to establish what a member of the race im using actually looks like before we start tagging it with good or evil.
I apologise for the extremely light figure. The scanner has screwed it up, and you can hardly see the shading. Try tilting the screen if you cant see anything.
DROAK:

[FalyneVarger]

So then you'll be handling a female elven warrior then? I'll have to do something else for my cleric in that case. I don't think we really want too many of the same race. I'll try to work up some more stuff. I'm not really sure what a Nord cleric would look like. lol I'll probably just make some bunk up for him. (I have an urge for a male now) Anyways, if you actually look at historical references the vikings actually have a Celtic style. So we probably have something similar in mind.

The style might work itself out as we pass the characters around. ...Hopefully. lol But if it comes down to it I CAN work in REALISM. http://falynevarger.deviantart.com/a...gift-113282134 http://falynevarger.deviantart.com/a...color-71471797 I just really prefer to work in my own style. ^^; Whatever it is called.

Character sheets sound fine to me. Is there a specific format for the final entries?

And I think your chain mail brush works fine for the skirt and such, but not for the rest of the shirt. It's too monotonous. We'll probably have to paint those parts by hand for quality's sake.

Welcome to the team, Mordus! >D

[FalyneVarger]

Your character sort of makes me think of a cross between a minotaur and a faun (pan's labyrinth style). I can see the lines pretty well on my desktop.
Looks good so far!

[Mordus]

Hes a Droak, basically a Celtic-type Goat-Faun. Pans Labyrinth probably pushed my hand. I plan on draping him in bandages (easiest clothing to wear with odd body shapes) hung with charms, skulls, teeth and bits of stuff. This particular one is a Seer - like a prophet, but only sees one side of the future. The bad stuff or the good things. This obviously shapes them as a person - my evil version sees only calamity in the days ahead, while the good one foretells happiness. Both are right...they just dont see the whole thing. While staring into the future, they manifest extra eyes. Check out my "Watcher" Devil for an idea on this...The idea of goats with extra eyes has been
knocking around my head for too long.

[Mordus]

Falyne: DONT.HURT.YOURSELF.
I know what it feels like to force a particular style. My painted work and color studd is worlds away from my pencil work, and different again from my BW ink pieces. But tehy all share a common denominator. Realism may win applause, but when doing art, do it the way that makes you happiest, net result better art regardless of style. I love your stuff anyway in your slightly more cartoonish style. Preachy Rant (tm) over.
On an off note, were you ever featured in ImagineFX?...I remember seeing some work in there like yours...
Meh. Im going to go do a full body sketch and some gear for him.

[FalyneVarger]

Watcher is good so far, too. :3
Goats always make me think of evil things. 0o They're pretty scary. But then I've been attacked by them more than once. I bet it would look interesting to see one on the good side.
Thank you. I prefer my style that way too, but sometimes a more serious look is need...I guess. lol I'm sure the three of us will be able to find SOME kind of common ground for this.

Ah. No, I haven't. My friend is trying to get me to send some stuff in, but I haven't gathered my courage quite yet. I feel like I should improve a bit more first. I'd like to see these pictures though. I hope the only thing similar with this person to my art is style.

[Mordus]

Like the lazy fool I am, I continue to doodle in the margins of life.
Trying out some ideas already for the more evil side (My favourite!)







Trying to catch up on what ive missed.

[FalyneVarger]

That tongue is the freakiest thing I've ever seen!
I LOVE it.
Keep it up!
I'll try to get some sketches in tomorrow.

[Mordus]

Its time to develop the background.
The Droak are a peaceful, isolated gatherer community hiding deep within the verdant depths of all the worlds great forests (and some deserts, notably near the cliffs of Shayle). They live alone, wandering in small groups of 3 to 4, hunting all they can and scrounging for more. Every 6 hundred and 66 years however, one kid (infant goat) will be born with bulging eyes filled with the stars. This kid has the curse of Seeing.
He looks deep into the future, knowing all that is to come. At first, for a while, he will see the good side of life in the days ahead. He will tell of plentiful food, great harvests and foresee storms in order to avoid them.
This does not last.
Slowly, as age crawls over him, smearing his youth with its black fingers, he will come to know only the darkness. He will be unable to scream out the various misfortunes, and will soon become a degenerate sub-intelligent beast, using all his life to wail doom at thr world while his body twists and warps in the grasp of the Curse.

Im a twisted person.




Need MOAR TONGUE?...



Glad you like the piccies. I hope to move onwards soon to a full picture.

[morgalahan]

OK, wow. This is the first time I've come back to a thread with so much done! wow!

I like the droak, he's freaky as all hell on the evil side, reminds me of a chiropterran from Blood and also of Vemon a bit! Absolutely scary! I can imagine him on the good side as well, looking very serene and mystical. Goat eyes always freak me out with those weirdly shaped pupils 0_o

Falyne, with my warrior, I was actually thinking of turning her into a half dragon...dunno. What I'd like is for all of us to sketch a version of each other's characters. My picture at the top is only a thumbnail really, nothing there is solid. It's just my idea of her so far. The chain mail IS hand painted in a way, I painted each of those rings by hand using a photoshop brush I made of a link shaped like a C. Made from an actual typed C But I know what you mean, I'll go in by hand in the finished version and make sure they look more authentic.

Question: Are we adding the Droak to the list of characters or replacing someone else with him? I'll try and do some thumbs of the other characters to get some ideas down. I have some ideas for the rouge/thief person

Style: 0_0 I'm not saying stylized is BAD. Lord knows my own work is somewhat stylized. By realism I mean sort of the style I've painted a few of my pieces in. I started drawing only in anime, and I'm trying forcibly to change that into a realism style. It's just my belief that it looks better when it comes to this sort of thing, but I'm not trying to impose my belief on you guys =P So I'm pretty certain that the style will work itself out as we pass the characters around By realism I meant something like this and this picture. As you can see, they have realism to a degree.

I just wanted to ask Mordus, do you digi-colour as well? Your pencil sketches are pretty amazing.

As for character sheets. I'd say they're just so that all of us have an idea of what goes with the character when we're painting/sketching them. Lets try and get our characters designed as far as we can go on our own. Not necessarily rendered but just defined. Then we can save the character sheets and use them as refs so that we can sketch out each others characters. I dunno, maybe I'm just over complicating.

As for the final format, I don't think it's defined. Lots of other teams have different ideas on the final format. It's a CHOW so there are set rules about the character presentation. It works if it's some sort of action scene. Like a wizard casting a fire spell to attack something off scene, or a warrior swinging a sword at an enemy and killing them. Just something like that. Not terribly complicated, but interesting.

Oh well, thats all I have to say for now. I'll get some more art posted later

[Mordus]

I dont digi-colour. I have no access to any kind of program, Painter or otherwise. In my sketchbook you can see some of my watercolour pieces with ink-lining added. I can do a really advanced version of those, but it may take a few days. I can post up some samples.
I would like to do a sketch of your characters head if she were to become a half-dragon. That might be fun, and a break from drawing horns and fur.

Mordus

[morgalahan]

Haha, sure, go for it. I was going to make her a half dragon in a subtle way, not too animalistic, but go for whatever you want to try. Nothing's sacred at this point

As for digi-painting, I'd then suggest that you draw your character and shade it in pencil as much as you can, then one of us with tablets and programs can do a paint over, if that's OK? I can say with a lot of certainty that we'll be doing our stuff digitally. So we need the style to be consistent.

[Mordus]

Good. But id like ta do a watercolour in any case.

[FalyneVarger]

Ah. I thought that there was something lizard like about your elf. I like the idea. :3 I think I've got my cleric now. I just need to do a quick full body sketch for her. (sudden rush of inspiration lol)

I see what you mean about the realism. I don't really like doing it like that though because you need to rely too heavily on photo references. But that is another debate for another time. Let's just concentrate on our characters for now.

I vote the Droak be added to the character list. He's freaky cool. And I agree that we will probably have to let Mordus handle his characters while we paint over them. For the sake of consistency.

[FalyneVarger]

So I was trying to find a way to make my cleric non stereotypical and here is what I came up with.
Another awesome made up race.

[FalyneVarger]

Mordus: Even if we don't use your watercolor for the final entry I'd still like to see it. I'm probably going to end up doing more with some of these characters once we're done with this project myself.

[morgalahan]

I only use photo references when I'm actually trying to learn. For the rest of the time I use what I've learned so far and wing it =P but yeah, lets concentrate on the characters

I agree, he's added. So that means we have 5 characters, which is all good for 4 people, or 3...

Mordus, do a watercolour sure, I'd love to see that. Both of you seem to have worked in watercolour a lot, I havent ever. For traditional media I've only ever worked in acrylics during high school =P My love is digital.

Looking forward to all the upcoming art! I'll only be able to get something up much much later, like in 12 hours when I can use the PC and I'm back home.

As for Tiki Snakes...he told me he'd post something last night, but he must have been busy or something ¬_¬ He's been working odd shifts lately, so I assume he's been tired. I'll speak to him tonight again and see when he'll get stuck in.

Hmm, I could always do some pencil sketching....we shall have to see.

[morgalahan]

Oh wow, thats awesome Falyne! I love that race and the character design! Are they some sort of avian air elemental race?

[FalyneVarger]

Refs are good for figuring out anatomy and lighting and such. ;P But yeah....lol I'm shutting up now.

Depending on how the fleshing out of the rest of the characters goes, it might be a good idea to perhaps drop some. We don't want to bog ourselves down too much. Especially since we are a bit behind.

Watercolor is probably my favorite medium to work with, but for things like this I think digital is best. More flexibility and easier to share.

So he lives? 0o

Pencil sketches are always good. I kinda did my cleric in both digi and pencils.

Thanks!
The Pilars are magic based beings that are charged with guarding a domain or special building. They usually follow a master so if we have end up with a mage/sorcerer, that would be the tie in. They're mostly good or neutral, but when exposed to an exceptionally evil force they can be corrupted.
I tried to mix a wasp, a bird, and a human for her design.

[morgalahan]

well it rocks, and I cant wait to see her rendered a bit more to flesh out those details so to speak I'm itching to start drawing, but I'll have to wait a bit.

About the characters, lets do one each for now, our main one, and then decide later if we want to add any more or not. We are a bit behind, especially in comparison with the other teams around.

I went hunting for refs for the Droak's gear, I found a few pics that may work.

[Tiki Snakes]

Yeah, um, Hi. Didn't quit the team as much as quit being a person for a week or so there. Back now, reading through, catching up on what's been happening and all that jazz.

For the record - I love the idea of the Good team being how they started out, and the evil team being how they ended up, and especially the concept that they stay a team throughout.

Vampirism could be a good 'falling point', I'd also considered the concept of 'making a deal with the devil', personally, but the team being turned en-mass (by an implied, shadowy and powerful master) is kind of...I could see it being visually quite cool.

Perhaps our questing heroes find themselves lost in the mist...


[edit] Having read the second page also now... Ehhehe, blimey. It might be because I've not been up long, but man, that Goak is really freaking me out. Which isn't easy to do. Nice work, Mordus.
Remember though, we'd need a good AND an evil version of him.


[edit2] I'm seeing a real woodsy, nature theme developing here. With the Fur-wearing Elven warrior, Leafy Air Cleric, and the vaguely tribal goat-person seer (who would fill the mystic/sorcerer slot quite nicely? Assuming I'm recalling the rules properly, we basically each need to produce at least a good and evil of one character each. I'm going to spend a few minutes thinking, and maybe start tinkering with a 'theif', see if I can twist the concept to fit the theme we seem to be accidentally developing here. [/edit2]

[Mordus]

Good to have you aboard, Tiki Snakes.
I did do some thinking about the whole good evil turning point. This may be slightly self centered of me...but what if the Droak turned them?

Originally his odd Seer status had him outcast. He joined up with various other people and formed a small group who acted as a team to prevent the bad things he saw in teh future. Slowly though, as the darkness took over, they became fatalistic, depressed. He twisted and began corrupting them all, as slowly they fell into a @it will all be the same in a hundred years@ attitude, leading to sheer nonchalance in the face of horrific murder and greed. One by one, the Curse of the Seer took them all under his wing.

Im terrified how much posting was done while I was away. Ive gotta get some stuff done!

[morgalahan]

Hey hey! Tiki lives!

Yes, we DO have 2 pages in this thread now, and I have a feeling we're close to moving to 3 pages. So, lots of reading a looking for you to catch up on

Hehe, so we have a woodsy theme do we? I was going more for celtic/nordic with the fur wearing. The characters all have a lot of room to grow, which is great. Hmm, I just went on a brush downloading spree *sigh* I promised myself I wouldnt go crazy over photoshop brushes again...since I tend to download a lot and never use em all. I AM looking forward to trying new techniques with these images, and I'll probably use the one's I've made so far again somewhere else. Push character development and ideas as far as they can go. Anything weird/freaky is great, as thats the most likely way to come up with something new and interesting. deals with devils, undead-ness, shadowy corruption...lets mix it all up and see what we get

We might need to come up with something specific to show with all the good characters, some similar trait that links them all together.

[Tiki Snakes]

Yes, intentionally or not, there is a definate 'primal' theme running lately, I'd say. And speaking for myself, Mordus, I rather like that idea. It keeps the meta-story as a part of the project itself, (rather than an irrelevant off-panel happening) and fits very well with the tragedy angle (A story is a proper tragedy if the ending is implied and inescapable from the offset, I recall.)

I'm going to do some scribbling around the idea of a 'trickster', now, I think. (Thief by any other name) and with a fey, wilderness feel to him. Will hopefully post more later.

[morgalahan]

Oh well, intentional or not, we may as well run with it. My current druid is very un-primal as it were, so I guess I'm putting it all into my art

And yup, and nice ideas for storyline are great I want to ask about this curse though, does it have the power to physically corrupt the characters? Or can it? Showing them tormented mentally as well as physically is a good way for them to be 'evil'.

Can we add somehow to the storyline that instead of preventing the disasters the Droak sees, maybe they end up causing them? Intentionally or not. So we would be able to see the characters go from one end of the scale to the other.

A fey trickster sounds great! cant wait to see it and hear your ideas on it

I think we should come up with a little more personal bio on the characters. I love yours so far Mordus, but I'd like to ask what the Droak's name is?

I'll work on my character as a half dragon a bit more and her bio.

[Mordus]

The Droak, as a Seer, is not given a name. They are expected to die soon, whether by their own hand or another. They sometimes gain names though.
Mine is called Speaker-to-nothing, so named by his distraught parents because of his tendency to talk to himself. And not in a good way.
Did a ten minute watercolor sketch for Morgalahan. Enjoy a half-dragon elf. I thoght her decline to evil might be a fight within herself - whether to follow the path of nature and adjust to the slow change of the world and her elvish heritage, or scrawl her dreams in blood all over the world as the dragon within longs to do.

[Mordus]

Oh, and my suggested topic "Half a Pound of Evil" has been selected as the new COW. So im very happy.