Team Chow III: Level 42 Night Goblin Rangers

[Jason Rainville]

This is the home of the night goblin rangers who have acheived the sacred level of 42. Here we will discuss our plan of attack, add relevant images and information, and decide the best way to roast the bones of our enemies.

Our members include:
Jason Rainville
ChaoticKnight
Zilrion

[Jason Rainville]

Cards, info, and plan of attack.

So far I have claimed these cards for myself:

Nine of Wands
Ten of Pentacles

The Wands suit, in a nutshell deals with fire, passion, and the colour red. It is lively and dynamic. The Nine of Wands is about defense against all odds, but it is an active defense. It's a mobile army rather than a castle, a counter attack rather than a static defense.

So far I'm thinking or a dynamic individual faced with an overwhelming opposition, likely a warrior. I'll try to think if there are any interesting twists I can introduce.

The Pentacles suit is about the outer material world; wealth, physical bodies, possesions etc. The Eight of pentacles typically depics a young man hammering away at coins. It's typically interpreted as dealing with attention to detail, toil and patience.

I'm thinking that this card will almost be an image of Hephaistos, beating away on a magic coin of sorts. Again that may be too direct, and I'll do some brainstorming with the card's meaning to see what I can come up with.
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Basic plan of attack:

Like last time, we could have a certain unifying element to tie our images together. The characters we depict could be a team of adventurers, or opposing teams of adventurers. There could be an overarching cultural influence, level of technology or narrative theme that each image displays.

Let me know whatcha think.

[Jason Rainville]

Hey guys,

We should really have an msn meeting tonight, or at the latest tommorow. I'll try to catch you on msn if I can, but if not try to message me or post here on when a good time is.

[ErikStorstein]

Agreed, I just got back on. Had a small late christmas celebration today with some close family (hooray I can afford the intous now). I'll stay on late (for me), to try catch you guys.

By the way:
The Sun
Five of Pentacles

oh yea, and subscribed

[Jason Rainville]

Zilrion and I discussed some ideas over instant messaging.

The main things discussed included what unifying elements could be introduced, how to challenge ourselves/differentiate us from the competition, and what the general procedure will be with the production of the images. I've saved the conversation and added the jist of it below:

To start, I said:

basically, last time we tried to see if there was a neat twist or unifying element that could tie our works together....
this time I'm not sure what the unifying element or theme could be
so if you have any ideas I'd like to hear em
I think for the different suits there should be some colour consistency, since certain suits have patron colours like red for wands. each also has a patron element, like fire or earth

That last part is particularly relevant. Each suit it tied not only to emotions but many other things: refer to the chart in this link

I also said, responding to Zilrion:

the inner meanings should really come first

Meaning that while the colours and elements of the suits add to the character, the character representing the card should be drawn from that particular card's meaning.

Putting the theme aside, Zilrion said:

I was wondering though about the approach
last team chow I kind of ended doing my own idea from scratch to finnish all the way with minor input, but I saw teams that sent the files around. So that everyone made contributions, which I found interesting

Meaning that some teams collaborated fully on images, passing the working files to each other.

I responded:

I'll have to think about that, like you say it's a neat way to do it but it's weird for a portfolio....unless we split it up as one person does the sketch or overall idea and another finishes it, or we give each other the descriptions for how we want it done

As I see it there are a few options; we work on each image seperately, we do the sketch for our card and another teammate finishes it, or another form of collaboration. So far I'm not totally convinced that collaboration over long distances would be the best idea, but I'm still open to the option.


Zilrion then voiced concern over the genre. He said that fantasy first comes to mind, but may be expected and cliched. I responded:

off the bat fantasy seems the most natural but like you say it'd set us apart to do something else. the next likely one would be superheros, what with the possibility of elemental powers and such

sci fi is difficult, I'm not sure how we'd represent wind or earth in sci fi
unless it's like, not a part of the character's race but a subtle part of the tech their races uses, like one person's race uses crazy wind technology, others use earth tech etc

We talked back and forth about the idea of sci-fi characters that come from races that use unique technology, centered around one of the four elements. I continued:

it could be that the elements influence their technology, so people from the air world have jet packs, guns that fire concentrated gasses or air bursts to know enemies over
earth people could "grow" some of their tech, or have certain things like chlorophyll over their armor

Zilrion asked:

are we going to have "pentacles" "wands" "swords" etc, or change it up some, I mean they have been portrayed as a lot of different things though they convey the same meaning

I replied:

I'm not sure if the name has to stay the same or not (it might have to) but defenitely the meaning of the card comes first, so in my cards there doesn't have to be any pentacles, just what the card represents. chances are I'll have a stand-in like some other type opf disc
and for wands it could be changed to sci-fi devices
it would of course look weird for a sci-fi guy to be waving about a wand

Zilrion and I then collaborated shortly on some of the technological qualities of the "earth" based race (pentacles)

I said:

so if they have REALLY efficient chloriphyl, they could use it as anopther power source

like would they manufacture their armor, or would they grow it? Would it look all rough like hard flesh or would it look more or less like "regular" amor?
I think flesh would be too far to like, the zerg
we should try to keep it to plants and stone
or even sand

Zilrion agreed that the earth people shouldn't wander into "zerg" territory with grown armor resebling flesh.

We then talked about the "fire" people (wands)
Zilrion said:

engulfed in flames is a bit boring yea. but you have creatures like the phoenix that have stuff like wings made out of flames. Maybe they could manipulate fire like that.

I replied:

I'm starting to think more of like, plasma, since it's like fire
like what if they had a set of armor that could create wings out of plasma. it could also have portions of the armor with a plasma shield too, there's a lot of stuff they could create

This would keep the basic element but be more in line with sci-fi. Zilrion also added that the armor could be seen as lava, cracking with glows from inside.

We then discussed what the air race (swords) could have.
Zilrion said:

I'm thinking a lot of gasses like poisonous stuff. also elements of aircrafts etc
and very aerodymanic, like good movement.

I said:

yeah, gasses would be great, we could say that they do a lot of mining on gas giants
and use it in weapons or tools and such

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So, the recap of the discussion:
- the meaning of the card influences the character first and foremost.
- each suit for the lesser arcana could be tied together by the use of elements and colour schemes.
- it will be decided whether each member will complete their own illustrations, or whether some form of collaboration is to be done.
- there seem to be 3 main choices for genre: fantasy (tried and true but somewhat boring) superheroes (offers some chances with elemental powers) and sci-fi with elementaly-influenced technology. So far, even though it's more of a challenge for me (I don't do sci-fi) I think the science fiction route is the strongest.
- it's possible to represent "swords" and "pentacles" with something that's relevant to the genre (so far, the sci fi genre)

- if the sci-fi route is taken, the following ideas were given:
+ earth race could use chloriphyll laced armor to generate more power, may "grow" armor or use other plant-like items.
+ fire race would use plasma to create physical constructs, as well as having possibly lava-like armor.
+wind race could be based on gasses mined from gas giants, and/or use advanced hydraulic technology.


So far none of these ideas are set in stone as ChaoticKnight still has to voice his opinions.
----------------

Aside from that, it could be a good time to gather some reference. Even though we're not quite settled on sci-fi I think we should look for and find a lot of science fiction and high-tech images and post them here. Also very relevant would be images of the four elements we plan on depicting as well.

[Jason Rainville]

Thinking out loud:

One of the challenges with the earth based tech is that it's hard to think of what the materials are actually made out of. Originally it was though that it could be "grown" ion some way, but this might make them look more like plant people than earth people. Here are a few options:

1: organic (plant) armor, with the shape of somewhat normal space armor. This race has developed bio-engineering to a point where they develop strains of plants that are super-dense and conform to certain shapes (discs or plates). It may not even look like normal plant, since it would be so dense and compressed to withstand impacts and energy damage. It may even shine due to the density. the upside for this type of armor would be that while it may not offer the best protection, it has incredible regenerative capabilities, able to withstand small arms fire for a long time.

2: A more subtle hint to the earth element that I thought of today would be ceramic armor. Ceramics are non-metallic and often have a cystaline structure, which speaks more to earth than steel, in my opnion. Ceramic armor is being used today, and is known for its great ability to withstand penetrating power:

Due to the extreme hardness of the ceramics used, they offer superior resistance against a shaped charge jet and they shatter kinetic energy penetrators (KE-penetrators). The (pulverised) ceramic also strongly abrades any penetrator. Against lighter projectiles the hardness of the tiles causes a "shatter gap" effect: a higher velocity will within a certain velocity range (the "gap") not lead to a deeper penetration but destroy the projectile itself instead.[1] Because the ceramic is so brittle the entrance channel of a shaped charge jet is not smooth — as it would be when penetrating a metal — but ragged, causing extreme asymmetric pressures which disturb the geometry of the jet, on which its penetrative capabilities are critically dependent as its mass is relatively low. This initiates a vicious circle as the disturbed jet causes still greater irregularities in the ceramic, until in the end it is defeated.

The upside is that it's not far fetched, offers great protective power and can easily be shaped to whatever we want (specifically, discs, since earth is representing the suit of pentaces, or coins, or discs) the down side is that it lacks the regenerative properties of organic armor.

3: A third option, and one I think is the best, is a mix of the two options; not even our civilization bets on only one kind of technology. We could either mix the techs in both characters, having a "jumpsuit" of organic armor, with main areas of the body also covered with ceramic armor. the ceramics could even have chloriphyll patches for extra energy. The other way we could do it is have one character wearing all ceramic armor, while the other uses all plant based armor. They Could be different types of specialists, the ceramic armored character being a heavy assualt/defense person while the organic armored character is more of an infiltrator.
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With fire tech, I'm starting to think that they're even more reliant on plasma than before. it could be possible that instead of wearing physical armor, the character could be wearing a backpack over a basic bodysuit, and semi-transparent segments of armor are projected plasma. Just a thought.

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And here's a ref image dump from some of my favorite sci-fi universes. Remember though it's CHOW, any spaceships would be for inspiration only



I see this as good inspiration for ceramic armor, though more tan:


Bespin is great inspiration for "air" element:






And even though I usually HATE blizzard's general aesthetics these days:

[ChaoticKnight]

I'm reading through everything here, I had a particularly busy evening last night. Also, it's New Years.
(Jason, I'm on msn... Where's u?)

I chose:
Strength
King of Swords

[Jason Rainville]

No prob Mike, it's a crazy time of year. Get back to me and/or Zilrion with your ideas

I just thought I'd post this up here rather than a link, since I think with whatever we're doing we need to nail the meanings of the suits. So say if we are doing the sci fi think and each suit is a race, we should be able to see the tarot influence in the lore of that race;

[SMILEFACE]

good luck an HAPPY NEWYEAR!!!

[Jason Rainville]

Since I'm the one doing wands (fire) here's some lore on the fire race:

Fire element race, wands, staves or rods;

Core tenants; creativity, passion, action, daring

Realm is spirit

The Ceilid Tribe

The Ceilid “Tribe” is actually a misnomer: the name was used when there were various tribes of closely related sentient species living on their turbulent planet, Aries. Today, while they are the only intelligent life to survive on this incredibly inhospitable world, the Ceilids still retain the name despite the fact that their society more closely resembles a commonwealth.

Aries is a molten world of fire. The huge amounts of sulphur ejected into the atmosphere by massive geological activity gives the world its dense yellow clouds. The surface is constantly changing through the melting and/or displacement of small tectonic plates, with a small respite during the “winter” months where the temperature drops to around 200 Celsius and the crust cools enough to form larger masses of stable ground. This spirit of change, movement and violence is mirrored in the Ceilids; a vibrant, passionate and daring race of people.

Ceilids, along with every other living thing in Aries’ biosphere are extremophiles; organisms that can survive in the most extreme of environments. They can survive in a huge range of temperatures, the upper and lower limits being 500 and 150 celcius. Exposure to “normal” humanoid temperatures (the galactic norm being -50 to +50 Celsius) is almost instantly fatal.

Ceilid technology was difficult to develop and improve upon. Because of the nature of their home, stronger materials needed to be developed out of the molten ores they were able to extract, lest their homes and eventually factories would melt around them. The changing geography of Aries made finding natural resources problematic. But what they lacked in resources, they more than made up for in an extreme abundance of energy. Geothermal extractors could be set up nearly anywhere, and generators creating energy from the flow of magma numbered more than their species. This energy fuelled research that would swiftly develop ways to compress, store, and eventually generate vast amounts of energy away from their home world. They had an inexhaustible source of energy and developed technology that other races would find to be prohibitive, specifically, plasma technology.

With magnetic fields projected from small packs attached to their bodies, Ceilids shroud themselves with a protective layer of plasma. This plasma not only acts as the ceilid’s defence, it’s also their life support system, keeping their bodies at a comfortable 350 celcius. The fact that they radiate such heat means that Ceilids must either travel with their own kind, or make special accommodations with other, colder races. Ceilids rarely live away from Aries, but are renowned as daring, decisive and sometimes ruthless adventurers.

[ErikStorstein]

editing in some stuff later. just some random inspiring images

[Jason Rainville]

Ok, so anyone not interested in readin all my lengthy crap (which would be a lot of folks) here's the jist:

Trying to bring as many elements of the suits into the sci-fi race as possible.

Wands = clubs = fire

the fire people aren't actually composed of fire, but their technology relies on plasma, which I guess is close enough to fire as I can get with the sci-fi universe. Their plasma tech is so efficient that they don't need physical armor or weapons, they can wrap themselves in plasma armor.

So here are my initial ideas for the race/tech:




This image shows what their personal plasma generator might look like. I'm trying to incorporate the "clubs" image where I can;




The Nine of wands is all about desperate but active defense. I'm trying to find something that's heroic enough.




Here's what the basic armor dessign might look like. Her weapon would be a "wand" of sorts, not only in the basic clubs design but also sporting nine spikes;


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On to colours. One thing I want to do also is make the suit's colour stand out. The colour for wands is yellow, so I made their world almost like venus: hot, nearly molten, and choked with sulfur. Endless clouds of sulfur block out much of the light, which helps make the glowing plasma stand out.

In terms of lighting, this might be the hardest image I've created so far, so I did a colour study.
Here's the basic landscape:




This is what I had in my head for the look of the plasma armor:




But I'm starting to think something brighter might stand out better. At the same time though, I wonder if the figure might get lost:




EDIT: quick update on armor from some crits:





Any crits or comments welcome

[ErikStorstein]

Some silhouettes thumbs for the earthrace, just to get myself going.

[snootchy]

sup aka interglacial clams, took me a while to find your thread but glad to c'yall cracking the wip on this Chow III, liking the rough sketch ideas, keep at it doods!!

[ChaoticKnight]

Cool ideas so far guys. Zilrion, hopefully you and me will chat soon.

My King of swords is air based, so I was thinking along the lines of Johann from Hellboy 2, or the Archon from Star Craft.
And for the Strength card, I'm not sure. I do like the motif of the girl and the lion so who knows.

Sketches soon.

[Jason Rainville]

Really like the idea of gas contained in a high tech suit Mike

Trying to come up with some ideas for composition. I don't know if I'm moving too quickly with this stuff or not, last time I took a lot longer on the design of armor and stuff...

EDIT: again this is for the 9 of wands, which is all about defense.

I'm more interested in the first image, it feels that the downward angle of the attack is more dominating and she's having a harder time defening;




This one has another angle, where's she's more active in her defense;

[B-Man]

Im watching this sci-fi thing and waiting to see something cool. Good luck you guys! Cheers!

[ChaoticKnight]

Here's a promised WIP. I need the portfolio work, so even if this doesnt work out I want to render the hell out of it.
This is the king of swords, element wind.

**Edit: Color shifting. Better or worse?

[Mark Tarrisse]

Nice start guys !
Jason Rainville : I must say I love the colors you choose for the first one, and the last two composition are just kickass ! But if I had to choose between the two of them I'd say the top one

[Jason Rainville]

A late thanks to Mark, b-man snootchy and granny

I think that while we can write as much lore as we want for our "races" and stuff, we should have one small paragraph that we can place just under the card that sums up who the character is and/or what situation they're in, to really hammer home the meaning of the card. A funny thing happened when I wrote up mine (image included)




“When the Darians tried to conquer us, they knew setting foot on our world would boil them to nothing, so the cowards sent their machines. Time and time again those floating, artificial soldiers returned our warriors to the birthing fire. A usurper-class drone was bearing down on our clan, with nothing much to stop it; our soldiers are our walls, and we were fast running out of soldiers. While all fled, Neria stood her ground. She saved us that day. Not just our clan, but the whole Ceilid Tribe. She showed us we could overcome them through sacrifice. And we did.”

the one part; our soldiers are our walls is a blatant rip from Sparta, where it was said that while their city had no walls, they were far from defenseless since their young men were their walls. But I just realized that this not only coincides with the idea of active rather than passive defense (soldiers rather than walls) but it also speaks to the way the Ceilids protect their bodies, with active fields of plasma rather than inert armor.

Yay for accidentally being deep

[ErikStorstein]

whoa that's quite awesometastic guys! I'm still trying to figure out the design of the earthen-race. This is the general idea that's in my head at the moment, but it'll probably change a lot. I've tried too take the various meanings of the pentacles deck and incorporate it all into a design, yet keeping it very humanoid.


The Misceons come from a world very much like earth, at least the way it used too look before pollution and all that modern tech stuff took over. They have an understanding of nature and life beyond any other known race, and are excellent engineers and crafters. Using their knowledge to create life. It is said that even their own bodies are merged parts from various creatures found on their home planet. You'll often find them "working" on themselves healing their own bodies from decay, making them nearly immune to aging.

They are not a very violent race as far as we know, and value more material goods and riches (They mainly travel and work as healers). They travel in ships that have a life of their own, as well as wearing armour and clothing of the same kind. Though you do occasionally see them wear expensive more decorative outfits with it, as they enjoy showing off. They have never been at war with anyone, but considering how great protection their living-armour gives, one can't help but wonder what their weapons are like.

Here's the worked up silhouette I wanted to go with (everyone else seems to like the 3rd on at the top the most though, so if any of you want to give it a shot at work it up quickly please do! I'm still quite unsure about this)

[Jason Rainville]

Really like the fact they like finery and craftsmanship, really ties into the theme of earth/pentacles dealing with material wealth and the physical world

Here's my idea for the 3rd one, but like I said he might be getting too "creaturish" I did 2 versions for a face, with like a tree face and a more human face, then each with some armor. I wasn't thinking about the armor too much, mainly just about some basic vine-like lines, but I think disks should feature at least a bit to tie into pentacles:







EDIT: and mike, I changed my mind from saying it was a bit better, to it being a lot better. The blue works better with the steel IMO

[Jason Rainville]

To anyone not up-to-date: Zilrion and I both have a card with the pentacles suit, so we're trying to collaborate on the pentacles/earth/Misceons race.

Zil I hope you don't mind but I have to post up your initial idea or mine doesn't make sense

So it looks like the Misceons are a smaller race that developed a form of power armor early on that they are somewhat dependant on (crafting is a big part of the pentacles suit, so they have become dependant on their crafting). So zilrion took the 3rd silhouette idea and turned it into their power armor. He sent me his idea:



He said that it would be a mix of fleshy, regenerating parts (to play up on the nature/earth aspect) as well as armored sections.

I did a little paint over with some of my ideas:



I tried to incorporate some "pentacles" into the design, specifically super-effdicient cloriphyll plates. I made the armor tan and textured like rocks or something, could be ceramic armor. Just ideas, take it or leave it

[Jason Rainville]

So here's an update on what I guess will be the final:

[Jason Rainville]

Contraaaaaaast

[ChaoticKnight]

You might want to flip that buddy. There's some wonky stuff goin on in the face

[Jason Rainville]

Thanks for the crit mike: I flipped it but couldn't see what was wrong, I did rotate the face on the head a little bit, here's where I'm at now with all the other stuff off, not sure if it's better or not:

[ErikStorstein]

Ok back in England now and ready to kick it again

some colour studies for the armor, did some slight adjustments also.

and a quick paintover, I'm the last person that should ever do that..

[Janos]

very cool original designs. I really like the world you guys are creating.

[Jason Rainville]

Thanks Zilrion for the PO, and thatnks for the comment Janos
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So I started working on the 8 of pentacles. Here's the card descrip: http://www.learntarot.com/p8.htm Basically, dilligence, hard work and attention to detail is the meaning. Since it's of the pentacles (earth) suit, it usually has to deal with crafting. It was pretty hard to think of anything better than "alien repairs something" but eventually I came up with the idea that the development of those super-efficient chlorophyll plates I was talking about could have possibly solved an energy crisis they had in the past. The image turned into a dedicated scientist working to develop those plates. Here's where I'm at and a short description:

Attachment 882858

“We faced the sixth energy crisis in the same amount of decades. Fossil fuels were finite, fusion was impractical at smaller scales, and our entire way of life - made possible only by our power suits - was seemingly coming to an end. Mran Dalla refused to lose concentration, however. Her diligence lost her her friends, her mate, even her status as a scientist. In the end, she developed a new molecule called atraphyll - an incredibly efficient, nearly black version of chlorophyll able to absorb energy from even the green portions of the EM spectrum. Weaved onto standard energy plates, they powered our suits with ease. She drew her inspiration for the earth, and we all draw our inspiration from her.”

Unfortunately, the story turned out to be more interesting than the image. Here are a couple of sketches for it:

Attachment 882860 Attachment 882861

I changed the pose slightly after realising that it wasn't very natural. Any crits or ideas on the miage are appreciated. It'll of course be better once more rendering and textures get in there, but I feel like something's missing.

EDIT: so... for me I see all my attachments as links for some reason, not sure why...