[956 words, 5 min estimated read time]
This month I did a bit of everything- a portrait drawing, commission work, and some more character design work for a new character!
Portrait Drawing of Rorik
I finally got around to making a full drawing of my character Rorik, with shading and highlights and all that. I decided to mess around with some style stuff while at it since it’s been a while since I’ve done a full illustration with shading like this.
Overall I’m really happy with how it turned out. It was one of the few times I could stare at it after making it and not find anything I didn’t like. I did make the mistake of giving him normal human hands at first though and had to go back and redu it, so that was kinda funny.
It was nice to finally have a drawing of him I really liked, one that hadn’t just been from when I was designing his character. I’d done little expression sketches and things like that, but not a full drawing like this.
Working on Commissions
I finished up a commission for my friend Florence / Spiderlily! They started a youtube channel with videos about the ttrpg they’re building, and got a commission of their sona for the channel. (Here’s a link to their channel btw)
I really like the pose I picked for it, and I really like the design for their sona so it was a lot of fun to draw! I really enjoyed the detailing for the book and the background frame.
Designing Yet Another New Character
So one of my friends is going to be running a d&d campaign, and I’ve been brainstorming characters to play. I’m stuck between the Circle of Dreams Druid design I’ve had on the backburner, or an Order of the Lycan Bloodhunter. I really like some of the mechanics to both, so I’m still not sure which I’ll go with. But anyway, this month I was diving into the Bloodhunter idea.
At some point I had an idea for a homebrew race zapped into my brain that was just ‘wolf beastfolk, but with horns’. Either as its own race, or we can just say it’s a beastfolk with a tiefling parent, whatever. Problem is, as much as I liked the idea, I am not confident at all with drawing animals, so immediately I was struggling. But I was determined to come up with a design I liked, (and one I could draw from different angles), so I set to work.
At first I was just trying to get some of the vague ideas in my head onto the page- body shape, colors, shape of the horns, how the hell to draw a wolf head. That stuff.
Eventually I got to a point where I just tried out some base body shapes to mess around with fur colors and patterns and horn shapes. Later I decide to change from digitigrade legs (like a wolf) to plantigrade legs (like a human). That way when they change into their hybrid transformation as part of the Order of the Lycan class, I could make the hybrid form stand out more by then changing their legs to digitigrade. Just a small thing that I thought would benefit me later on.
But I dunno after I finished the base for it I realized it reminded me of that buff dog meme and couldn’t get it out of my head lmao, so I tried some other body shapes.
I also changed the color palette to more cool grey tones, and simplified it to two colors instead of three. I was liking the sloped shoulders better for the body shape, it was resembling closer to what I’d envisioned in the beginning and helps the horns stand out more and not get confused with the bulk of the shoulders.
I liked the first horn design best, so ended up going with that one. Then came the fun part of breaking his horns and giving him some battle scars!
I like the design at the end of the lineup best, with one broken horn, a chipped ear, and X-cut across his chest.
Finally time to put some clothes on the boy. I knew the general shape I wanted to go for would have more weight up top and slim down around the legs. I also knew I didn’t want it to be a full metal suit of armor, something more medium in protection and weight that would still allow for some agility.
Once I got a design I liked I started designing some cloaks to go along with it. I knew I wanted to give him a bulky fur cloak.
Then came time for colors! I worked on colors for the base armor design first, then colors for the cloak design. I wanted to make sure the armor looked good on it’s own first. I tried a lineup of cooler toned blues and greys, then a lineup of warmer greens and oranges.
I’m still working out which will be the final design. I think my favorite may be the last of the blue/grey armor and cloak designs. In the meantime I’ve also started to consider playing the character as a Hunter Ranger rather than an Order of the Lycan Bloodhunter. Or maybe I’ll change my mind last minute and play an entirely different character by the time the campaign starts up, who knows!
Writing Challenge
This month I ended up making a writing challenge for myself. I decided to make a separate blog post to talk about it, I ended up having a lot more to talk about with it than I thought I would. So that’ll be coming up soon!
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