Saturday, June 16, 2012

Esa concepts

So, yesterday I made a new warlock character on World of Warcraft, and caught myself trying to create a character for her. It all started by trying to decide what talent spec I wanted to make her - affliction or destruction. I didn't really want to go the typical "leveling spec" route of demonology with her. I wanted to have fun and just run quests with her.

I started formulating a personality - she was wearing an heirloom headpiece, so I decided that as a worgen, she was ashamed of her face and didn't like people looking at it. Depsite her implied meek, sweet personality, I thought it would be funny that she actually had a bleak outlook on the world, and just wanted to set it all on fire. So, I went with Destruction.

Something clicked in the back of my brain. One of the things I've really been struggling with lately for August Rye is that I needed a female character that could fit somewhat into the circle of August's 'friends', or rather a loose collection of people August can somewhat get along with. The only female August's age was a girl who she hated, plus was dating the boy that she was smitten with. This creates a bit of a sterotyping problem, because on the surface it looks like 'two females who can't get along because they like the same man.' I'm not too big on that kind of cliche, so I've been trying to think of a suitable female character to fit into the narrative. The problem is that the main character, August, is not exactly a friendly little ball of sunshine, so the trick was finding someone that was not so like everyone else that she'd get shot down by August as just another peasant. No, this girl had to be someone special.



So yesterday, Esa was born. Roughly around the same age as August and Billy, Esa roams around the demon world, keeping only undead and a few other demons as company. She's absolutely erratic and eccentric when compared to the main cast, which may be part due to her upbringing with other demons in the demon realm. She absolutely hates when people look at her actual human face, to the point of being ashamed of it. Instead, she always wears a hood, or a mask that resembles the face of the species of one of her closest undead companions. Her main powers are lighting things on fire and necromancy on Thursdays. When it comes to her outlook on life, she sees no problem with her rampant acts of destruction - as far as she's concerned, everywhere you look is something that needs to be destroyed, so you might as well watch it all burn. Despite her bleak outlook on life, she's very pleasant and polite, if you can get past her cultural quirks.

Commissions

Got a couple more commissions done recently, a Furcadia portrait and a full digital artwork.


 A portrait commissioned by Banish. When I showed the final product to a friend as a way of getting some extra feedback, they remarked that they could really tell how much better I've gotten at portraying the male form. I have to admit - they're right. I'm rather proud of what I did here. I usually tend to avoid drawing shirtless men because I simply cannot do them justice, but I'm glad I got a commission for one and was brave enough to take it on. It came out well.

This picture is a rendering of an avatar, from one of the avatar sites similar in function to Gaia Online, or at least that was my impression anyway. I'm a sucker for the kind of dress-up factor these kind of games offer, but I find little patience for the endless gold farming to buy items. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way nowadays, which is why I 'officially' quit Gaia a year or so back. Still, actually giving life and personality to avatars is still always fun, so I was more than happy to do this commission for an old friend, who was more than generous with her offer for it. I kinda shuffled my feet a bit on this one, but it did come out quite well overall. I'm just fussy about details I can never get quite right - it's something I need to work on.

Two very enjoyable commissions that I think have shown some of the progress I've made over the past year. An interesting starting point for my summer!