Growing Up

Growing Up

It is FINALLY time to talk about Winter and her rebellion! This took me several days so I have zero idea how coherent it is! Sorry 😃

So, Winter spent numerous of her teenage years running a terrorist organization. As a result, she is no longer allowed in Roarhaven and so runs a rebellion against some of the stronger god factions (mainly Mevolent and Valkyrie, somewhat the Darquesse cult) with a gang of people who are left over from the terrorist group.

Winter is the leader, and Alter is second-in-command. I’m debating whether or not they should be dating and I’m leaning towards yes, but I also lowkey refuse to write romance so we’ll see where it goes. Alter was also the guy who convinced Winter to join the group and eventually run it, so he does feel some responsibility for the events that went down because of it. Also, constantly nearly dying has made him a lot less Nazi-coded, so at least that’s a plus.

Aside from Alter, Malice is also there (still in energy form) and basically acts like Winter’s shadow by giving advice, following her around everywhere, and making sure that nobody is trying to sneak up and kill Winter. Malice is directly the reason why the Faceless Ones escaped from their prison, but she realized that they weren’t going to help her and instead decided that it would be more vindicating to help Winter defeat Valkyrie.

Somebody who is not there is Mia. She and Winter both joined the organization at together (although for different reasons) and Mia ended up sticking around to support Winter when she took over. Eventually the bone wand exploded and turned Valkyrie into a god, yadda yadda, but the whole thing ended with Winter being sort of…cut off? From her sister, her parents, from the Sanctuary and Roarhaven as a whole…pretty much everything except for her little organization. And so when Valkyrie started acting weird and the Faceless Ones escaped, Winter decided to dedicate what little she had left to fighting her sister. This was going alright until a fight between the two groups where Anton was cornered and using his gist, and Mia tried to step in to protect somebody else, causing the gist to grab her and maul her to death before anyone could stop it.

Winter has since made it a goal to kill Anton Shudder in vengeance for what happened. Like, she loathes his continued existence to a Skulduggery/Nefarian level. Anton, on the other hand, did not actually know who Mia was but felt absolutely awful (and still does) about the fact that he killed a teenager who was trying to save her friend.

Since the organization and everyone in it was kicked out of Roarhaven, they have continued their lack of association with the Irish Sanctuary and move around a lot, not really having a single main base. I do think that they would spend a fair bit of time in America though, where there are fewer gods to fight and therefore less constant danger. Winter also regularly gets into territory skirmishes with Valkyrie over who gets to maintain control of the Grimwood House, although Winter doesn’t know what’s down there. She just knows that she wants Valkyrie to stay the hell away from it. Valkyrie, on the other hand, wants to create more god-killers to use on people like Mevolent but has a hard time with it because neither she nor Skulduggery can go down there on account of the fact that they would get torn apart by magic-sensing monsters. Also, they’re a tad nervous about waking up the dragon. Valkyrie is half considering trying to use it as a pet. But Winter knows none of this, she just spends a lot of time trying to stop Valkyrie from getting whatever’s down there.

In fact, the rebellion as a whole does a lot of that. Their purpose is to try and kill as many gods as possible to return the world to peace, with Winter (who has the god-killer spear) at the head of it. Aside from Valkyrie and Skulduggery, the rebellion also regularly gets into fights with Mevolent’s troops. They do, however, avoid going near the Sanctuary for various reasons, including the understanding that their existence near Roarhaven would disturb its place as a relatively peaceful haven.

And Winter herself? Lots of issues. Valkyrie becoming a god and then regularly defeating Winter’s rebellion in fights has really not had a great effect on her already bad self-esteem. She’s also now had to live her life for years without her sister to look up to, which is especially hard because Valkyrie was a huge role model for her her entire life. She also still has periodic breakdowns regarding Cadaverous Gant as well as something that Cadaver Cain did to her (specifically betraying and then shooting her. And saying that Valkyrie was superior to her for not trusting him). Winter is also very cut-off from her parents because they’re mortals who’re hiding in Roarhaven at best and dead at worst. Lastly, Winter has a bit of a complex relationship with Skulduggery because she now knows slightly more the extent to which he took advantage of Valkyrie as a kid, but she also remembers him protecting her from Cadaverous and him just…being a background figure in her life for a long time. Skulduggery would probably kill her if not for the fact that Valkyrie would be sad about it.

In short, Winter has many issues that I think would be interesting to write about, and if I ever write this out as a fic it will be written partially from her perspective.

Because I’m currently doing a collection of all my Sky OCs, I’m gonna talk more about the lore around these kids!

They call themselves the Restorationists and what they do is they collect stories, songs, and performances from spirits or murals and then play them on real instruments or otherwise perform/show them in real time so other kids can appreciate them more! They also try to decipher the lore of the murals in order to create stories about them.

This means that they spend a lot more time interacting with spirits and examining the murals scattered about the world than hanging out with other children, they mostly just have each other for company (exception being when they’re performing).

They don’t have any one spot where they’re localized, they’ll kind of just go wherever and perform for whoever’s there.

Side note: their desire to learn more from spirits than just their emotes will lead them to take interest in a different OC of mine named Natalie.

Y’all should’ve never let me watch Harpy Hare because I IMMEDIATELY made some little guys based on them

Base is from Harpy Hare by Yaelokre, go give it some love!

Start by drawing a plain humanoid figure in whatever pose you want, make sure to plan out what position you want your cape to be in, and be sure to get some amount of references from the game or online so you can study them to figure out how to draw them. Studying the outfits as you’re trying to draw has definitely been the most important one for me. Getting pose and/or lighting references can be super helpful as well, and you can go online to try and find something (or ask someone) if you’re unable to get it in-game.

Also, some people choose to draw their Skykids with more human looking eyes while others prefer to stick to exactly what they look like in game, so I suggest experimenting a bit to figure out what you’re most comfortable drawing! I personally prefer drawing them with white eyes because I struggle with eyes. And hands.

No idea if this part will be helpful, but this is how I draw my little guy (featuring bad shading)

I originally made his design in-game and then I took reference pictures with the Season of Moments camera from a couple different angles, and then I just insert the refs and draw. I’ve gotten better at drawing him with practice, so your first couple drawings might be bad before getting better.

I’m also working on giving the kids actual expressions 😅

Anyways, go wild with it. The most important thing here to note is that references are lifesavers when trying to draw Skykids.

artists of skyblr how do you draw a skykid. i want to know the ways. teach me your moves senseis. i will go mad if i can't draw my silly little people doing silly thing

This can be a solution to insulation and weatherproofing challenges

Source: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTF2JYRGH/