Some Sketches

Some sketches

Some sketches from after class. Found a book where I can watch everyone walking by, and everyone just kind of decides I'm in the background so I can try and sketch people as they walk by.

"Playing Gods" character concepts!

Some more concept work for my game, I'm trying to escape the long shadow of Tolkien and DND fantasy. These groups are the Orcmen, baremen, and elfmen. Faces, a few outfit mockups. Starting with orcs for my direct attentions because their designs are the easiest to mess up on, considering how often weird nerds use it as an excuse to be racist (or in real life use it as a slur)

An aside: these are not traditional fantasy "races" in the world of Playing Gods. Interbreeding between them means the child will put simply look like either the mother or whoever of the two parties uses more magic- magic, an expression of concepts and the divine, will alter the appearance of the user over repeated usage and exposure, essentially an expression of culture. Orcmen use music, baremen use sigils and shapes, elfmen eat magical things, wyrmkin use breath... There's a lot of wiggle room with it.

Top left shows some orcmen, designs derived from sabretooth cats and clothing/outfits intended to evoke steppes cultures somewhat. Because they're a furred people, they're going to have beards (and beard styling) regardless of gender, and I'm working on how they engage with it. Since the bulk of them are going to be herders and traders respectively, I'm electing to have their gender be something chosen as a coming of age event by adolescent orcmen. I'm also going to blatantly plagiarize Finnish (and some old Germanic languages) for their names and language, because who actually cares if I butcher a European language?

Above, Hevoshera the horse lord! Below, a schpiel on orcmen naming conventions.

The first name is chosen when they're old enough to display personality, but children can also choose their own (if they're stubborn enough). In her case, Hevoshera, Finnish for "horse lord," was a declaration of intent: at a young age, she declared she would have the largest herd to her name and the most swords pledged to her clan.

The second name is going to be kept partially secret, chosen as an adolescent progresses into adulthood. Orchie, Orchit, Ocher (the ch- sound here pronounced from the front of the mouth with a ttch- almost? Meant to be used quickly) are the base that's shared generally, essentially denoting pronoun usage. If the first name is how others are to refer to them, this name is how they refer to themselves, and only shared in full when they want to. I've yet to explore her relationship with gender (busy trying to do a lot of other designs still) so for now she'll just be Hevoshera Orcher.

The third name is the family or clan name, and I only have placeholders right now for them. So, Hevoshera Orcher Yarvinitt would be the full name of her in this case.

I'm trying to also explore their jewelry, hence the tusk caps. As much as possible, though, I want to avoid orientalizing them, which... I can't tell if I'm bad at this right now. But she looks crisp!

Sketches, settled on an elf foot design, and drew a Bare Hunter.

These elfmen are plucked of their feathers at a young age and trained in combat among other things, similar to janissary programs. The loss of their feathers makes them more while, improves the ease of wearing heavy armor and weather adaptiveness through clothing, and focus on speed and stamina training in the armor. They are also known as Bare Hunters because their training is meant to make them specifically good at killing Baremen (what we would call humans), their training giving them stamina on par with the best baremen and advanced combat training that focuses on bareman vital points, combat styles. Their advent was effectively secret until the baremen campaign to the north, created after the loss of the southern elfmen fiefdoms and the breach of the ithsmus that for so long prevented war.

They hold political power as well, each of them given the full right to half the acreage they take back from their prey and their leaders knowing how vital a role they play in the war.

Stuff I forgot to post from the year