[Jadebrain]

Sorry for the lack of new pictures lately. I’ve been busy with work, classes, and the like. Anyway, here’s Brigrada, Queen of the nation of Gondrogar. I don’t have much of a backstory for her, and even if I did, I’m in a hurry, but basically, she’s unmatched in strength and combat skill in all the known world. It was for this picture that I requested help with drawing women who are muscular and yet still identifiably female, and so I wanted to make sure the picture as it is (proportions, contours, etc.) was okay before I shaded it.

[Jadebrain]

Another request for help from the community; this time, I’m trying to design not a character, but a race. I already have the race statted out and flavored – they’re an insectoid race characterized by incredible toughness and good reflexes (and that’s REFLEXES, not quickness or agility in general), with not a lot of intelligence or charm. I’ve been trying to draw pictures of the race for a while now, but every picture I draw just comes out… wrong. I’m trying to draw them to be similar to humanoid beetles, but I just can’t get the proportions or anything like that the way I want it; either the race is too thin and doesn’t send the message of a tough race, or they’re so wide it looks ridiculous. I’m especially having trouble designing the torso, both in respect to the torso itself and to the way the torso interacts with the limbs and such. While I don’t have any pictures to upload (I currently have one picture which I haven’t thrown away, and no access to a scanner to upload it with), I would like to mention that I have decided that the race will have segmented eyes, mandible-pincers, antennae, a beetle horn and a proboscis on its face, and it will have vestigial wings which won’t be powerful enough to fly with, but can be used to mimic speech by buzzing, so that the bug people can actually speak despite having a proboscis-type mouth. Also, its arms will be tipped with lobster-like claws, under which would be weak, under-developed hands for finer manipulation.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Jadebrain]

From a mechanical perspective, I like to play humans. They’re highly flexible, such that any mechanical character concept could be done with a human. In addition, sometimes I like to play already-made characters (or characters based on already-made characters), and most of those are human.

It’s a shame, really, because I think humans are boring. In fact, a lot of “standard” fantasy races are boring – you’ve got tall, arrogant, extremely effeminate humans with pointy ears; short, stout, stubborn humans who like treasure almost as much as they like alcohol; really tiny, adventurous humans sometimes sporting big, hairy feet; you get my point. It’s gotten to the point where I find all but the most exotic of races to be pretty boring.

So I try to spice things up a little bit. One time in a DnD 4e campaign, I played a Dragonborn Infernal Hexblade and flavored his infernal powers as being that he was actually half-Dragonborn, half-Tiefling. Another time, again in a DnD 4e game, I played a human ardent who got his psionic powers from what was basically a friendly, self-sentient alien tumor (with a british accent to boot) that had consumed and replaced his right arm. In yet another DnD 4e campaign, I played a character based on a character from the setting of the game system I myself am making; he was a human mage who happened to be magically cloned from a dead god, and as a result of a botched ritual which was intended to awaken his divine powers and turn him evil, he had a crippled leg. My latest character that I’ve played in someone else’s campaign (this time, it was a 3.5 campaign) was a tauric Goblin/Wolf who, due to being beaten as a slave every time he spoke, was afraid of himself speaking. I think the most “normal” character I’ve played in the past couple of years was Jeff Andonuts (from Earthbound), flavored as having crashed into the campaign world after a malfunction in the Phase Distorter while trying to find and apprehend Porky Minch.

Actually, scratch that. My most “normal” character may have been my recurring character, Aaron Irving, a human sniper-type rogue whose biological father was a vampire who kept trying to recruit Aaron into his service.

As you can probably guess, people have tried to get me to play “normal” characters on plenty an occasion. I’ve actually considered playing a completely boring, one-dimensional human fighter named “Gene Rick” just to get them to shut up.

[Jadebrain]

At this point, I’m still not entirely sure if I understand what you’re trying to say with your descriptions, but I’ll try to critique it anyway…

I’m assuming that magic, in your game’s world, would be rarely used? If it were to be used often enough to allow for “mages” in a traditional sense (as in, people who primarily use magic) to be anything other than rare or nonexistent, one would need a far simpler system, with far greater predictability. I get that you’re trying to create a system in which spells can be designed on-the-fly, and that as an idea is both great and rare, but I don’t think this is the right way to do it. You’ve got players having to make charts for their spell components in which they try to define the properties of their spell by picking and choosing traits from their components – that in itself is far too complex – and then choosing an undesired trait for each desired trait, thus increasing complexity further. The fact that an insufficient roll makes a spell partially succeed by only applying some of the desired effects puts far too much work on the shoulders of everyone involved, both on the part of a player who must plan ahead with each spell in order to minimize the risk while maximizing the reward, and on the GM who must, for each bad roll, consider which of the player’s decisions should be kept and which shouldn’t be kept, and also consider not only the immediate effects of what gets kept and what doesn’t but also the long-term effects and how each would influence not only the campaign’s plot but also how the players themselves would react.

If I were to play this game, I know I wouldn’t ever want to play a mage. Being the mage would mean that you’d probably take far too long above the table to cast the spells, thus making the other players resent you for hogging too much time which should, ideally, be evenly divided among the players; being the mage would also make the other players resent you because, well, when the fighter rolls bad, he simply misses when swinging his sword (I’m assuming), but when the mage rolls bad, the game could easily end with a localized (or maybe not) apocalypse. If the flavor of the world were to reflect this, practicing magic would certainly be done by only the most nihilistic of villains, and any mage who would for whatever reason not fall under that category would conceal his identity as a mage, for knowledge that a mage was nearby would cause everyone to immediately try to A. kill the mage, B. run to safety, or C. commit suicide so at least they could die on their own terms.

Of course, this is all assuming that I’m interpreting what I read correctly. Now, just so that there’s more of a degree of constructiveness to my criticism, I actually had my own idea for instant spell engineering which, unfortunately, would not be implemented in my own system for various reasons, but which might be useable in a different system (not necessarily yours, but you might be able to use or adapt it). It’s actually based on the flavor of how magic works in the setting of my game, which is why it’s quite shameful that I can’t think of a way to properly implement it mechanically. Anyway…

The system I’m proposing for instant spell engineering is that each overall “spell” is actually a combination of multiple smaller spells. Say you wanted to cast a fireball to throw at your enemies. You’d first cast a spell to flood a volume containing air particles with arcane energy (to act as fuel), then you’d cast another spell to increase the rate of collisions between those air particles in order to drastically increase the heat in that volume. The oxygen is already there, so you now have a fire, floating conveniently in the air. Assuming the fire was big or hot enough to satisfy what you wanted to throw at your enemies, you’d then cast yet another spell to move the effects of the previous two spells toward your enemies at a high velocity.

This system would allow you to mix-and-match spells to produce different effects based on the spells you use. Players would, of course, have to learn spells to apply certain effects. It would be a lot simpler, because the effects of each spell are already determined, rather than having to think of each and every effect that would be associated with a component. It would be less risky, as you would roll for each spell, and if you failed on any individual spell, you’d know exactly how your “overall” spell “partially succeeds” by simply not including the smaller spell that you failed to cast, and if you had enough time and energy to do so, you might even try again. Unpredictable effects would only happen on a critical failure. It would still be more complex than what most people are accustomed to, but it would also still be easier than what you were going with. I hate to make it sound like I’m insulting you, or that I’m bragging, but ultimately (and again, assuming I’m understanding what you’re saying correctly) I think a lot of people would prefer the system I proposed to the system you’ve got going as a system of instant magical engineering.

[Jadebrain]

I finally managed to decide on the character’s clothing and finish a drawing of her. How does it look?

[Jadebrain]

@Hammerknight said:

Would this be any closer. She is a Manimal (Man+Animal) from one of my worlds.

Eh, it’s definitely closer, but not exact, given the plantigrade legs and such…

I don’t mean to be rude, or to make it seem like I don’t appreciate your effort (I appreciate any honest effort at helping me), but I’ve kind of decided to search again on the internet for inspiration for the clothing of this character. As of right now, I think I’ve got the lower body clothing done in a way that I like (granted, it’s quite different from the initial design – the only thing I kept was the longer dress on the side and back), and I’ve seen some decent ideas for the upper body clothing. The difference between the search I did more recently and the search I did when I was first trying to come up with ideas was that I searched specifically on furry art sites for inspiration in the more recent search, whereas before I was using a general search engine.

Once again, I really do appreciate the help you’ve given, though now that the character’s design seems to be going in a different direction than first planned (and one which HM3 won’t be able to do very well), I probably won’t be able to give an actual visual update on the picture until it’s done. If you think you’d still be able to help me without a visual aid as to where I’m going, that’s great, but if you can’t, that’s fine too.

[Jadebrain]

@Hammerknight said:

Would something like this work for you. Bare arms for that time would have been “skimpy” and the stocking showing would of put it over the top.

Eh… I appreciate your attempt at helping me, but there’s not really much I would apply from your suggestions. Granted, that’s because of the fact that I had neglected to describe the character adequately… The character is a Poruqe, the same race as the character depicted in this previously-posted drawing. Given her fur, having any sort of fishnet-type clothing would be pointless at best and problematic at worst. In fact, her race is the reason I only did the clothing in HM3; it’s kind of hard to clothe people with digitigrade legs in an application designed mostly for plantigrade characters, and there’s no good furry-type body for females yet. I’m basically using HM3 to brainstorm what I’m going to draw in pencil, in case you’re wondering.

As for the cape, that’s another thing I forgot to mention: The types of weapons she prefers to use are the heavy kind which require large objects carried on the back (like the petroleum gel tank that goes with flamethrowers), so the cape would also get in the way.

While your suggestion of bare arms is a good one, I’m not sure how to implement it correctly. I suppose I could make the sleeves shorter than they were in the picture I posted, but I wouldn’t remove them entirely, as that would make the vest look incomplete (assuming I keep the vest).

[Jadebrain]

I just got your PM… I really should check my inbox more often. Anyway…

I’m not entirely sure what, exactly, you meant with most of the things you said. In your first post, most of the last two paragraphs were hard to understand. You had completely undefined terms such as “Casting Weight,” and you have “Mageroot,” which I’m assuming is a type of spell component, but you need to define certain things about it. For example…

-Will the amount of mageroot used influence the spell in any way (I am assuming yes)?
-You mentioned desired and undesired traits – how do those depend on the ingredients that the mageroot is touched to?
-How much mageroot is usually required for the purposes of most spells?

As for your second paragraph, you need to format it better. I hate to be rude or anything, but with the lack of attention to grammar and no description of the variables involved, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what you typed. What does “i1,i2,i3 . . . ” refer to? It seems to have something to do with the ingredients for casting spells, but what do the numbers mean, and why are there different ‘numbers’ of ingredients at all? “With 3 i, 9 each for 18” sounds like it has something to do with multiplication, but 3 times 9 is 27, not 18, so I can only guess you’re not multiplying 3 by 9. The only thing I got from the rest of your second post was that something was rolled, and even that is vague; what type of die or dice (I’m assuming it was a die or some dice) was/were rolled, what sort of results on the roll give what sort of results in the game, are there separate rolls for whether or not one succeeds vs. how much one succeeds by (i.e., if you hit with an attack vs. how much damage you deal), etc.?

[Jadebrain]

Thanks for the praise! Anyway, I’ve got a little problem with the design of my next character, as described below…

I am currently trying to brainstorm the clothing of an NPC in a new story arc to playtest the game I’m making, and I have little to no idea of how to make the specific design. Basically, the look I’m trying for regarding the clothing is a combination of “skimpy” and “steampunk.” I’ve tried looking online for pictures of clothing which would qualify as both, but what I got was basically too much of one trait and not enough of the other. You know, either “skimpy” or “steampunk,” as opposed to both in equal measure.

So far, this is what I’ve come up with for the clothing, as brainstormed on Heromachine 3.0. One thing I feel must be mentioned, just to give you a better idea of what I have so far: you’ll notice a dark brownish-gray area on the dress; that is not the front of the dress, but rather the interior of the back. Anyway, what I’m basically having trouble with is making it both more revealing and more steampunk-ish, whereas right now it just seems like an inconsistently-revealing dress with some dials and test tubes tacked on.

In case it helps you to get an idea of what I want, the character is basically a rather anime-esque (despite my general lack of enjoyment of anime) depiction of a steampunk tinkerer, who also belongs to a specie that is usually obsessed with beauty (and she is no exception).

[Jadebrain]

Here’s the finished drawing of Gauley, one of the Player Characters in the campaign I’m using to playtest my game. Not much has changed since the outline from four weeks ago… basically, I just added shading and fur patterns and such.

[Jadebrain]

Here’s the second stage of a drawing of the character of one of the players in the group that’s playtesting my game. The character, whose name is Gauley, is a Grendemoth, one of the races in the game I’m making, and it was for this picture that I needed advice on hide armor. As it is the second stage of the drawing, I have not done shading yet, though for this particular picture, I decided to use a zig-zaggish pattern to denote fur for the purposes of Open Critique Day, in addition to editing the picture on my computer to increase contrast. My main concern is whether or not the hide armor looks practical or realistic given its design, but other tips would also be appreciated. Also, if you think the “abs” look weird, it’s because they’re not actually abs… *ahem*

[Jadebrain]

Here’s a finished version of my previous picture, now with a name for the character. You’ll notice I completely redid the sword, in my attempt to add visual majesty to the picture, and I also tried harder to make her face look less like a human’s face with a muzzle tacked on. One thing I’ve had trouble with throughout the making of the picture has been the general area around her right shoulder – I really do need more practice on the female form, especially with how the chest interacts with the shoulders. As for the problems specific to this final rendition, I do believe I’ve gotten sloppy with my ability to shade fur, and my lack of decently-sharpened pencils certainly isn’t helping; for example, you almost can’t tell that her left hand has fingers, even before the scan-induced detail distortion. In addition, the hilt guard looks far too large to be practical; I tried experimenting with using the same general shape repeatedly, which wasn’t such a good idea in retrospect. Any other thoughts?

[Jadebrain]

Here’s some more unfinished concept art. I know that some of the parts of the picture are a bit off, especially her right eye. I will be fixing that in the final drawing. Right now, though, what I think I need help with the most is the clothing and accessories. The race she belongs to is a race which typically obsesses over beauty, majesty, and similar whatnot. As a person who has never really had a clear or consistent definition of “beauty,” depicting this in my art is rather hard. Everything from the clothes she wears to the sword she wields, in my mind, fails to convey her love of beauty and majesty. Any ideas?

[Jadebrain]

@The Atomic Punk said:

A very neat character. The double thumb is something that I have never seen. She have a backstory?

Not much of one. This is basically a drawing of a character I’m using to playtest the game I’ve been working on for a while now; she’s little more than a set of mechanics, and her personality is kind of generic for a mage (enthusiastic learner, basically).

[Author]

Posts