I don't know if you noticed, but I did some work on the labels widget last night to make it more like the archive widget.

Now it's still fully as detailed, but vastly tidier.

Yanha the Insulator, from cube to finish

A while after I made clay-Yanha I decided to make another Insulator, but this time in Blender. This one was more meant to be a generic Insulator, though as of right now I don't see Yanha having many structural differences from the norm, so I was kind of meaning to just use it for Yanha too with a different texture.

Going to try to build and animate a 3D Insulator in Blender. I've never used armatures before, so this might not be easy.

Also I have no idea how I'm going to get the legs to flop like a tiger but the middle to be fluid yet dense like a snake.

Well, the Insulator is starting to look Insulator-like now. (Thanks to SH whenever I use that construction I can't stop finding it funny)

It's funny, I had the perfect colours for the Observer but I don't really have good colours for any other mystery beings.

Well, I'm making progress. The shield is done and the middle part of the body is mostly done, but the rest needs some work.

Currently I'm working on the front legs.

Ok, I think I'm leaving this thing's feet alone for now.

I'm probably going to scale the front legs up a bit and use that scale for the rear legs; the proportions are looking a bit weird.

Tomorrow, though! Need to finish my program for Java class.

A slight close-up of the shield, with the feet done-ish.
Ears. Think I may need to fix their angle but I like the shape.

Feet.

Now they actually almost look the way I want them to. Still look kind of weird from some angles though, may end up messing with them some more.

Aaaaaah why is it reminding me of a terrier all of a sudden

A nice turntable of the Insulator before I try to fit it with an armature and animate it. The 3D cursor photobombed it a little, but... I'm okay with that.

Plus, a tentative attempt at a colouration for this beast. The palette isn't completely final, but the pattern is probably roughly so and I also imagine individuals' colour palettes varying a little within the general theme of "Verity-green-and-brown".

(Also, you might note the tail isn't done; I plan to actually put a transparency map on it so it fades and create the water effect over it with particles so it actually moves.)

Duuuuuude

Weight paint is like... an aurora

what in heaven's name have I done

Whoa, hemi lights look a LOT better than the other lights I was trying to use.

It's a shame you can't see the spots as well now that everything is shaded properly. I'm going to try to make an actual texture today* so you can actually see this thing's colours and patterns and I will finally have a "de facto reference" with correct colours, proportions, and everything, for the Insulator.

I'm also going to make a Yanha skin using the same texture map so you have a reference for Yanha specifically. (English: After I paint it with olive and viridian, I'm also gonna create a blue and white version.)

* An actual texture, like, made in GIMP, instead of Blender vertex paint, which is what you see here. it's pretty good for very quickly and sloppily colouring things, but it's really... low-resolution, I think is a good way of putting it, so you can't really paint designs that are the least bit detailed with it.

After a lot of confusion and fiddling, I ended up with this.

This is what a UV map looks like, folks.

That's all I have for now, but I'll edit the rest of the process in when I finish the texture. If and when I animate something with this model (which I plan to!) that will get another post.

3D Eventuator, from start to (for now) finish

Concept art of the Eventuator.

Maybe a little less than half done?

There we go!

Booleans were giving me trouble with weird errors and weird results on the front legs, but after I deleted and recreated all the face fills on that part I could boolean just fine.

Booleans sure are weird.

Rectangular prism to array, array to boolean, boolean-difference’d mesh along curve. And all of them are modifiers, so they live update if I tweak them.

Blender rocks.

Apparently, it’s really hard for me to find a square-ring shape I like, but I think I like this one.

Sort-of final render of the Eventuator!

Final until at some point in the future I try to texture/animate it and it has to be tweaked, anyway.

Stablehand: Adumbrator (updated), Equivocator, Eventuator, Vociferator, Blazondeer

I'm currently kind of revising the canon as far as attributes, particularly Undirected attributes, go, so at the same time, I'm trying to work on revising the assortment of mystery beings to better fit that. There aren't going to be any new attributes added, at least not at this time; I'm just better clarifying "ways" each attribute can "be", if that makes any sense.

What prompted me to do this is that I got an idea for a new type of Undirected mystery being that's especially hostile, shadowy, and mysterious. At first I just got the image of a Portent one like that, but then I decided I'd make similar ones for the other Undirected attributes. After that, I realised that there were other ways I imagined Undirected attributes being expressed in than just the "standard" one and that, so I made a couple more categories. I'm unsure if I'm going to do the same with Directed attributes, or whether Undirected attributes will just be the more complex ones and that's the way it will be.

Trust me, it will make more sense later.

I already described the Adumbrator, but this is the revamp. Its head is mostly a hollow, flat curve, and houses churning dark clouds instead of a brain. These clouds seem to follow the general mood of things, though they also sometimes churn more visibly when the Adumbrator is contemplating something.

Equivocators are six-limbed, vaguely horse- or centaur-like beings that always wear two masks, usually connected by a cloak. They seem to have the ability to reverse their bodies by putting their "arms" on the ground and picking up the set of "arms" at the other side, enabling them to quickly change directions.

Few people have seen either of their masks come off, but it's rumoured that both ends of the Equivocator are just tail ends beneath the masks. If this is true, nobody has any idea where the head is.

Eventuators are quiet, aloof beings that mostly just wander around and observe their surroundings, much like Observers. However, at times they will just... unexpectedly do things. Usually, these things are things that seemingly would have happened anyway, though once the Eventuator has already done them, it can be hard to tell.

Nobody is really sure why Eventuators go around doing things that would inevitably happen anyway, but this seems to be their trademark. It's also thought that they may live forever, though nobody knows if that's actually true.

Vociferators are extremely noisy mantis- or wasp-like beings that seem to be discontented almost all the time. They tend to fly around mostly randomly but occasionally they seem to pick a certain area and just continually fly all around it being exceptionally noisy, threatening, and intrusive. They're somewhat arbitrary about the areas they pick to do this in, but if anybody taunts them or aggressively tries to fight them off, that tends to increase the probability of them choosing that area by a lot.

Wild stories tell of people getting killed by their stings, shredded by their foreleg teeth, violently devoured in their mandibles, etc., but nobody knows if these stories are actually true, because almost everyone just avoids them when they appear and no bodies have been preserved showing Vociferator damage that anybody knows of. Nobody is even sure if the widely-held assumption Vociferators actually want to kill and destroy when they fly around places angrily is true or not.

Blazondeer are regal caribou-like beings that almost always carry at least one flag. Usually they have a number of different flags hanging from their body and antlers, whose shapes and heraldic patterns vary from individual to individual but are usually symmetrical from one side/horn to the other.

Blazondeer, somewhat like Veriasauruses, can often be seen wandering around silently and majestically while displaying their insignia as if trying to advocate for some kind of cause, but to empty air. It's not really known why they do this. (Some have speculated this is their courtship display, but there's really no evidence for that.) At other times, multiple Blazondeer sporting the same or very similar insignia have been seen in the same area, suggesting that some people may use them in teams like reindeer. Nobody who does this has ever been discovered, though, and like with other mystery beings, very few people who've just found them have been able to tame them. Unlike with most other mystery beings, though, it seems like every so often somebody who managed to tame a randomly-found Blazondeer does show up. However, it's very rare for one of these people to even have two, much less a full team of them.

Incidentally, since almost all mystery beings can float and swim in the air, Blazondeer can do that too, meaning that not only does the Stablehand universe have a "Christmas flying reindeer" mythology but a lot of young people just assume they came from "Santa". (I'm thinking they probably wouldn't call it Christmas or Santa, of course, but still.)

Stablehand scrap update: 11/11~12/29

It's that time again. Time for another Stablehand scrap update! I was putting out stuff kind of fast in the past couple of months, such that I didn't really have time to update this blog, but now's the time to fix that.

Meet my new hat.

It's felt, repels water, and came with a silly booklet filled with random stuff about hats. (Like, seriously, there was a teeny bit of maybe useful care information, but then the rest of it was all snippets of historical trivia and etymologies of various expressions involving "hat". ...Um, what?)

Anyway I finally have a hat that looks like my personaish character's hat, which I can use as a reference, and also just to look awesome.

So that's good.

WIP of my new Destiny Attribute poster!

It's looking a bit crowded right now...

Finally I tried to make some colour palettes for the Destiny attributes! [sic]

They're pretty tentative, especially Esteem (I wanted two of the colours to be "hexart colours" but I need to figure out what those would be first XD) and even when this chart is done these exact hex colours probably won't be the "de facto" colour used for the attributes all the time because I like to change things up sometimes.

The swan thing I coloured with each of the palettes was just a really ad hoc thing I drew specifically for that purpose; I don't plan to actually use it in Stablehand but if you really like it for some weird reason it's under the same licence.

In this one I drew Lance, Kate, Kris, and Jinfèng in a more Total Drama-like fashion after having a weird dream that "maybe I should draw Lance as Mal because they're both named Lance!" (yep, I literally forgot Mike was named Mike and thought he was named Lance XD).

This is fan art technically, but... I think it's safe to say it's under the same licence as the rest of Stablehand since there aren't actually any Total Drama characters in it. Just, I guess, use at your own risk? I dunno. (Edit: I'm going with that.)

(Man, non-libre media are such a headache...)

A very rough start on the Observer.

("Pet" form; I'm going to try to make "boss" form a shape key if I can)

Stablehand: Ahalatl, Eternituga, Veriasaurus, Hlardraho, Adumbrator, Shoǔshi

As you might or might not already know, I'm currently on a quest to get all 27 (which means 29 since I already made two extras) mystery beings designed. It's an arduous quest, yes, but I'm not going to stop until it's done.

Also, if you haven't figured it out by now (and I'd be really surprised if you hadn't) each of the mystery beings is slightly themed around a particular attribute(s). I'm in the process of making a rough table of all 29 of them, which consists of three columns: Directed mystery beings, Undirected mystery beings, and neutral mystery beings (can be either Directed or Undirected).

Anyway, here are the new ones!

Ahalah (singular Ahalatl) are peculiar leaping beings that look something like a kangaroo, a frog, and a salamander all mixed together. They seem to be capable of soaring to great heights with each leap, and also of moving incredibly fast at times. They can be both extremely adventurous and extremely timid.

Eternitugas are tortoise-like beings that seem to be made out of some kind of crystalline substance that's partially translucent and partially opaque depending on the angle. They seem to have a strange ability to make infinite clones of themselves going upward or downward, creating a massive tower of eternitugas that can then possibly reach very high or very low places. The top (or bottom) of the stack will then just step off and leave the rest to fade away one by one, leaving only a single Eternituga at its destination.

Eternitugas never really seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere at all, though.

Veriasauruses are beings that strongly resemble theropod dinosaurs; they are usually white or a similarly light colour with a darker colour as a border. They always seem to be wandering around in search of something, though nobody knows what. Sometimes they will just pause in one area, standing there like some kind of strange numen, before eventually moving on.

Hlardraho are hexart-like beings with very sharp needle-like projections on their bodies and often bright, dazzling colourations. Unlike hexarts, though, they seem to be capable of spewing fire out their mouths, and this fire seems to have a strange piercing quality to it that allows it to obliterate practically everything in a narrow radius of its path for many metres, leaving only an incredibly long blackened tunnel in its place.

These beings are usually fairly calm and docile, but can sometimes be extremely violent and destructive thanks to this piercing fire ability. Because of this, a lot of people are afraid of them in places where they have appeared.

Adumbrators are unusual floating beings with a four-part "shield" surrounding them and a somewhat normal-looking upper body that gradually fades into a constantly-reforming cloud-like lower body with spikes randomly coming in and out of it. The "shield" revolves around very slowly and stays very close to the body most of the time, but sometimes it will start whirling very rapidly and move further away, the cloud-like part of the body churning much more violently and tending to become much spikier. This most often happens when the Adumbrator is stressed, angry, or feeling some kind of danger approaching.

Shoǔshi are large white quadrupeds that look vaguely like fulvopards, and also a lot like gigantic hands. They have the ability to use all four of their legs to grasp things, and their grip is said to be incredibly strong. From time to time, they seem to like to grab random things and run off with them, using their powerful tails to somehow just sort of swim through the air, though it's not really known what they do with said things. It's thought that at least a few times, they've simply set them down other random places in a "Robin Hood" fashion, though.

When they're not travelling around empty-handed looking for things to steal (which is most of the time), they're almost always seen carrying or batting around large pearl- or gem-like orbs, which they seem to be highly possessive of when they have them. It's unclear how many orbs an individual typically has, as no one is definitely sure of having seen the same Shoǔshi more than once, and nobody has ever found a cache of spare orbs anywhere. Actually, nobody even has any idea where the orbs come from, or what kind of function they serve, if any. One idea is that they may be a kind of status symbol.

Stablehand: song drawings

My friends and I occasionally do this thing where we each pick a song and somebody else draws music to it. Anyway, I drew Sleipnir and Hughes from Stablehand! As I said, Hughes thinks he’s great friends with Sleipnir but Sleipnir doesn’t really care about him most of the time (it depends on the day; sometimes he’s on okay terms with him but most of the time he just finds him annoying), so it wouldn’t be unlike Sleipnir to just decide to leave him behind one day without saying anything.

Yeah. This is actually my first decent drawing of Sleipnir OR Hughes, so I thought it was worth posting here.

And this is... Lance. This one isn't really as good but at least it gives you an idea of what I want his Stablehand appearance to look like.

11-22 Edit: looks like I have one more to add!

This is completely stupid, but every time the song [The Riddle, Gigi D'Agostino] said "Sly looks in corridors" I couldn’t help but think of Sleipnir ("Sly") trying to look through corridors carefully without being detected but Hughes just out singing this crazy song out in the open like, whatever.

Stablehand: Aethereal trio revamp

I kind of got around to revamping these guys, at least partially. I decided that all three of them should have projection-wings to make things consistent, but that all three of the wings should have different styles in order to keep them different from each other.

I still have a little work to do on SH's wings; I think for his overall style I will be leaning a more toward the top picture and kind of like the way I drew the wings there, but I feel like the wings in the bottom picture "fit" better. So maybe they'll end up being a combination of the two or something.

Aiyalam's wings were a pretty random, ad-hoc choice, but I think I'm sticking with that decision.

Stablehand: Synergiser & Seuwayote + a little more about mystery beings

At top is the Seuwayote, and at bottom is the Synergiser! Or a rather rough version of it, anyway. The Seuwayote is probably not totally final either. But at least I can tell you about it now.

The Seuwayote (Say-ooh-wa-yo-tay) is like a coyote of shadow. Though individuals' colours can vary, every Seuwayote's body is split into two distinct colours which are usually fairly unsaturated. Usually, this split is symmetrical, but some Seuwayotes' colours seem to be able to shift such that more of their body is the light colour or more of their body is the dark colour, or even such that they are only the light colour or the dark colour. It's not really known how or why this happens, or even whether Seuwayotes do it at will, but people suspect they can. Their bodies are extremely mutable and seem to be able to change as quickly and freely as a shadow, and also seem to camouflage well in shadows, allowing them to accomplish otherwise near-impossible feats like weaving around closed doors. They're often curious, but almost never attack anyone, or even make a single sound. When they do, though, their call is said to be extremely eerie and otherworldly.

Also, every Seuwayote has a hat, and it's literally inseparable from that hat. If the hat gets blown away in the wind, the Seuwayote will disappear and reappear from inside it, wherever it ends up. Destroying the hat may or may not destroy the Seuwayote itself, since sometimes they have never reappeared after the hat was destroyed, but others, they've just reappeared from the shadows and sprouted new hats out of their heads.

I already told you about the Synergiser, and I've edited this picture into that post for a little more chronological sanity too.

Oh, and here are better drawings of the "main" eight mystery beings' feet. My goal was to make them all "different", so none of them would look quite the same.

This posed slight problems for creating a number system for them, until I realised that if each one is different each digit could represent a different mystery being and they could just use base eight. (If you haven't guessed what the theme is among all of them now that I've accidentally given you a huge hint here, I'll be pretty surprised.)

By the way, "heterogeneous" in the diagram means that their surface has various pigments and textures like "normal" animals, like patterned fur or scales, and "homogeneous" means their surface mostly just has a single texture that doesn't really look much like any you'd find on a "normal" animal, though the colour may vary a little.

Stablehand scrap update: 9/04~11/11

Quick Wyvera thing and a dream I had.

I may or may not use the “griffin” in Stablehand, I dunno.

A couple of... um... well, let's just say that when I fail to design a mystery being right the first time, this is what happens.

I drew the Insulator (which was supposed to be Yanha) before making the sculpture, so the proportions are a bit off still, but they're overall closer to what I wanted than in than the initial drawing.

A very quick attempt to draw the Observer’s colour palette between classes!

Basically, the entire thing is mostly a deep greenish blue. The head horns, spikes, and ears have subtle light blue on the end and both the ears and the rest of the forehead section are a little lighter than the rest of the body. The patagium is close to the light blue colour but a little darker and greener, and the “boss” (upright) form has a V-shaped marking across its chest that is a sign of dominance and absent in the quadrupedal form.

The creature’s four “eyes”, which are not supposed to look super eye-like but are kind of shiny and gem-like, glow brightly, and they’d glow even more brightly when the creature is experiencing strong emotion of any kind. The “eyes” could probably turn different colours, but they don’t really have a standardised code of using any paticular colours to communicate.

  1. Even though the Stablehand universe has dragons, winged equids, griffins, and other similar animals, there are no winged cats. However, after one person set up a hoax to try to "prove" the existence of this animal (which the hoax artist called a cœlailurus), they've nonetheless become embedded in Grævonian and world culture.

    A number of people treat the cœlailurus as a cryptid and keep insisting it exists somewhere, but most just mockingly use as an example of something really improbable, kind of like people in this world talk about flying pigs. Hence, when they hear a really weird idea, people tend to say things like "well isn't that a fine cœlailurus you have?" and "that's totally pardwings".

    I'm not sure how you'd pronounced the letter "œ" when spelling things out, but for now I'm going with "way". Especially because that could lead to some pretty funny chatspeak/meme-type stuff. I mean:

    "No œ!"
    "Yes œ!"

    etc.

  2. I had a suspicion the "get out of here" thing had been done like a million times, but I still couldn't get over it for some reason and had to draw it.

    (Of course, since it was about 23:00 then, I was finding almost everything funnier than it should have been...)

    Somehow as I was doing that, I about two-thirds accomplished the revamp of Stolen Heart I'd wanted to do.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)