2013-09-19

Stablehand: The mystery beings and their sensors

I had to make a diagram of the mystery beings' various sensors, because not even I could get them all straight. :P

As you'll notice, many of them can see in either infrared or ultraviolet, and the extra-special Instigator can see both. All of them also have a strange extra sense, which practically nobody in-universe knows the exact purpose or mechanics of (or at least, practically nobody outside the mysterious Borderlands; it's unknown how many people live inside them, if any). This sense is a little weaker in the Instigator than most, nearly absent in the Ostentator, a little better than most in the Conductor, and very strong in the Postulator, which seems to be able to use it in place of sight.

(I said Postulators don't usually echolocate before, but now that I think about it, I can actually see them using sound/radio waves in conjunction with this sense a lot, so that is probably no longer canon.)

2013-09-17

Stablehand: Postulators and Ostentators

Postulators are fluffy bat-like beings with great hand-like wings (or wing-like hands, maybe) that like to live in dark places, but have made it their task to assume that figurative light extends everywhere and to strongly argue that no matter what happens, things are not as bad as they appear. Though they have no eyes, the pads of their wing-hands appear to act as sensors that can somehow intuitively "feel" the world around them, allowing them to navigate without even using echolocation in a much wider radius than bats (though they do apparently have that ability too). Nobody really knows how this works.

Ostentators are showy quadrupedal beings that look somewhat like llamas with leijonœrn faces. Each one wears a large, showy fur coat over its back which it is very rarely seen without, even though logically it would not only not need one but could easily overheat wearing it; for some strange reason, these coats do not seem to cause them any problems. Oddly, the markings of these coats seem to vary randomly from individual to individual without any real connection to anything, even though all Ostentators' body markings are more or less identical.

Nobody really knows where Ostentator coats come from, either, since while they are separate from the being itself and young Ostentators seem to start out with full-sized coats that never change in size, nobody has ever seen an Ostentator without a coat first get one. Some have boldly suggested that the coats may simply materialise out of nothing the moment the Ostentator is born, or weirder yet, that the coats are somehow born first and then the being grows out of them like a sporophyte. But, again, nobody even knows what the most probable explanation is.

2013-09-15

Stablehand: Conductors and Instigators

There are a lot more mysterious beings coming up, I can tell you that. For now though, I just have two more.

Conductors are vaguely dragon-like floating beings which almost always carry a baton. Incredibly proud and domineering, they almost always have an idea of what everybody else should be doing, which they will often very emphatically try to "hint" at by moving their hands and batons. When they are being particularly expressive, the stripes and spots on their tails may randomly cycle backward at varying speeds. Insulators often hate them for their pushy, rather egoistic nature.

Instigators are restless, mischievous beings that like to stir everybody up. They are not necessarily bad, but they do get bored easily, and as such have a bit of a reputation for spreading lies, playing pranks, and otherwise being sneaky and causing trouble just because they have nothing better to do. Their tail ornament can act as a beacon and make a number of strange sounds, and their tongues, which are literally both sharp and silvery, are effective at hypnotising others to do their bidding. It's common to see them form small bands with others (Instigators or otherwise) to accomplish some kind of secret personal objective that's completely mysterious to everyone else.

(Cockatiels, of course, have nothing to do with Instigators. That's just something else I drew that happened to be on the page before that, and I didn't want to let the rest of the page go to waste.)

2013-09-04

Stablehand scrap update: 9/04

A wyvern (which I’m tentatively calling Nycopteryx), and the Prince of Eggs.

You need no further explanation.

I have no idea what this thing even is, but I just kind of had it appear in my head when one of my friends said “Looks like John was the blue thing after all”, and then I had to draw it.

It might actually end up being a transformation for somebody in Stablehand or something, though I can’t imagine who just yet.

Two different things were happening on these pages: first, I was trying to draw the main characters/design their outfits a while back (while experimenting with perspective on Kate), and second, just today I was trying to design logos for the characters. JF: birdy. Kris: quartz crystals. Kate: dino wing thing, which didn't quite satisfy me. Lance: flaming blood puddle. Hughes: sprout. Ariana (character I haven’t designed or told you about yet): pouncing cat.

On a subconscious impulse, I also found myself imagining the logos sliding in from the side and the sounds they'd make as they did that, and tried to write those down. I really can't tell whether that was just a trope I picked up from TV and video games or yet another sign I may be synaesthetic.

Okay, there was another thing going on too: the reason Lance was drawn in ballpoint was that on the day I drew that, I was procrastinating on finishing my homework to submit online when suddenly there was a fire drill and because I didn't think to bring my homework or much of anything out with me, I was forced to sit and watch the deadline approach while unable to accomplish anything whatsoever. Nervously, I hunted up a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen and tried to draw Lance in order to calm myself. (In retrospect I think I did surprisingly well for not being able to erase AT ALL, being nervous, and not having any references.)

Oh, and I was also trying to design Grævonian newspaper stuff. So I guess four things were going on with these pages? That's... a lot of things.

And lastly, we have these. As I said, I forget what exactly gave me the impulse to draw them, but once I got it, I absolutely couldn't stop myself because the idea was just too funny.

As you can see, my ideas of Stablehand PSAs have somewhat evolved since the first time I drew an idea for one; the first time, I was just thinking about the general biology of hexarts, and not at all about what the government thought about them.

I plan to make more polished colour versions of these at a later date, though I don't know exactly when.

2013-09-03

Stablehand: Yanha the Insulator, from start to finish

Over the past three days, I've been working on a sculpture of an Insulator who I call Yanha. Unlike other Insulators, which I'm thinking like the other similar "mystery beings" will be a dark-bluish-greenish colour (although there is some amount of variation between individuals), Yanha is a bright white, hence its name.

The sculpture is not quite done yet, but I will edit in the final picture(s) here when it is.

Insulator concept art.

Yanha looking, as I remarked to my friends, "like a backwards cobra".

Yanha in-progress.

Yanha about to go into the oven.

I had no idea how long to bake this thing since the thickness guidelines were pretty much useless on something with this much variance. So I just put it in for an hour and hoped for the best.

About two hours and three frantic, impatient checks later, it was baked.