Updates and a New Medium

This last week has certainly been something for me. A LOT has happened, and a lot more continues to go on behind the scene, pretty much all of which I’m incredibly excited about! As I’m sure some people have noticed, I finally took the dive into twitch after letting my anxiety stop me for so many, many years. I’m still not fully comfortable with it, but I am slowly getting less and less anxious with each stream I do. That, and running Link to the Past Randomizers has been a lot more fun than I expected! On top of that, I also recently took the dive into digital art. Digital Art was something I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do, but always thought I sucked too much to even pretend that I could do anything even halfway decent. Well, after this last week, I’ve realized that I, once again, vastly underestimated my capabilities. While I acknowledge that I’m still an amateur, I am incredibly happy with what I’ve created, and, because of it, another one of my characters finally has a face. Everyone, meet…

Vargoth

Standing as the supreme general of the Sapphire Legions, Vargoth is one of the most ruthless and cunning automatons in the entirety of Sapphiria’s Empire. He is brutally efficient and has a strict take no prisoners policy, leading to many regarding him as cold and merciless. Despite his dominating and overwhelming personality, Vargoth is more loyal to Sapphiria than arguably any being in existence. He is willing to do whatever it takes to see her vision realized and serve her in whatever way he can, and even if it means his demise, he would gladly lay down his life in her service. Over the long years, he has gained a reputation as a merciless overlord and a sort of boogeyman feared within all ranks of the United Earth military, and there is now superstition that whenever he appears on a battlefield in person, the battle is as good as lost. There is ample evidence that this isn’t superstition…

Digital Art

And there you have it! Over the past two weeks, I’ve managed to find the time to sort of learn Krita and finally bring Vargoth to life! Vargoth has been an idea in my head for a long, LONG time. He’s one of the few characters that I’ve felt confident in being able to draw, pretty much entirely because he doesn’t really have a face. There were parts of him that I could see clearly, such as his shoulders and upper torso, and then parts of him that weren’t so clear. It took me more time to sketch him out than it did to paint him, but, overall, I’m quite pleased with this piece! I’ve never really done digital painting before, and I didn’t follow too many guides on this. I let the piece guide itself as best I could, and, in the end, it turned out ok! That being said, there is clearly room for improvement, particularly with details, highlights, and texturing, but those are all things that I can learn as I find time over the coming months!

In terms of what went well with this piece, I was reasonably happy with my line work and I think I did ok with some of my highlights and getting his eyes to glow. What I really liked in this though was the fire! When I started this piece, I knew I wanted him standing amidst the burning remnants of his enemies, but I’ve never really drawn fire before. Turns out, it was WAY easier than I was expecting. With a mixture of splotches and smudging, I was able to create a pretty nice fire and smoke effect! With more time, I’m sure I’ll figure out how to make it look even better, and I already have an idea of what my next piece will be. Perhaps something more… landscape oriented!

3D Stuff

Alright, onto weekly updates! With Vargoth in the rearview mirror, I’m pushing forward on the 3d models for the next set of ships. Work has been started on the Trident and it’s coming along nicely. It’s absolutely the hardest ship for me to wrap my head around for reasons that I’m SURE will become clear when I finally post it, but the other two are much simpler. Once it’s out of the way, getting the others done will be a piece of cake, and then they’ll find homes on this site on the ‘machines’ page at last, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

Twitch Stuff

As I already covered, twitch is slowly becoming a habit for me that I want to solidify over the coming months. I won’t be focusing on it as much as some people do, but I am trying to nail down Wednesday and Friday as my stream nights with Sunday and Monday being potential bonus nights. For the foreseeable future, it’s going to be all Link to the Past rando stuff, but there’s a potential for other things too! My hope is to eventually get to the point where I feel comfortable streaming pretty much any game that I play, and then my schedule will definitely start picking up!

What’s Coming Next

After this week, I’m sure just about anyone can guess what’s in the works. It’s all twitch, 3d art, and digital art, right? Well… yeah. I’m focusing as much as I can on these three things in my free time, and I’m hoping to find even more time soon to begin chunking away at a lot of the projects I want to do. Additionally, I want to art things out for my Twitch stream, but first I need to find a better tool than illustrator just because my fondness for adobe has drastically decreased as time has gone on… All that being said, in rough order, you can expect the 3d ships to popup first, then a digital art landscape piece, and then probably more 3d ships to round out the UEC and Sapphire Eye arsenals. After that… Well, it’s tough to say, but I will at least continue to hint that a much larger short story is locked in the chamber. Perhaps even before the end of the summer we’ll see just what shape that ends up taking!

I don’t have much else for this week. Next week, I want to focus the blog on a deeper dive into my story, especially now that another face has been filled in with Vargoth. Until then, cheers!

The Flying Fennec