To figure out what sort of body type to give the man (now named Pasha) I tried to figure out what I had already covered. I think a lot more about those things now.
Zinnober has that long, bony/sinewy “ectomorph” thing going on.
SEB is just, young, didn’t define her specifically because I guess I don’t yet know what is realistic for her.
Ink Royal/Mr Squid (NAME PENDING), doesn’t look right here. But I figure his body would still have a lot of female shapes.
Agent is just a guy. Never defined him much either… I did think he was pretty huge earlier in life (while in the navy), but I don’t know how he is specifically now. He’s a big guy though.
Pasha, really average here. I figure he’s maybe 20-25 and still has a bit of growing to do.. does this even make sense? Anyway, at the start he’d probably be a bit skinnier, but growing stronger (and older) as we progress. He gets to work in the field or tend to the animals or something, so he does get exercise.
Ran, figure he’d have a sort of thicker torso but with tapering limbs, if that works. Overall he’s still pretty averagey, strong but without cut abs and that. He does something like yoga though.
Drow/C4, guess he’d be sort of an elf stereotype body, with a light build. And he goes assassinating in women’s underwear… maybe in a matriarchal society things are different, huh??!
That tentacle monster hunting space dude… I don’t even know what he should look like. He’s an ex soldier, so enjoy some bulky stereotyping.
oh also I coloured him quickly
(not only am I remembering body hair, but tanlines!!)
I don’t even have that many male characters, so the options to do “something new” are pretty open. Yey.

From the same session
Pretty sure that’s an outfit idea for Pasha in the middle, but then some research showed me them ancient Greek/Turks didn’t wear poofypants, I am disappoint, OK, I could give him them anyway, but part of me really hates being dishonest to stuff like that.

Did some proportion experiments

Someone said one of them had amazing character (more than anything else I had done!!!) and I was miffed ’cause it’s just random, but I drew on it anyway.

I am always eager to learn more about cartooning
also those are Mazken and Aureal ponies.
Up late at night doodles about not sleeping – so meta.
Frot scene ideas for mage&man. Also heroic proportions, I forgot how to get them right, so I tried.
stuff.

Some thoughts on the mages’ types/classes, after they ascend. Ran’s master abusing him a little, I think it’s partly to make him accept what his real body is now. The sitting scene is him watching over Pasha while he recovers from ascension (if that happens, I am undecided). Pasha would still be male (warrior class) after. Then there’s Pasha and Ran fucking (I mean, that’s what I drew them for, what’s all this silly story stuff and magic for???). I can’t help noticing my gesture/sketch people are way noodlier (skinny and without definition) than their designs say.

The next 3 are drawn on a lazy saturday while visiting my bf’s parents and celebrating his birthday. I can’t believe I drew so much in half a day!
Request: Gun Toting Punk Princess
and also a fishy octopus girl.

Orc and Bosmer ponies. Pasha. A gerudo, why can’t I draw my own characters like this? Hnf. A lady, dunno who she is! Krihan.

some nudes. Second is intended to be Ambrosius but the rest are random.

And the following (lazy) Sunday…
Pasha and Ran in loooove.

On my way home from Copenhagen that day, the trains were messed up ’cause of the flood the week before, so we ended up waiting 45 minutes for the speedy train instead, eating ice cream on the platform, and I doodled some of the people standing around, what fascinated me first was a dude with a sizeable beer gut :3 Those are the only referenced drawings here, though. And then it descended into imagination again, sailors and greekfaces. I really do like greekfaces, that total lack of distinction between nose bridge and forehead especially, but also the pudgy overdefinition of everything.

Tuesday
Was drawing a back… then drew references for the Kyisha model (see last post), and Blaine… rekindling my love for drawing boring sideviews! Tried to get more cartoon in there.

More sideviews, probably wednesday
Thoughts:
1; the mage himself, his usual 40-50 year old appearance. I am calling him Ran, by the way. I think that’ll do.
2; Sofia. Concepts like up, down, or walking, does not make sense in her dimension, so I don’t even know if she’d have feet, but she’s humanshaped ’cause she’s formed from part of Ran’s mind/soul/something.
3; demon futas.. ok, kind of don’t want to keep this as part of the concept. Unless it’s some super-evolve battle form desu, but idunno, Ran is physically stronger in his human form. But it probably reduces his “magic power” to be like that.
4; younger. I don’t really know when exactly Ran ascended to being more than human, 30? 40? He has let himself age since, because he feels older. The amount of studies and meditation he has gone through takes years, at least.
5; alternate ascended form, looks more like a eunuch or such, with no real secondary sex characteristics. Ascended mages can have sexless, male, female or hermaphroditic forms, Ran’s body is a reflection of his own effeminacy even if he does not accept it. It’s a complex matter, one of being 100% true to yourself. The mages seem to believe the soul in androgynous and the body is a superficial matter, yet without denying the differences.

Friday is when I scanned everything, and worked more on that aureal
Honestly I don’t even want her to really be an obese midget, more like.. cartoonily drawn that way. But I need to research cartooniness.

I couldn’t sleep thursday night, and wrote/doodled this down.

Vila is the headmaster or at least hold a high seat at whatever “temple” the mages are from, her lover was one of Ran’s teachers and responsible for his ritual.

Still gotta figure a lot about how to manage her clothing modules (if I do that at all and don’t just cheat), but anyway. A really fun character to model!

Imp.

Tried some differently proportioned silhouettes, and went crazy for outfits. Well, not THAT crazy, poofy pants everywhere!

Strange futa magics
I have this thing for futa demons I think.

Guy design, from the same sketch it went vastly different whether I inked and coloured, or just painted, the paint evolved and the ink stayed fixed.

Guy design II. So I don’t even know if this is what I want for his body. Figured he’d be on the short side, and become longer bodied if he ascended.
STUDY STUDY STUDY – face planes!

Mage’s face, age ca. 20 and ca. 40

It’s fun to think about what goes through his head now and then, and how he lives. The older version has clearly smiled more
progress

I originally planned to abuse this blog for sketchblog, but ironically I’ve lately posted mostly “presentable images” only. June was a great art month, and July has opened nicely.

So I got pretty far on this a week ago, only needing a few highlights … and then I completely forgot about it again, until I saw it in my July folder an hour ago.
Jeesh, I need a better WIP system so I don’t let art die!

Guess it’s time to do a tally of Ambrosius art now

_{click image for a larger version.}

I am becoming rather fond of this style of rendering, and I really should do it more because it is super good practise. I feel I’m getting a better grasp of it too.

The old arts:
The character begins in 2005, and is the arch nemesis of Zinnober.

2006

2007 – I feel my art had a really really weird departure this year, and I’m not sure what to think about it. The strange proportions are evident up through 2008.

2008 – I also had this phase where I analysed and described everything, and previously androgynous/undefined characters, I attempted to pin a sex on. I actually think that happened earlier though. I sort of think some of these attempts at explaining everything would’ve been better off not having happened?!

2009 – this is where proportions and anatomy finally start making sense! I also had fun drawing the character as female, it can be anything. The low poly 3D looks goofy, but it became the foundations of my low poly base mesh that I have used and altered a lot since.

2010

And fanart for good measure;
– thanks
All you need to be a Vermillon Avenger is be a dick, have a mullet, wear orange and carry guns. Huzzah, a futuristic rocket powered vigilante, as Tehmeh would say.
I was so busy talking about art that I forgot the other news! Woo, got admitted to the animation workshop’s Drawing Academy semester course!

Now I just gotta cough up €5,000/$7,000 (and move to Viborg). I’m working out some commission prices and specifications, since if I can earn some of that money via art it would be sweet. I used to be wary of touching commissions, but with my consistency having improved so much I feel I can provide that service

Text suggested by a horrible person

Here are some progress shots

Ehiya was originally drawn in spring 2008, and I happily plastered em with primary colours – the colours I soon came to hate. But as if that wasn’t enough, the art for Avatar was starting to surface, and later with the movie, well… I didn’t want a turqoise patterned tribal tailed blue narrow elf with black dreads and lots of jewelry. I just feel that spot is taken.

Ehiya is the spouse of another elf, Minhasil (ambassador/spokesperson for the river cleft palace), and is a shaman – which in the Elf context means someone who studies nature, elf “magics” and lore, and functions as a healer. Elves have learned to control the core system, and with enough skill, someone can deliberately affect the core system of another elf to aid them in recovering injury or disease, or rebalance their cores (beyond what they automatically do). It can also be used for bad, of course. Escheran elves have specialized in using their core for powerful bioelectric effects, both to heal, give shock damage or to augment physical abilities. The high surges damage their skin, forming a special toughened skin, usually colourful, in the surge lines. The effects are extremely precise, utilizing the body’s nerves. Other elves use these effects to communicate with electronic equipment, but the voltages are much lower and skin damage doesn’t happen. In a sense, elves have a wireless effect to their nervous system, rather short range, but they can detect electricity near them, and elves will ‘resonate’ with each other like a sixth sense – this is part of their body language, and it communicates approximately on the level of body language.

These two contain nudity.

Interesting to note, the working titles were Siann for Ehiya, where Minhasil was Khan, that must’ve been a title rather than a name. Then I decided elves don’t like royalty.

My androgynes at the time had pretty mannish proportions, wholly due to being drawn that way. I’ve preserved some of that in Ehiya, because ey’s a cerebral person, not a fertile voluptuous mama.

This article is a work in progress.

History/speculative
Version one: In the gardens on Eo, the whimsical child goddess¹ created some creatures to be equal with one another and to have endless potential, and suggested they spread across the world. But these elves were like dolls, small, weak and childlike, they did not even have a sex. Puzzled, they looked to their creator but she had moved on to other things, and asked the other gods to take care of it. The two remaining gods, the Hunter and the Destroyer, together then gave the elves the means to grow; they were all given the same sex and were equal, they were all given the core to give them power over their own destiny.

Version two: The fourth planet of the Escher system has two moons, the smaller of which is called Eo. Approximately 50,000 years ago, a sentient people inhabited this satellite (which may or may not be natural). They were a diverse people and likely not from the same species, appearing to be humanoid with faces of different animals, but without fur. Compared to humans, these people were emotionally stunted, very much like reptiles, and as such a true society did not really form, they were unable to truly cooperate the way a social mammal can. They were more or less psychopaths who got uneasily along by having pecking orders. They were intelligent and advanced, and had both slaves and servants created for themselves in the form of robots, which they took their worst aggressions out on. One of their major advances were in bio-engineering and they experimented in creating new creatures. Believing robots could not truly feel being in the bottom of the pecking order, the people decided to create a slave of flesh and blood – perhaps this was just cheaper or better, if we don’t know how detailed their robots were. Their new slaves were made in the image of the synthetic servants, a particularly small and subservient type created for simple house work, doll-like in appearance and physically no threat to their masters. They had made these creatures from animal samples from the moon Iastre, a forested, cold place inhabited mostly by hermaphroditic mammals at about the evolutionary state we see in Earth mammals now (in fact, at least two of the species there was close to evolving to something sentient – a solitary bear like animal and one best described as a mountain goat or deer), and left a multitude of animal genes so that the product could be customized (fur, feathery hair, light scaling, a few different skin pigments). They were also packed with extra material so they could synthesize any protein and such they needed from eating even poor nutrition. The unit was equipped with a central control unit (the core and its organs) which contained the main gene banks where regular cells only had their required genes. The core could be controlled from an external device via locally applying electromagnetic signals, and by being in control of the glands surrounding the core, the creature was kept subservient. If genes needed to be changed, their immune system was capable of distributing new genetic material to the target cells.
(…)

Physiology
long topic goes here

On average, elves are larger and heavier than humans, ranging between 170 to 220 cm in height. They have distinctly narrow waists and wide hips, as well as strong shoulders – the hourglass form is seen as a beauty ideal to elves; a strong hunter with child bearing hips. Even a muscular elf does not lose the waistline, possibly because even more muscle builds on the legs and shoulders. Like humans, elves are fast and enduring runners with well developed legs. Despite their technological level, they do not keep large livestock for meat, and happily hunt for it on foot (out of a strange anti-convenience ethic for both hunter and prey).

Skin comes with three basic pigments, a white opaque pigment, a brown one and a purplish-blue-gray dark one. Elves can have a variety of skin colours that can range from human-like browns, to pure white and almost black and purplish tones, by mixing these three colours. Their flesh tone will show through the skin where it is thinner, but as their flesh is more brownish and dark than that of humans, this does not lend the pinkish warm tone to the skin – elves with humanlike skin colour look a bit “off” in hue to a human. Skin colour is not genetic but a colour the elf seems to choose for itself, consciously or not, and it can gradually change later. At the time of writing, Iastren elves have typically white or pink/sand skins, Escheran commonly show the whole range, elves living with humans typically have humanlike skin colours (but they may deliberately not have), space faring elves tend to be more grey. If subterranean elves exist, they are typically dark with bioluminescent abilities. When the skin is damaged from repeated electric surges from the Escheran shamanism, a special type of skin will form that is more resistant to the energies. This is slightly tougher and less elastic, and has a different colour and specular than the original skin. Hair growing from these scars will be discoloured too, and the marks do not heal on their own once set (but can be made to heal). Colours vary a lot, but is always the same for that elf (with some hue variation over time).

The hair is thick and flat like a band, made from a chemically inert polymer. Hair can be stiff and coarse (sticks up), smooth and flat, or curly (though not tight afro-like curls). There can be a degree of “undercoat” in the hair, where it’s thicker near the skull, or where the hair on the sides of the head is significantly shorter than on the top. The hair growth continues down the back of the neck to between the scapulae. Most elves groom, cut and style their hair. Elves have thicker body hair (if they live in cold climates) on their lower legs and forarms. Hair can be virtually any colour.

Some elves have tails. This rare co-dominant trait is thought to bring good luck and enhanced abilities at “shamanism” (this is likely true, as the tail expands the neural net). The tail is hairless, typically up to 40 cm long, a bit thicker than a wrist at its base and tapering towards the tip. It is articulated, though not particularly flexible or strong. The tail is not part of the spine, but an extension growing from the sacrum. It has been observed that elves move their tail as part of their body language, so to speak.

Metabolism is variable, depending on…
ability to hibernate

Life expectancy
An elf can practically live forever, they do not normally age after reaching adulthood. They can still be killed or destroyed from severe physical damage to the head or torso. A number of things can happen as the elf ages, as they will typically gain more control of their core and may elect to begin expressing some of the “odd” genes from the animals it was made from. When elves are near each other, their cores help synchronize each other and keep the system running, however a lone elf can destabilize after some time, leading to a gradual immune system failure and the body failing to maintain itself, similar to ageing. Not all elves depend on this, possibly depending on their level of core awareness, but this is possibly what makes elves so socially dependant and responsible towards their community.

Sociology
Elves live in clans (Escher IV) or family groups (Iastre) at peace with each other. There is no elf government, and elves are generally anarchists or meritocrats, often suspicious of leadership when it doesn’t immediately make sense. They still hold an old fear or being enslaved. Decisions are made in plenum, a spokesperson or responsible may be elected to oversee the action fulfilled.
It is unknown how the elves’ economy worked prior to meeting humans.

Mentality and behaviour
Possibly because of their long lives, elves can exhibit enormous patience towards a project – as long as it’s progressing – but they are just as quick to react if things are not going their way. As such, they have a low tolerance for things that waste time. They can be seen as relatively prideful or vain, though it varies with the individual elf. Young elves are often much less patient than the older ones. Elves are naturally curious and sometimes not too careful. They are somewhat likely to sit on tables or get right up in someone’s face when talking – this isn’t rude but simply a cultural difference to humans. Elves are not as emotionally convoluted as humans, making them better at being solution-oriented but also making them seem sometimes less emotionally invested, indeed, they are slightly more rational and not in the throes of their feelings.

Sexuality, mating etc.
Elves commonly have dedicated and monogamous relationships lasting for at least a few decades. There isn’t a “male” and “female” in the relationship. They have sex for similar reasons as do humans; recreation, fun, bonding, reproduction. Elves have a lot of non-penetrative sex and mutual masturbation, and are not seen engaging in fetishes at all (bondage/oral/anal/bdsm/lingerie etc). Most elves raised outside of human cultures are wary of mating with humans, but elves living alongside humans typically will, and will also exhibit more humanlike sexual behaviour.

Culture
Still somewhat undefined at this point, however the Escheran elves appear to have a higher culture than the more isolated Iastren elves which live in smaller groups and are less likely to cooperate.

Design principles & Art
concentric circle design etc
Mosaic?
clothing: plant and animal fibres.

Music: Elves have a relatively poor music tradition when comparing to humans. Their repertoire mostly consists of singing and playing simple instruments. Many elves are fond of human music culture for its richness and variety.

Spirituality
Elves are pretty atheistic. They sometimes refer to something humans have interpreted as spirits or ancestors, but these are in fact very old elves that still live to this day. Some of them have changed much in appearance, and most of these odd ones live alone out in nature and are powerful core users. Other old elves live among their people, and may not look so odd (indeed indistinguishable from a 50 year old elf).
There is no real explanation for the gods of their creation myths, it is as if they are things that live inside each elf or in their collective consciousness (see Carl Jung). The three gods represent principles in elf life; being a child or a whimsical artist (first godess), being a mother, lover or hunter (the preserver/Hunter), and the abilities related to the core (the destroyer) . It would indeed appear some elves have mixed feelings about their core, and may state it removes them from nature.
Elves do not pray and do not believe the world was created in any sort of magical way. They do however decorate their walls with their heroes of old, the goddesses and ancients.

Technology
Elves have a high technology level and are capable of interstellar travel or more. However, visiting an elven settlement, technology will not be very visible. I still have to figure out how that works :3 They do not have much of an industry.

Pets and other animals
Escher IV: a reptilian-like dog is kept as a hunting dog. There is both a smaller, aggressive breed and a much larger one kept for riding. The large creature, called a kumo, is much more mild and some believe it is dumber, however it has proven a smart and loyal animal. Much like dogs, groups of them live with the elves as if it was their own family. The kumo are often found sleeping together under the midday sun near elf homes. Livestock is not really kept, as elves seem to believe it makes the creatures docile, but it is suspected they simply enjoy the challenge of chasing it up when needed, or enjoy to not have to keep the animal fed.
Iastre: unknown.

_{1: The female sex on the gods may be attributed to a translation decision, as the Elven word for gods contain the Elven word for mother.}