World of Twilight: Neues Preview

Ein weiteres Preview zu World of Twilight.

For the last couple of months most of my sculpting time has been focused on the two characters for the Engineer pledges from the kickstarter campaign.
They are now approaching completion, so I thought you might like to see some of the process involved in designing and sculpting one of the new characters for Twilight!
The first stage involved various conversations with the backers. One of the backers, Jasmin, wanted a fubarnii noble who is more feminine than the usual characters. Obviously male and female is a bit different for fubarnii than humans, but it gave a nice challenge!
Jasmin also suggested that she should have a hunting hawk, which provided a great focus for the character.
That left us with an elegant noble who spends her time hunting. We considered whether she should be mounted, but decided to keep her ‚on hoof‘. The final big decision was where she came from. Jasmin elected to have her from near the Great Lakes (close to Larigal and Enipel), which would give her a shorter and more petite figure, like the original trader.
This was the first sketch and provided the groundwork for the sculpt.

Having got the basic design sorted I shift to building an armature out of thin wire. This is the point where you define all the joints and the basic pose. I usually start by sculpting the hooves first, mainly to give a nice solid base when sculpting the rest of the model.
For the falconer I wanted to give her really neat, crisp clothing, so I took the time to build it up in very slow layers, just adding a little bit each day. The photos below show a couple of steps. The first one would have been after a few days of sculpting (armature, then hooves, then starting on her clothes and ‚boots‘), then one or two more days adding the next details.
The funny snakey arm will eventually become the falcon and the other arm was largely keeping out of the way at this stage.
I’ve not included any reference for size, but I think she’s probably 22-23mm tall to the top of her (partially formed) head.
I should comment that Jasmin wasn’t too sure about the hat and collar combo in the original sketch, but I rudely ignored her, hoping she would be won over in the end!

I managed to get a little bit more done on her hunting hawk before heading „oop north“ for Christmas. I also added a couple more layers of clothing and a pouch for carrying treats for her hawks (or possibly her lunch).
That isn’t much of a change from yesterday’s photos though, so I’ve skipped on a couple of weeks to when I got back again.
The next photos see quite a change as I finally started work on her face. I was aiming for quite an elegant, regal face for her, with softer lines than the older fubarnii. I may be the only person who sees the subtleties though „wink“-Emoticon
Her hat was a real challenge – trying to decide how big it should be and exactly how it should sit on her head. I think it quite a rework after this photo.
As you can see, I had been having fun working on the hawk as well „smile“-Emoticon

At this stage of the sculpt things always seem to take a long time to get anywhere (as you start to get bogged down in doing all the fun little details), so I’ve shown a few snapshots of the progress over a couple of weeks.
I had started off with quite a static pose, but decided to add a bit of dynamism with the positioning of her staff. Her hat and outfit slowly evolved to have some more ornate flourishes.

Quelle: The World of Twilight auf Facebook

Link: The World of Twilight