Take the giraffe by the horns

Ok guys it’s here. Two images under the cut. What happened that led to this post. (cw: mature!)

He’s finally here. The one and only. Borch, Three Jackdaws, Villentretenmerth. The most beautiful.

(Yeah I designed him solely for drawing Geregismerth so you can't skip it)

More of what happened with these three afterwards: Spicy stuff (cw: mature! nudity!) | And later

Compare to Regis and Geralt, whose designs come without any debate for me, Borch really didn't have that many descriptions in the short story, so I had to figure out a bunch on my own.

One thing I immediately decided is the hair... Since it's described as "thick", I imagine it to be long hair. Cause that feature just won't be as obvious on short hair. And it just kept getting longer during the process...

Because the one biggest thing I'm focusing on for his design is that he doesn't carry weapons. He doesn't need to fight, despite looking like a knight. So his style choices (it's really just about style for him) don't need to be practical at all, in contrast to Geralt. Which is another focus. I want him to be the contrast for Geralt in all the ways! (whereas, we got Regis who has a dark, slender figure much like Geralt. Those two are matchy matchy)

In general, this guy should feel like he obviously has high status, obviously human, but the more you think about it the more strange he is... (Well, besides the two Zerrikanian warriors following him)

That's why besides the long hair, I also ended up on very long coat in the debate about length of his coat and tunic. (Btw shout out to @hanzajesthanza for being the reliable researcher and helping me figure out his clothing situation...)

The color palette was also a really hard decision to make... My decisions in the end are surrounding three things: 1) To bring focus to his hair. 2) It should feel "fancy" but also... Dusty? Worn? As his coat of arms is described as worn out. It should show his status (while not real) yet doesn't stand out that much. 3) It gotta be different from Geralt's palette!!

So we end up with the blue stripes, and I decided against a dark coat which would be too repetitive with Geralt. 1) was actually still so tricky since... Chestnut hair and dark brown tunic. What. My only solution was to make everything else slightly more green tone to contrast the red tone in his hair. While keeping a generally brown palette.

And of course I had to make the coat of arms more fancy to actually look like coat of arms... I cannot have the birds just be sitting. (And! Gold earrings to match the gold on the coat of arms! Cause he's a golden dragon! Duh!)

Modern AU stuff compilation! It's all pretty random and doesn't have a consistent setting. But it's fun.

I'll leave stuff for your imagination here. But master @tio-trile said that they're watching The Exorcist (1973) (which kills me), and that Geralt's favorite ice cream flavor would be super sweet stuff like rocky road which is literally perfect...

Also who would write a true detective modern au pls??? I'll give you my soul

When I first started playing Witcher 3, I thought that you had to unequip armor every time you got it repaired. I would have Geralt stand there in his skivvies in front of the armorer in White Orchard, and it would feel very awkward and also very logical.

@platypusafro I thought that, because the alternative would have been this:

Other characters pretty much always smell him before they see him (stinky)

He spent his summers in a shack right next to a cemetery brewing moonshine out of mandrake

He was the vampire equivalent of a drunk driver before he got his shit together

He was a vicious murderer and victim of bullying at the same time (the ultimate ad against peer pressure)

He spent 50 years in the ground and came out fully (morally) reformed

Just appears out of nowhere

Works in a field that heavily involves the substance he was addicted to

Simultaneously one of the most dangerous and least threatening guys

Outs himself as a vampire in front of a crowd of people, who are actively looking for a vampire they believe has been terrorising their community

Entirely unfazed by a witcher holding a blade to his throat, even tells him to “thrust it in” (homoeroticism)

“Your blood smells nice, poet”

Presses Geralt on how high a bounty he had to have on his head for Geralt to hunt him after Geralt said if he ever showed his face again he’d kill him, which resulted in Geralt telling him to fuck off

Showed up the next day to tell Geralt to stop sulking and change Dandelion’s bandage

Is so excited to yap that he answers questions people haven’t even asked yet

Is nearly unkillable, but died anyway

Draakul the mule

Flexes his knowledge of vampires in front of a witcher

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A KNIGHT...

the visual inspiration for this was a combination of Frederic William Burton's Meeting on the Turret Stairs and also Bernardo Cavallino's The vision of St. Dominic receiving the Rosary from the Virgin

this was supposed to be just a one off illustration to get the thoughts out of my system, but then I started thinking about medieval politics and warfare and plagues and a castle and home as both a place of refuge, a prison, and a tomb, so perhaps they will end up as ex voto characters as well.

you may say, hey! that rosary looks like it has too many beads! it's a fifteen decade rosary, probably. dominicans are really into marian devotions. it works out.

also. spiral style stair cases. oh boy. it was that unexpectedly more difficult than I originally thought it would be to draw. the more I think about it, the less I understand them, even though I had a million photos of the stairs in front of me while I was drawing it.

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