MrEarthshine

So, I'm trying to move onto a new project, this time in a genre of game I know I enjoy.

Not sure I'll update much on this. I plan to go after programming first on this one.

The name I'm working with for now is 'Bloodmoon', but it's not like I could tag that.

Those familiar with the meaning of my blog's name might figure out that that's not the Sun back there, it's the Moon.

Something is better than nothing, so here's a gnoll with a billhook.

A bit of refinement on Ferotsa. Firstly, there's trying to make her less sad-looking from side view, she's meant to look gruff, not tired of life (though there is an overlap). Secondly, softening her shoulders, as that's supposed to be a hunched back like a hyena, not a very high shoulder line (oops). I've also made her neck visible from the front, as it was not drawn that way on my initial reference for Ferotsa.

Maybe next time I'll round out her face in profile to match how it looks from the front.

I'm also refining the digital part of my stuff, including erasing some inking I made by mistake and digitally drawing in Ferotsa's brow line after I forgot it while inking.

Much like my last post, here's a bit of free-floating worldbuilding related to a mysterious, underground-dwelling, animal-related, fantastical sapient species with a tenancy toward covert operations. It's one of those artworks that makes me realize just how far I have to go.

Anyways, my own take here, inspired by some of those old pulp short stories like Kull the Conqueror and such.

Serpentfolk, as presented, are rule-breakingly ancient, driven underground by some great calamity before anyone else had figured out agriculture.

They are all-gifted, as it were, having the speed of fast snakes, the strength and endurance of constrictors, venom at all with a mouth that big, as well as profound intellects and very long life spans. The problem is that they are arrogant, seeing mammalian life as beneath them to point of drawing little distinction between a cowherd as his cattle.

Their long life-spans and high average intelligence foster a tendency towards extremely high education, with most serpentfolk not being considered full adults until their hundredth year, and just about any one of those full adults being polymaths beyond most mortal dreams.

One notable feature of serpentfolk's relationship with magic is a tendency to assume new forms to blend in on covert missions, or to permanently alter their forms to suit their occupation. The warrior pictured above has assumed an additional pair of arms for sake of deadliness, and red scales instead of her native green as a form of martial display.

Serpentfolk's interactions with the surface world, or even other underground-dwellers, tend to be extremely covert, or extremely violent (often both in that order).

So, I've had ideas for ratfolk for a while now, so here's some free-floating worldbuilding, as it were.

Ratfolk are terribly mysterious to other fantasy folk, more or less the fantasy equivalent of a cryptid, seldom spotted and sometimes believed in.

What gets interesting is how they interact with humans, which is that they do at all. Human settlements get substantially more ratfolk sightings than other folk, even to point of it being believed that ratfolk live in the sewers. And they do.

Under all that mystery, ratfolk are an unusually advanced society that just wants to mind their own business and be left alone, or, at least, they were until humans showed up.

Ratfolk are, perhaps, the last species of mortal to remember the local variety of fantasy ancients, and humans happen to be dead ringers for these ancients, much to the ratfolk's continued astonishment.

Exactly what the ratfolk decide to do about this varies between groups as much as any issue might divide people, with some plotting harm and others plotting aide. The unifying factors, however, are acting extremely covertly and being determined to prevent another war like the one that destroyed the ancients.

Happy Boxing Day! Have you all eaten your trees yet?

Merry Christmas from me and mine to you and yours!

So, meet Ferotsa, a big ol' bounty-hunting gnoll.

Her story is roughly that her clan dissolved during a famine and she ended up in a human village hunting for pigs but finding a bounty board. Ten or so years later, she's a force to be reckoned with and definitely not starving anymore.

I like the colors I went with here, though I definitely have a long way to go before I can draw Ferotsa consistently, that and there's something bugging me about that name.

A brief comic with Ferotsa looking sadder than intended.

Suffice it to say, she sits wherever she wants.

Ah, the bar. A rather ill-considered venture on the part of the execs, but still somehow profitable.

The stage, where the band starts. At night it's just an empty room, but at day... it's still usually an empty room, honestly.

I'm definitely considering doing 3D renders for the backgrounds at this point.

I finally drew some humans for this blog... sort of. There was that carriage driver who ended up with a blurry face.

Anyways, this started as an experiment in cartooning towards making random characters that could work in a comic, but then I was so annoyed with my dark pencils that I remembered that I had a pen, so now this is the first actually inked entry on this blog as well.