A red delicious straight off the tree is an Absolutely Fine Apple and also the #2 most edible apple you find in the woods. (#1 is the Wickson crab, my beloved.)
You think a grocery store red delicious is bad but that’s because you haven’t eaten enough apples that sprouted when someone hucked a core into the woods off a dirt road or planted a lil cider orchard or some kind of bird or bear consumed and shat out an apple seed. WOW do those apples run the gamut of awful from mushy to wooden to mealy in new and different ways and bitter and sour and somehow utterly flavorless. “Oh no this apple is a little mealy when you leave it out for two weeks and otherwise pretty wooden and has no depth of flavor”. Yes ok well then go buy an orange or something. “Why do you keep eating apples that have a 95% chance of being terrible?” Everyone needs a hobby.
However.
Sometimes in the woods I’ll see it, the twisted limbs and gnarled trunk, the silver and green leaves, fruit with a beautiful tapered shape, the green flecked with red where the sun hits, all covered with a gentle gray bloom. The ground below is full of birds and bees and bugs and wasps and small mammals enjoying the bounty of the most gracious fruit, the apple that always breeds true, the prize of the abandoned homestead, the red delicious.
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In this section, I'll be sharing sketches from what I call "Scene 6: Finale," which includes the moment Centross looks up at Fable up to the conclusion. Also included are some thank yous and some bonus images!
"Centross smiles at Fable. Centross pulls Fable close into a hug, stabbing through Centross' heart. Centross looks up across the cave."
In the colored version, I believe John was the one who added some purple in the eyes of Centross looking up! Very nice touch! It makes Centross look more like the one in control of how the fight will go.
When Centross gets impaled by the sword, I wanted to make sure to get a good shot of it going though his chest with some blood on the blade, especially the dribbling bits.
"The reaver is flung spinning across the cave towards both of them. It impales through Fable. A golden light glows around Fable and is sucked into the reaver. Blood begins to ooze from Fable’s wound for the first time ever. He is stripped of his immortality."
This is the big one! I was trying to figure out how best to portray the light absorbed by the Reaver. I settled for a crackling energy, kind of like Zeus and his lightning bolts!
In the final, I emphasized the impact of the Reaver through Fable with blood spurting from his mouth. His body is hazy near his waist because I wanted to show that the borders of his physical body were beginning to dissolve.
I'm not sure if this was an intentional part on the writers' ends, but I'm a big fan of how this scene is a direct contrast to Centross and the souls! The contrast between purple energy being given vs yellow energy being taken...cinema.
In the final, I snuck in a hazy image of a skull on the Reaver's gem as a little bit of a treat!
"Centross headbutts Fable, who falls backwards, stunned. Centross shakily stands to his feet..."
An unused close-up of a teary, bloody, sweaty Fable. He has been undone! He's never had to keep track of so many fluids before!
It completely slipped my mind to draw in the headbutt scene, so I mostly worked it in digital.
"A loud heart thumps as part of Centross becomes stardust... More of him becomes stardust..."
The doodles are a bit lackluster, but I knew that I wanted this sequences to be very colorful and luminescent with a hazy brush. The scene transitions back to the smooth brush in order to show that the action has mostly calmed down.
"He looks towards Icarus... He turns to Fable."
For the frame Icarus is in, I wanted to make sure to emphasize his distress, confusion, and sadness. Lots of tears and furrowed brows.
For the frame Fable is in, I wanted to emphasize the loss of his immortality and pride. He's on the floor, nursing a new wound and drained of power and life.
"His body is almost fully stardust...Blackness...Centross’ eyes flutter open, glowing violet irises and pitch black scleras."
His face was not at all legible in the sketch. I wanted his eyes to look like they were beginning to close, but it wasn't reading well in digital. I'm much happier with the final product.
Although Centross is inhabiting a void, I still wanted there to be a sense of space and emptiness, so I layered some thick black brushstrokes in an overlapping pattern in the final.
Last Words:
I understand that these past few posts have been very lengthy! I don't expect anyone to read ALL of my notes (but if you did, holy smokes, many thanks). These are just mostly here for me to practice explaining my creative choices.
This project had a pretty tight deadline (a little under a month), but I feel like our team was very efficient and responsible about getting the work done in time! A little pressure goes a long way.
I'm thinking of opening up commissions or a small print shop in the future! I'll be sure to make an announcement for when that happens.
I'm very open to any future Fable SMP projects or collaborations! You guys are all very lovely and creative, and I always like hearing about new projects.
And now, some thanks!
Thank you to Centross for the opportunity to create this cutscene! It was really fun showing you my sketches and getting your feedback on them. This project really helped me flex my art muscles, and I'm grateful to have met you and become friends!
Thank you to @strawberripine for keeping me company in the wee hours of the night as I was trying to finalize in digital! Your presence helped me to keep focus and not sweat about the small stuff!
Thank you to @sherbertquake56 for editing the scenes into a finalized product! It was really cool to see how the visuals and audio flowed together!
Thank you to @johnyyyyyboy, who put in a ton of work on backgrounds and lighting! It really helped to elevate all the action that was occurring!
Thank you to the Fable cast members for the kind words of support throughout the process! You all are a lovely creative bunch, and I'm sorry that when I met some of you in person, I was having a bit of trouble engaging in conversation!
Last but not least, thank you to the Fable SMP audience for enjoying the cutscene! A lot of work was put into it, and it was very gratifying to see everyone's reactions in real time! You all have a nice community, and it's so cool to see everyone's cosplays, fanart, fanfiction, etc.
Have read two (2) things about how FODMAPS are bullshit today which is not fair because I also am laid low by eating more than seven (7) cherries in a 24 hour period and then, after recovering slightly n Monday I ate some apricots. It’s not necessary to share how many apricots. Also I had less than seven (<7) cherries. And some peaches. And THEN I didn’t eat stonefruit at all except for three (3) peaches for a day which is an act of will because the cherries and apricots are still there but diminishing in number due to other people in my house.
Anyway I’m confronting the fact that I’m gonna need to eat NO stonefruit today. None. The peaches will perfume the kitchen and I will resist. Nothing with fructans will pass my lips. The only fruit I will eat is this large sack of blueberries. And maybe some strawberries. It will be an act of will.
Some years ago I was reading an article about the decline in flavor of the Gala apple as growers had selected for a redder and redder apple. (The original Gala is a delightful apple, maybe a little soft, great flavor, yellow with occasional red flecks.) One of the pomologists who developed the Cosmic Crisp — then newly on the market — said “we’ll never let it happen to this apple. If we find a branch on a tree with red apples we’ll cut it off.”
Anyway I saw these today at the grocery store and would like everyone to know that the glory has departed from the Wenatchee Washington State University Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center.
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Hello friends! This is the first part of a series of posts I will be making about my time making the cutscene for Centross in Fable SMP.
Before I continue, I'll be completely honest. Aside from what I was told by cast members and what I gleaned off the Fable Wiki, I know almost next to nothing about Fable lore. I mostly went off of what made sense in the moment. Just wanted to provide a reason for possible discrepancies seen in the visuals.
With that off my chest, here is the first section, where I go into detail about pre-production!
At the start, I was given a folder with references of the characters involved in the scenes: Icarus, Fable, Rae, and Centross. I was also given a script with dialogue and specific actions the characters would be performing in the scenes.
Most of the references were drawn by cast members such as heyhay, artfulrenegade, and more! These were a big help in figuring out the main costuming of the characters.
Each batch of sketches was sent to and approved by a few cast members before being finalized digitally. For pre-production, I primarily did a bunch of head busts:
For Centross, I wanted to emphasize the jaggedness of his scars and the messiness of his hair. The guy seems like he's gone through a lot! In retrospect, I definitely would've benefited from a scar chart.
For Fable, I wanted to put emphasis on the lines of his face to convey anger and sternness, especially the sneer lines around the nose and crease lines near his eyebrows. Either way, a controlling straight white man in a suit and position of power...truly the greatest evil of them all.
For Icarus, I wanted to make his face a bit more rounded and youthful in comparison to Fable. He takes a more passive role in the cutscene, but he still had to be very reactive! I wanted to make sure his wings and eyes were expressive.
Although Rae was only in the very beginning of the cutscene, I still wanted to honor the presence of the character. I'm still not exactly sure what's happening with the right side of his face in terms of the lore, but I wanted it to be very textured in order to show it was something invasive.
Between 6 and 9 kinds of fruit, depending on how you count. (Mulberries, blueberries, strawberries, cherries, apricots, peaches, yellow nectarines, white nectarines)
