#stekh

Extremely WIP animation to test out character physics. It's not got a whole bunch of life to it and isn't super anatomically accurate yet, but I wanted to share something this week. Very happy with how things are shaping so far.

Quick status update: Not dead and working on This Guy! This is a super-WIP texture that's not finished yet (proper renders to share by next week is the goal), but I'm very happy with how the new Stekh model is going. Still needs the whiskers, fur, and lots of cleanup around the legs, forearms, ears, etc. They are already animation-ready and this time I've been keeping the design modular so I can quickly generate distinct people from this as a base in future projects.

I'm working to design clothes from two historical periods too, lots of stuff to share when it's ready! My current goal is to use them in some slice of life style animations around one of the cities they inhabit, in three different time periods.

First (successful) attempt at using an SLA machine to bring some of my creations 'to life', as it were. Ran out of material while the skull was printing, but overall am extremely impressed with the result!

There will be a bunch more (digital) stekh content upcoming too, though it's still too early to comment on that much as well. Things are looking up in terms of 'amount of personal creative projects needing to release soon', now that things are less demanding at work and I have more energy to put into everything personally important.

A really rough écorché showcase.

To be retopologized as a character base in upcoming animations.

Stekh got a lot of visual redesign this year, the 'heart' of them ( ethology, evolutionary niche, cultures, individuals, etc that've been worked on for years) remain mostly the same.

I feel this design 'fits' them a lot better, that's also much improved over the original as I learned more about anatomy and biomechanics.

Museums are very helpful!

I'm most excited about the development of the hindlimbs. Keeping in line with the niche of a projectile-throwing predator, Stekh now have a novel way to do this via whipcracking!

TLDR: The force of the main body moving can be transferred to the hindlimbs, which conserves energy towards the end as an acceleration of the hand, reaching incredible throwing speeds.

Small world building update: This is roughly how Stekh are shaped now! I've had a few gripes about my previous designs as I come to learn a lot more about bio-mechanics and anatomical structures in general. They still have their same ethology, environmental role, and general body-plan; but this form really accentuates the throwing-niche specialization and allows them to move a lot more efficiently in their environment.

It looks like a tail from this angle, but those are actually the two hind-limbs. In this case they are a lot more articulated and fish-like, never having evolved to carry weight and more adapted for maintaining stability. Early ancestors also used their tails as a defensive tool similar to monitor lizards, though in Stekh this whiplike motion was adapted for killer underhand-throws.