im DRAKOMACHINA!! resident dragon enthusiast and lore nerd. this is mainly an art account but i also use this place for extensive rambling and cringe!! i am extremely well adjusted and normal about worldbuilding. if you wanna talk shoot me an ask or send a message, i don’t bite i only yap </3
i am very passionate about worldbuilding and general history/biology and will make that everyone’s problem.
✦ I POST ABOUT …
MONSTER HUNTER, POKÉMON, ULTRAKILL, PHIGHTING, FORSAKEN, REGRETEVATOR, SPLATOON, AVIATION/MOTORSPORTS, FINAL FANTASY XIV, GUNDAM, ZOIDS, MECHA, SPECULATIVE BIOLOGY, WORLDBUILDING, WRITING, METAL MUSIC, HIGH FANTASY
do you have advice for doing scenery? you seem to be able to whip those out pretty quickly
YES actually!!! i'd be happy to try my hand at expaining how i do most of my backgrounds!!!
the BIGGEST thing that helps me do backgrounds fast is breaking things down. doing rough thumbnails always helps me in this stage, because its really about simplifying it down AS MUCH as possible whilst still retaining the base details. try working in big blocks of color - once you have colors and forms down, backgrounds become SO much less intimidating to work with. the moment you start getting caught up in individual details, backgrounds start to seem so much scarier. my best advice is to keep things very simple at first as you block out forms and ideas, THEN once you have everything in you can have fun with extra details
my backgrounds are actually deceptively complex. if you look at them from a distance, they can look really volumetric and complicated. but if you zoom in enough, it's actually just a lot of basic techniques that are applied to give the illusion of more detail than there is!!
for instance, take a look at this background from a recent artfight attack i did. looks really detailed and complicated from here..
BUT a lot of the forms are actually pretty basic - just textures and solid colors!!!! this is a tactic i use for almost every background i do, and its what helps me get them done relatively fast.
^ here's a little page from the illustrator's guidebook that kinda gets at what i'm implying here!!! even three simple colors can be used to make a cohesive looking background when applied correctly !!! i always do thumbnail sketches like this as i work on backgrounds, keeping everything simple and vague before i go in with actual details
TLDR : everyone can cook. backgrounds can look pretty intimidating, but i really recommend simplifying everything down to more basic forms and blocks of color. take things loose and vague, and keep your detail limited - or else you might get caught up detailing 10000 individual leaves or something. backgrounds are ALL just applying the fundamentals of shape, form and color. that is ALL you need to make something cohesive looking !!!! i encourage anyone interested in that to get into doing simplified studies and thumbnails as they work. practice is the absolute best way to improve!!
big scenes can feel daunting at first - but once you get the fundamentals in place, it starts feeling a whole lot easier to work with !!! above all, don't stress about it and try your best to have fun with it. once you get the hang of it, i find backgrounds super satisfying and freeing !!!
i'm obviously not an EXPERT, this is just personally my doctrine as i draw.. i hope that you can find it of help!!!! and i always welcome asks like this if people have questions about my work and the like, i'll do my best to answer them!!
UPDATED REF FOR MY RAZEWING RATHA! I did use the top-side view that @drakomachina did for an updated reference for me a while back.
Similarly to Toothless in "Alpha Mode," the muscle and sinew surrounding Ratha's wings will glow internally as they heat up. This can extend anywhere from the wings to his throat, becoming a bright blue, almost white.
The top sides of his wings are unique from the rest of his body in scale quality and size. While Ratha otherwise possesses normal shedscales, his wing webbing is plated with fine scales that can "glitter" and shine with different kinds of bands. They're very pearly.
His dark scale plating has a polished quality to them, sort of similar, but not as bright, as Skyscale Ratha's. Fun fact: This was a trait that I had given him well before MHS3 was announced! Part of the reason why I love Skyscale is because it has some qualities that are similar to my Razewing.
He's small! A measly 5'4" at the shoulder, but this is all because he's young at roughly a year old. As he ages, he will fill out and grow into a behemoth.
Volcanism on Hakolo and beyond (MHS2 Worldbuilding/Map Ramble)
I've long found it interesting that we have two archipelagos nested inside each other on this map and since I’m an absolute nerd I’ve decided to look further into the volcanic activities as a whole.
In advance I gotta say, that wheter it was intended or not, the volcanism on the MHS2 map is actually pretty realistic.
Let’s get started :D Continue below the cut
Introduction to volcanism (you can skip this part if you’re familiar with it)
There are two variants how volcanoes can form. First, through subduction of a tectonic plate. I’ve ruled that out, because the area itself is way to small and there are no other geological processes we can observe that would usually occur alongside said subduction, such as the formation of a deep sea trench and a mountain range directly over the subduction zone. (You could argue, that the region’s west is pretty mountain-y, but the land’s pretty fragmented around the coastline and there’s a better explanation for the mountain range.) Which brings us to our second variant: volcanism because of a hotspot.
What’s a hotspot you may ask? Great question, here we go:
A geological hotspot is a place where very hot material rises from deep inside the earth (much deeper than usual). This rising heat, a so called mantle plume, melts rock and kind of ‘eats’ itself into to the earth’s crust, therefore creating chambers. When the magma reaches the surface, it forms volcanoes (really simplified, but I don’t want this to turn into a lecture about volcanoes). Unlike volcanoes at subduction zones, these volcanoes sit in the center of a tectonic plate.
And as we all know tectonic plates move; but hotspots do not, meaning that depending on the hotspot’s activity it will leave a trail of volcanoes behind.
Image of Hawaii as a real world example, before I move on to the fictional map.
Actual analysis of the volcanism on the MHS2 map
NOW for the interesting part: We don’t have a trail of volcanoes on our map, but we do have a trail of volcanic activity!
known areas with volcanic activity past or present
my interpretation of the map design
possible underwater ridge; volcanoes that never got high enough to form an island
Can you see the trail? :D
The arrow here shown in cyan would be the plate‘s movement. In our case the thermal springs in Loloska would be the oldest known occurrence of the hotspot‘s activity. In contrast, Terga‘s volcano sits right above the hotspot and is therefore active.
But Wendigo! If a hotspot leaves a trail of volcanoes then shouldn’t there be no flat sections on the trail??
Yes and no.
Only because we have a hotspot doesn’t mean it has to be active. Hell, I live like 40km away from one, would be pretty nasty here if it weren’t sleeping. Once a volcano errupts, it‘s magma chamber underground has to refill again. This can take months or millennia (for reference the one near me last erupted 13k years ago and is expected to do so again in 3k-5k years). The areas where there aren’t volcanoes, the hotspot was simply in a resting state.
In real life we see these ‘chains’ of volcanoes, because our tectonic plates move slow enough, that the magma chamber can refill in time to errupt right next to the previous one.
We‘ll just assume that the tectonic plates in this fictional world move much quicker than the ones on earth, meaning we have more space between the areas with volcanic activity. This would also explain why the trail can take such a ‘sharp’ turn over an area this small.
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Finally, onto the two archipelagos: The smaller, more obvious archipelago that is Hakolo and the entire region itself, which also looks like one.
Found this nice image online. I think it shows pretty well how an archipelago can form, without me having to explain it in detail. (Once the crater has a connection to the ocean, it’ll fill with seawater and the archipelago is created.)
Hakolo’s flat area (North Kamuna Cape, etc.) most likely formed this way, while the higher planes (Forbidden Grounds, Oltura’s shrine) are from the second volcano. Hakolo used to be an island with two volcanoes on it, before the first one collapsed.
The big archipelago/the region itself is the only thing with a more flimsy explanation. My theory is, that the whole region once was a volcano and the large central water area are the remains of an ancient collapsed volcanic complex. So, long before the “map” ever drifted over the hotspot, the big archipelago existed without Hakolo in it’s middle and without Terga as a volcanic region.
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Thanks a lot for reading :)) These take a lot of time to put together!
new MHST3 trailer just dropped here so i’m tossing out a preemptive warning :
I WILL BE YAPPING ABOUT S3 NEWS AS IT OCCURS! this means SPOILERS are imminent!!
ill be posting all spoilertalk under the tag #MHS3 SPOILERS so if you’re trying to avoid spoilers, go ahead and mute that!!! i’ll also probably end up putting it beneath a cut too, for that extra layer of protection.
