Figured I should make a pinned post about my Guardian, so here it is:
Fenix-3
Exo | Hunter | Stasis User
Ghost’s name: Dot (blue circular shell, currently “Enhanced Defense”)
He exists in an AU where there is a dedicated group of human and Awoken scentists/medics that study exos. Each one has their own role, but that’s a whole other post.
Fenix was a late build, very close to the end of exo production. He was close with Cayde-6 as both an exo and a hunter. He is interested in the history of exos and works closely with Elsie (Beyond Light is important to his character). He is very close with his ghost and likes socializing on the bases.
I use the streetwise ornaments and the Mars Sunset shader if anyone wants to draw him as a study (feel free to ignore the helmet, I just like the casual look that set gives).
wanted to share this w people on tumblr because i'm not sure how many of y'all know about it, but there's a Google Drive full of ripped models from Destiny and Destiny 2, and in it there's a blender file called Build-A-Archon (imho i think they should have called it Build-A-Baron but WHATEVER) that’s a bunch of eliksni parts set up so you can mix and match them, up to and including having all of the naked parts so you can see the base eliksni model w no armor
the bare head doesn't have the full plating as seen on the official model on ArtStation but if you know enough about modeling you could theoretically model that back on yourself, and this could otherwise be a really good resource for art or making eliksni OCs! it's even fully rigged for posing and has the scales listed for Captains and Vandals so you can scale them down to the correct size for a given character!
here is the link to the Fallen folder of the Google Drive, Build-A-Archon is a .rar folder you can download from there, and here is the link to the full drive of 3D models. for fanartists this thing is an awesome resource, they have a lot of enemy races, armor, and equipment uploaded
Okay. My original post got 12 notes so here’s the updated version for my Warlock, Rev-9
1. The name of his ghost is Lux!
2. He was rezzed in the Bray Exoscience lab
3. He was reborn during the dark age
4. His preferred subclass is prismatic with Song of Flame as his super, along with the strand arcane needle and stasis coldsnap as his respective melee and grenade (but during the dark age, he was an avid arc user)
5. He woke up to bright lights and walls covered in white. Along with bodies of dead exos.
6. When he was first resurrected, he was using arc as his main subclass until he got down to earth and joined the iron lords. Where he then was training under Felwinter to use void. That’s where he struggled.
7. Before getting down to earth, he spent most of his time combing through whatever he could find in the braytech labs. He figured out that in a past life, he was a scientist for Clovis Bray l. He did not like what he saw.
8. After the loss of most of the iron lords. He’s a loner.
9. Neither. He lived through the dark ages so he has seen both the best and the worst in lightbearers.
10. Has mixed feelings on it. Logically, he knows that both stasis and strand are just tools to use in defense of the city. Emotionally, he doesn’t like to use stasis because of the experiments and logs that he read
11. He’s thankful for the second chance that the traveler gave to humanity but doesn’t like that it left the eliksni behind
12. He and Lux get along and he’s thankful that he has a close friend in Lux
13. Has seen what happens to civilians when lightbearers get drunk on power, he refuses to let anyone become a victim for any would-be warlord or self-proclaimed god
also. do you have any advice on how you draw exos. specifically when it comes to like breaking down their form in a 3d space. chewing on them /pos
ok so my 3 biggest tips for drawing exos:
USE A REFERENCE. the reason I can make my exos passable to look at is because I reference heavily. 3d models are best of course, but half the time I don't care to open up blender and look at them.
PRACTICE. do some exercises to get better at 3d shapes. trace some images of exos! tracing is a really good way to learn.
LOOK AT THE WAY OTHER ARTISTS DRAW EXOS. some artists I like are lavenderarts, rivaldi22, ninthriven, trialsofsaint14, monstyra, sylenth-l, and fmab. i look at what they simplify and what they don't, how they shade, and so on, and try to implement their tricks into my own style
this is one of my fav exercises that has helped me get better at understanding 3d shapes. it's smth I really struggle with - my brain doesn't picture objects in 3d space well, which makes driving a car very interesting. but this has helped.
this exercise just gives you an idea of volume and form that I really like. I'll fill up a whole sketchbook page with just these blobs for a warmup. it's great!
with that said I'll try to take you through my process of drawing an exo but please take it with a grain of salt as I'm still learning
some things to note:
despite being robots, exos are humanoid in shape. familiarizing yourself with human anatomy, ESPECIALLY the skeleton as exos have no skin, is really important
exos generally have the same shapes underneath their external plating, approximately the shape of a human skull (open a 3d model of an exo and remove its external face plating and you'll see what I mean)
the mouth on an exo is generally higher up than it would be on a human face. they don't have a nose to get in the way of the mouth, so the mouths are a little higher up
you can do whatever you want forever. there's a lot of stuff that I simplify when I draw exos - for example, I have very little patience for figuring out what the struts and supports inside the cheek/jaw area look like so I usually just draw them all the same unless I'm going really hard at it
when I'm drawing exos I try to focus on how the features relate to each other. I know where the eyes are supposed to go on a human face (about halfway down the cranium), so I know where they go on an exo. from there, it's about relating things to the position of the eyes.
I try to take note of important characteristics on an exo's face. I don't necessarily get as detailed as taking notes like in the image below, but this is a good start it you want to get familiar with exo features. I grabbed these two pics off destinypedia as an example
it's also important to remember that exos are very angular and have facial planes versus the smooth transitions we typically see with human skin. you don't need to necessarily draw them super precise - just a line hinting at the change of plane works wonders for making it look 3d.
these are very sloppy because I did them in like 2 minutes each but I hope it comes across how I've implemented what I said???
I hope this is helpful. you just gotta practice a lot, and if anyone faults you for your robot anatomy being off slightly they can go fuck themselves lol. everyone who draws knows that robots are hard to draw and shouldn't dunk on you for making mistakes. godspeed brave soldier
I've just discovered an entire google drive folder with over three hundred 3d models straight from the game, both d1 and d2, completely up to date.
The folder comes with a tutorial on how to get the models yourself in case there is a model you are looking for that is missing from the collective, and for all the others all you have to do is extract the .rar folder and shove one of the models into the program of your choosing ( such as blender, which is free, btw )
I cannot tell you how many things I've hesitated to draw just because I could not find a good reference. This person is doing god's work.
Happy Art-ing! ദ്ദി (•̀ᴗ•́ )
Do you have a Destiny OC? I draw them all the time- I'm known for my Exo OCs! I want to see YOURS! Any race, species, be it casual "just a dude" or the 7th son of Oryx, I want to see them! Tell me about them!!!
I want to draw them, I specialize in Exos but I REALLY want to learn more about the community on here. Be it big or small, please don't be shy!! I want to know sooo much.
You can even submit a whooole block of text and only ingame screenshots if you're not the artistic type.
Examples of my D2 OC art here:
Trying to rework Celeste's body reference, I'm kind of on the fence about it honestly, but I'm also ass at designing machines so it's not like I could do better lmao
Hey, don't cry. Five thousand fanfic daydream scenarios inside your head about the super-obscure fictional character you've latched onto like an orphaned duckling, okay?
“No one knows how Exos work except ghosts” is bullshit because I don’t believe that in the hundreds of years since they came about, no Exo ever took a screwdriver to themselves to see how they worked. I don’t believe that Exo friends haven’t learned how to patch each other up, that there isn’t a market for custom LEDs and plate swapping and cable replacements as they wear out over time. The average person probably doesn’t know how Exos work, but most real life people aren’t well versed on human anatomy either and I think it’s similar
OKAY I had a thought and I think it would look so fuckin’ cool. Idk if anyone’s mentioned this before, so forgive me if they have but it’s been infecting my brain.
I’ve seen a few people talk abt Exo tattoos, right? The debate over whether they’re actual proper tattoos or whether you just paint them on, but I had another similar thought: UV paint. The kind of paint that you wear on your face to raves and stuff, that glows super bright under UV light. What about painting Exos with that?
I could totally see people using it for both visual aesthetic and having actual purposes of hiding information. Like, if you painted it on, you could have whatever colours you liked, without it contrasting and looking bad against your original paint all the time. Tattoos are good, but I think the idea of cool, hidden tattoos is even cooler. Maybe some Exos paint themselves, and sometimes they let other people paint them. It feels like it’d have a lot of significance in universe too, regarding culture.
Or you could use it to hide information in plain sight, like writing the answers on your arm before going into a test.
Plus it would just look fucking awesome. I imagine the most popular colours are the neon glowstick colours: red, blue, yellow, pink, green, purple and orange, but there’s definitely gonna be people out there making subtler or different.
UGH I just think this is such a cool and visually pleasing idea, shining a UV light on an Exo and finding this hidden tapestry of colours.
