Commission for @pikablob of the steam locomotive Featherfoot from her Underrail fantasy setting (which can be found here)
Finally, on the nearest occupied track, close enough that she could hear some component within chunking back and forth with quiet mechanical regularity, was an engine painted in brilliant scarlet. Its boiler seemed to be in the dominant Freehold-style, with a tall funnel, two great domes, and exposed pipework, backing into a large cab topped with a little clerestory bump; but its wheels and mechanics were mostly hidden by heavy frame-plates, save for exposed cranks between the three driving axles.
Featherfoot is sapient, with a "Coal Heart" in her firebox which acts as the mind and main power source for the loco (though she still consumes coal). She is a one-off 4-6-0 Constitution-type built by E. Towan & Co. Jushi Works, using a boiler built by Cortopassi Locomotive Works.
More background and alternate image versions below the cut:
Featherfoot is based on a Illinois Central Railroad ten wheeler of the type that was involved in Casey Jones' infamous train collision, but below the frames it more resembles an outside-frame inside-cylinder Great Western Railway 4-4-0--a City or a Duke class. Its tender is based on a GNR tender similar to what the Stirling Single carried.
There are four holders for marker lamps or flags--three along the pilot beam and one on the smokebox, intended to be used with UK-style headcodes but with US-style marker lamps.
The livery is based on the fictionalized GWR Duke class seen in Assasin's Creed Syndicate.
Here's some WIP images:
1:25 PM to 2:37 PM
While waiting for the client to get back to me on some questions, I doodled this:
Eaurp Guz! What are you doing on a miniaturized fantasy train!? Ah who am I kidding this is super in-character for her.
After a break and a little back and forth with the client (moved and replaced the whistle, replaced the oil headlamp with an electric one, added a dynamo), I completed the sketch.
I also tweaked some of the proportions a little. Note that when I am doing a "sketch" commission as opposed to "clean line art" i usually clean the sketch up a little more than I did here.
I then moved on to line art, which also gave me a chance to get the proportions on the wheels and frames right. I also totally re-thought the appliances and piping visible on the boiler.
By 10:31, the line art was complete. It had taken about an hour and thirty minutes, i don't have an exact timestamp.
Various other details were also added here--rivets, brake pipe, detailed coupler, detailed air compressor, snifters, wheel spokes, cut levers, the two builder's plates.
Here's the loco with full color. This is more or less how I left the loco off at the end of last night, at around 11:30 PM.
This morning at about 10:30 AM, I started working on rendering--and at 12:30 PM I finished the drawing.
The rest of these alt. versions are not chronological, and were created by removing certain layers:
The engine, cold.
The engine, solid color (but finished).
Solid color, but brightened to look better in a white background.
Transparent version with and without full rendering, steam, and lights.
I was shocked to find that with the line art removed, it didn't look half bad. It does look way messier, but I really need to go and try to tackle a fully lineless drawing in this style some time.
Featherfoot is a forgetful lilac point she-cat with a penchant for daydreaming and wandering into fields of flowers. Although she rarely joins patrols or is called to fight, she finds use in helping in any other way she can. She often helps apprentices with their duties, gathers herbs for the medicine cat and tends to queens and kits. She is gentle and soft-spoken.
Another talent of hers, most surprising to other cats because she sometimes seems rather dim-witted, is her ability to easily interpret signs and dreams from Starclan. She is also an excellent fisher.
my future featherfoot (wiz3link3ff2), Lively! aka the squishiest thing ever because he’ll have 0 con. breathe in his general direction and he’ll probably die ):
