#riddlemasterofhed

[lyraluthuin19]

I haven’t been very active on this account because like usual, I’ve been drawing frantically, but unlike usual, I’m so absorbed that I don’t feel like taking the time to critique stuff online. I also unfortunately am not getting much done on my webcomic. I'm obsessed with the goal of getting hired as an animation storyboard artist, and I concluded I need more than my own original scripts to get there. So I assigned myself two fan storyboard projects to force me to work in new styles. This is the first set of character designs for the bigger project based on the Riddle of Stars trilogy by Patricia McKillip. I’ve tried to draw these two, Morgon and Deth before, and never had it turn out, so this is exciting. The focus here is to work out a style language. I ran as many lines together as I could, going for a Legend of the Seven Seas aesthetic, and I drew very detailed hair and eyes, pulling inspiration from anime. There’s one more thing I want to try - taking out some of the lines and making the rest not black (Klaus-style) - but these drawings are a good start. Now I get to decide on a scene to storyboard and I might go all out - for the climatic ending of the second book. That will give me a good idea if Deth’s design holds up ;) Incidentally, there is a character in this series named Lyraluthuin, which is my screen name for most of my social media accounts. Not a coincidence.

[lyraluthuin19]

Another character design for the Riddlemaster Trilogy. This is Eriel, a demented woman who is willing to destroy the world of humans to get her sealed power back.

[lyraluthuin19]

This is Raederle, one of the main characters of the Riddlemaster Trilogy. I just love how her character is written. She develops some awesome powers but has to work a little for it. She is a strong companion to the main character Morgon and saves his life several times.

[lyraluthuin19]

I've been working on more character designs for the Riddlemaster Trilogy. This one is Ghisteslwchlohm, which is mercifully shortened to Ohm. He is a bad wizard who wants to rule the world as the High One.

[lyraluthuin19]

In response to the tragic news of the passing of one of my favorite authors, Patricia McKillip, I feel compelled to explain something of why I unintentionally went silent on this account. I’ve been hesitant to acknowledge that for the last year, instead of going back to working on my original webcomic narrative, I continued developing concept art for McKillip’s masterful Riddle-Master trilogy (which I grew up knowing by the name Riddle of Stars). I had a powerful creative urge to expunge. Was I just trying to more deeply explore the powerful themes of McKillip’s work in order to understand my identity as a creative; to understand better how to tap my creative energy to tell stories of redemption and healing? Just for that, I suspect the past year’s odyssey will prove to have been worth it.

Was I compelled by a feeling that modern society perhaps needs this story to be revitalized by being adapted into a new medium? It always felt like a long shot to convince the fanbase to trust me with the film rights for an animated adaptation of the story, but still, I kept drawing.

I’ve been trying to become more comfortable with sharing rough artwork that hasn’t been hardened, but going back into my old posts, it’s evident how much my drawing of these characters has improved. I had to study the best of my rough and inconsistent initial drawings to begin nailing down high-fidelity style guides for the major characters.

The challenge with Morgon has been to find ways to visually represent his character growth, and especially his descent into darkness and return from the brink. The person we see the Anuin scene I storyboarded isn’t exactly Morgon’s best self, so it was therapeutic to focus on his gentler side for a change.

With Deth, it has always been a struggle to deal with the gap between his appearance and mental age, as well as between the level of emotion he expresses compared to what he feels. I’ve begun to really enjoy finding ways to break past that impressive poker face of his, while realizing that most of his emotional cues are probably too subtle for the average person to catch right off.

These style guides helped me fall into a cadence where I can keep the initial emotional energy of my rough storyboards AND get the drawings on model much more reliably than when I started.

My favorite headshots from Anuin seem to have settled down to these two. That unexpressed fright of Deth’s came through much more clearly than I expected. Wish I could hold that panel longer....

I started to verge into some more detailed exploration of other major characters (courtesy of a storyboard from that scene at Trader’s Road with Raederle and Ghisteslwchlohm).

And started to really nail down that ending scene at Wind Tower. What can I say? It’s just been too much fun.

Also, I have been keeping my YouTube account undated with improvements to the Anuin animatic, including voicing. https://youtu.be/6Q9zbvywPi0

[lyraluthuin19]

Even without most of the major spoilers in the dialog, the fact that this scene could even happen is a spoiler.... I realized a long time ago that Riddle of Stars had potential for a visual narrative told almost entirely through Deth’s expressions. But I couldn’t do anything with it because I couldn’t draw anything that read to me like the characters were supposed to be. When I recently set out to design Deth, I didn’t expect to get something I liked, I just thought it was time to poke at the problem. It’s a tough premise to design against. Pairing an expressive eye design with such bland acting isn’t something I would have thought of as a less experienced artist, but I think it works. Deth may try to be boring, but with a design like this, he can’t get away with it, which is perfect for the character. It creates an incongruity because you know something is going in his head, you just can’t tell what. Deth is such an interesting character. McKillip sets up expectations of how he will act just to break it over and over again. The break I drew in this scene is supposed to be so far from Deth’s normal that it’s startling, but that depends heavily on keeping his expressions toned down in every scene up to that point. It’s hard to storyboard the scene at Anuin (which I want to clean up into a very nice animatic, but that’s mostly on pause until I finish my Christmas shopping) without drawing the resolution. My interpretation of both scenes play off the same idea. This one may be stronger, but I could hardly justify using something so riddled with spoilers in a professional application.

[lyraluthuin19]

Little thumbnail teaser, hopefully not too spoiler-y. I picked one of the most dramatic scenes in the Riddlemaster trilogy to draw, so to give enough context for the whole dialogue to make sense, I have to spoil one of the most brilliant plot twists in fantasy. I plan to post the whole animatic with context when I get there, but for now, you should read the book, and I should get some sleep. #storyboard #riddleofstars #riddlemasterofhed #morgon #deth #fantasy https://www.instagram.com/p/CIV0H8Ir0zI/?igshid=e0tjroj242gl