You like TTRPGs? Wondering what you could add to your campaign?
What about Strange, Powerful and Mysterious Deities and their followers? :)
"Book of Devotion" is the most recent compendium by SleepyWyrm_Ed, who you might know from their previous project "Tome of Pact", currently open on Kickstarter!:D
I was lucky to be part of this one this time as one of the "Forces of Nature" Deity artists!:D
The compendium is great to add to any campaign or just to read for fun!
If you are interested to learn more about those Deities and their Clerics and Paladins, please check out the kickstarter page!
We are so cose to reaching the Concept Artbook bonus!!:D
If you want to see how all those Gods and their Devotees came to be how they are please take a look at the campaing!:D
In the mean time have a baby (?) Deity!
REALLY random and unorganized doodles cause i just been drawing whatever. translating nonhuman characters into human designs is smth that i find rly fun and good practice for character design, which has never been my strong suit; i still feel like i rarely hit the mark but i’d say i’m definitely improving ! i’m not at all satisfied with a couple of these designs either but i still feel like they’re much better at representing the og characters than most humanizations i’ve done in the past, and i don’t wanna get burned out on them either, so i’m callin it good for now LOL
some super dumb doodles, unfinished ideas, and screenshot redraws ive wanted to do for a loooongg time but never took the time to actually do them until now, human au stuff, etc etc u get it
do you have any idea when people in china stopped bowing to each other as a greeting? it seems like the most common forms of greeting now is to shake hands or wave both which were introduced from the west. it's the same in taiwan too.
Tldr: It never stopped because Chinese people never had the practice of bowing in greeting the way that Japanese people did/do.
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(Note: there are types of greetings that involve a sort of bowing (ketou), but this is reserved for special occasions)
Back in the day there was greetings were made by clasping one's hands in front of them in the direction of the person being greeted. There might be some head lowering/slight bowing involved but it's done in conjunction with the hand greeting. You can see various forms of this in historical dramas and even hanfu shows and shortform videos. The exact way one held their hands changed in some years but the general idea is the same.
Women's and men's hand greetings differed back in the day. A women's greeting was called 万福礼 wànfùlǐ and consisted of holding the hands in front of oneself and bending the legs, or holding hands at the hip, etc. The exact way to hold the hands also changes through the years. Women also do what is called 肃拜 sù bài, which is an earlier form of a women's greeting and includes getting on one's knees (thus the 拜).
Some examples of greetings:
Men's vs women's hand positions
拱手礼 gōngshǒu lǐ ("cupped hands greeting"). The most common greeting. Top photo shows the gendered difference for proper etiquette for nowadays if you ware going to do it, for example, as a new year's greeting.
Bottom photos: I think if you look carefully in modern society, you can still see examples of this greeting in China. It is a gesture that can also be used to expresses one's gratitude. It is still there, it's just fell out of vogue in favor for waving and hand shaking.
This can also be seen in The video above shows Ming era 万福礼 as well as men's 揖礼. 作揖礼 zuòyī lǐ ("bow with clasped hand greeting") is kind of the same thing as 拱手礼, but 作揖 specifically includes a slight bow whereas 拱手礼 is merely the raising of the hands.
叉手礼 chāshǒu lǐ ("crossed hands greeting") popularised during the Western Jin - Song dynasties, seen in the drama "The Longest Day in Chang'an", which takes place in the Tang Dynasty. This particular greeting started out as one used by Buddhists in the Eastern Han dynasty.
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/489897518
抱拳礼 bàoquán lǐ ("cupped fist greeting"). This one is something done more so by martial artists. For men, you use your left hand to cover your right hand. For women, the opposite is true. It is also called 吉拜 jíbài when showing respect. If you flip your hand (keep in mind men/women do this the opposite way), it is called 凶拜 xiōngbài and it used to show respect to the dead. So one has to pay attention to this.
There's kind of a lot more etiquette rules you could get into but this answer has already sort of gone beyond the scope of your question lol. Chinese people wrote rites books over the many dynasties so actually there are descriptions of how these greetings were done and over time and that's how they are replicated in dramas and movies.
Four Seasons Manor (四季山庄): Set Layout, Part Three!
This is the third and final post detailing my set sleuthing adventure, looking for the sets that make up Word of Honor's Siji Manor. If you're stumbling over this post in the wild - hi! I draw architectural drafts of cdrama sets, as accurately to the show as I can. A huge amount of research goes into creating my art, and so far no set location has been as elusive as this one.
Split across two sets - one located in Hengdian World Studio's Spring and Autumn Tang Park, and the other in Hengdian's Huaxia film studio - this post is the final part uncovering the layout of Siji Manor. (And nothing will make sense if you read this post first, go back to part one and part two!!)
A reminder, before we dive right back into the breakdown of my completed birdseye view, that this last part will cover the main courtyard of what I have dubbed the "interior" Siji set, highlighted in red below:
Let's dive in!
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The Main Courtyard
The main hall (6), the largest building in this set, is what I and @minnarr, who shares my brainrot 🙏 and has been a great help in this process, have been calling "Everlasting."
This is because sign over the entrance reads, "萬古長青" (wàn gǔ cháng qīng), which to my layman's knowledge translates as "Everlasting and Evergreen," an idiom that can be extrapolated to mean "forever green throughout the ages," which describes a noble spirit or deep friendship that will last forever, like an eternal Springtime:
In the above screenshots, you can see that Chengling's training area (9) is set up in front of this main hall, and over his head in the third picture, you can just about see the moon window that is a feature of WKX's room.
Importantly, the pavilion (10) just about seen behind Chengling's training area, marks a de facto boundary for this set as it appears in WOH, as the camera angles of these episodes never never stray past it. For a long time - until I began to watch Mysterious Lotus Casebook and Heroes, which handed me the final puzzle pieces to rule out this set as part of the film parks - I thought the entire set must finish just to the right of the pavilion.
That is not so. If I pull up some screenshots from MLC and reintroduce the scant few photographs I've found of the "Mansion Scene" Huaxia set itself from part two, you can see this main courtyard in full:
In these photos and screenshots, we can now see the main courtyard almost in full: the main building with its projecting entrance (I'm unsure if the term portico applies to Asian architecture); the pavillion to its left, standing opposite Building 8 which we will come to in a moment; and Building 11 at the end of what, in MLC, is a central pathway - but that I have interpreted in my own drawing to be a path of scattered stepping stones like the rest of the set, considering the smaller courtyard (5) - as discussed in part two - appears to be taking on the role of a more formal courtyard.
'Everlasting' and 'Gentle Winds'
For a moment, though, I need to draw us back to the main building. This building - Everlasting - is very important as, by vehicle of drama magic, this is where the two Siji sets conflate.
In episode 24 we cut from a shot of the main building in the exterior Siji set, whose sign reads "風輕雲淡" (fēng qīng yún dàn), or "Gentle Winds and Light Clouds," to this interior shot of Everlasting:
And to confirm that this interior shot is Everlasting, or building 6, we return to MLC, where we are treated to an outside-to-inside shot of the build, whose inset floor matches that of WOH's Everlasting building, seen clearest in episode 24, above, and episode 28:
(I do have more screenshots that I may add in later, but right now I'm running out of steam, please just take my word for it. 😂)
Cold River Room
Now, unfortunately I've been unable to place the medicine room, in which ZZS grinds herbs, in what photo resources I have of this film studio. Likewise for the room I've taken to calling the "infirmary" (where WKX takes a healing bath after his confrontation with YBY). Equally as unhelpful, there's simply no discernible exterior details seen from inside these two rooms that I can dig my research claws into and try to identify a placement or orientation for them:
The room they spend their first night at Siji Manor in, however, is a different story. That room - dubbed as the "Cold River Room" by Minna - is Building 8.
This was quite easy to place, thanks to this screenshot of a behind the scenes video (that I've since long lost the link to, unfortunately - if you have a link, I'd be very grateful if you share it with me so that I may add the source). Here, we can see the column inscriptions on Everlasting through the window:
So I can confirm this building to be the room they spend their first night as Siji in, seen here behind Chengling as well as in a MLC screenshot - showing its place across from the pavilion clearly:
The Pond
The last part of the main courtyard - and of this set breakdown overall - is the pond and Building 11:
I had suspected their was some kind of water trough or strip of pond between the seating area (4) and the pavilion (10) for a while, but never had the resources to confirm it. I still can't. However, a film studio's entire purpose is to shapeshift from one design brief to another. Sometimes, there is a pond and sometimes there isn't, as these two images show:
The left image is a photograph from the article about Hengdian's film studios linked above, taken from the seating area (4), while the right image is a screenshot from Heroes episode 13, the camera positioned in front of Building 11. I simply decided that I liked the pond there, so I included it in my Siji layout.
As an aside, in this scene in Heroes, with the camera panning just a bit further right, we get a lovely clear shot of the archway from the formal courtyard (5) to this one:
Finally, we come to Building 11. You'll notice that I called the courtyard of the QHZ snow scene in WOH a "formal" courtyard (5), on account of the clearly defined, linear paving.
However, it doesn't have the large gate of a main courtyard:
This courtyard, the one with Everlasting, does. The winding steppingstones used as paving in the Siji set dressing of this location takes away from the formality of this courtyard that, once you see it in its entirety in shows such as MLC or Heroes, it certainly has. To that point, Building 11 - or rather, structure 11, as may be more appropriate to call it now - is actually a large gateway. This is easiest seen in Heroes, episode 13:
Of course, that doesn't mean we have to designate it as a gateway in the Siji layout. I don't think it's meant to have that identity, based on the above - well, it's not meant to have an identity at all. It's never seen in the show. But, given the Siji set dressing and the resemblance it bears to Building 8, the Cold River Room, I might consider giving it the identity of one of the rooms I've been unable to locate - the infirmary, or the medicine room.
Let me hear your thoughts!
I'd like to hear your suggestions and thoughts on that. On all of it! Because despite all of this research, I am still left with the gargantuan task of drafting it all into a finished piece. And as such, I am still faced with the dilemma I began to outline months ago in part one:
How could I merge these two very different sets together? Should I merge them together?
I have rambled ideas at friends about presenting an architecture draft that is simply reportage - showing both sets, and summarizing the information I've given you all here before making suggestions on how they could combine into "one true set".
But on the other hand, do I draft the Siji I see emerging in the crossover of these two sets - the one I can feel starting to take shape in my brain? And then simply offer this research up as the facts.
There's still a long way to go, but thank you for being here! As always, if you'd like to support my research madness and help fuel my many artistic endeavors, please consider donating to my kofi or checking out my print shop:
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And happy new year! I hope 2024 brings you happiness and opportunity in all that you wish ✨
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