TOPIC: So much for the SneakPlate

Been Co-GM-ing a game of Edge of the Empire/Force and Destiny, and figured I'd whip up a doodle of one of our PCs for the kid's graduation.

Still need to clean up the face and smooth out the rest of the detailing, but posting to talk about it since keeping it a surprise is frustrating, hah.

Ditched the pencil lines and otherwise cleaned up and detailed everything but the head.



Also other tweaks like making the saber hilts thinner and fixing the trooper's reflection so that the front feet matched up.

Dude you constantly surprise me with your artistic abilities! You're making the rest of us look bad!

Seriously, that's awesome looking. I wish I could "doodle" that well.

If it's any consolation, I take *forever* to get anything done. I'm constantly flip-flopping between interests, so I never develop the speed that comes with developing a particular skill.

Aaaand out of time. This is as far as I got before having to run to the printer.



Mostly brightening the hair and cleaning up the colored layers.

Aaaand a quick overview of the process, in case anyone was interested.

Hi Kouri,

I've watched this thread over the past few days and I just wish I had a portion of your "Unfulfilled Potential", that it is some serious talent. I think you and NeBosa should have been professional Illustrators. I hope the recipient of this picture treasures it...thanks for sharing.

For Tyeth

Saber electronics expert and graphic artist. Quite the creative skills sir!

Thanks Ty. I don't know that I'd call any of it talent so much as near-obsessive dedication. Most of my free time in high school (and half of the class time, honestly) was spent studying "Dynamic Anatony" and "Dynamic Figure Drawing" while scribbling in whatver sketchbook and/or printer paper I'd get my hands on. I'd like to think I have at least a basic grasp of figure drawing - but my struggle was always *what* to draw, and without any ideas to convey, I wound up avoiding drawing when it became more of a headache than a release.

Prop building wound up being a lot more fun since I no longer had to figure out *what* to do, but *how* to reverse-engineer an established desig - which I personally find to be a much easier thought process. Past couple of years have been near-exclusively lightsabers since I've always been fond of swords, and I've been looking for an excuse to learn about electronics.

Beyond that, art's pretty much just about the end result - so cheat any which way you need to to get there. I had details on the character, but no idea what to do with him, so I worked through it step by step.

1) Character's played by the same buddy I built Alternate Apprentice for, so let's use that as the character's main saber.




2A) The character just picked up a second hilt from a dead NPC, and the player expressed some interest in dual-wielding, so let's go with a dual wield photo.

2B) The player would probably prefer two light-blue blades, but I thought the picture would be more interesting with two different-colored blades. I imagined building both sabers with a light-blue style LED in each, so one would get an Enhanced Blue Day Blade, the other a Photon Green Day Blade - hence the Sky and Lime sabers in the photo.

2C) This needed to be more interesting than a just-standing-there-character-study, so I had to hunt down a decent dual-wielding pose. Settled on the photo of Play Arts Kai Cloud. Also wound up liking the big-pocket pants on the figure as a design element for our wannabe smuggler.

3A) Outfit needed to be designed. Player wanted some sort of black coat to focus on the character's smuggler background. The lightsabers and force-sensitivity were just tools - we're not dealing with a Jedi here.

3B) Last session, Character looted the armor from this defeated boss:



With help from another character, he managed to purge the armor of it's dark side influence, but damaged some of the armor plating in the process. More was stripped away to save weight, and what remained was used in construction of a new armored coat. You can see modified parts of the shoulder pads, arm braces, shin guards, and belt in the drawing.


4) Okay, so Character is jumping/running - well he needs *somewhere* to run. Game takes place during the OT, during the gap between ANH and ESB, and I realized one of those oval-lit corridors would be neat. A search for "star wars corridor" brought up a bunch of result, and I lucked out in finding one to repaint that looked like it would fit the character.

5) Well *why* is the character running? I'm joking with myself that he failed a Stealth roll (even with the bonus the armor offers), so let's throw a storm trooper in back. Found one at a nice enough angle with a blaster bolt ready to go.

6) Last bit's a quirk of the player/character to use (or abuse, depending on which GM you ask) the Character's Force-Enhance ability to permanently increase his Agility stat. Use of the Force is often invisible in the movies, but I wanted some visual representation that the character was enhancing his speed through the Force, so I slapped a white aura and *woosh* to the figure.

HI again,

Great insights, and I thought my backstory for myself and my saber designs were deep. Maybe this character disturbed a Mouse Droid during the Stealth Roll?

And the Force Enhancement Aura works, LucasFilm blurred Ewan and Liam in Phantom when they Force Sprinted away from the Droidekas...and the "Whoosh" didn't do Nike any harm!

Would like to see more of these images if and when you feel creative again.

For Tyeth