Tuesday, August 28, 2018

WIP - Himni Rek-Aro


Holy smokes, two posts in one week. What is the world coming to?

I sketched this a couple of weeks ago as part of a small art challenge for myself. This is Himni Rek-Aro, a character who appears in The Rebirth Trilogy. She is the last of the four original original characters I drew when I started writing the trilogy as a teenager, once upon a time (the others being Kuma, Cenme, and Nighteye). I've wanted to draw her for a while in order to more fully flesh out her appearance. This sketch needs a lot of work before I ink it, but it's a start. In particular, I need to redo the details of her mask. The wing theme was okay, but it's not what I wanted. I do plan to ink and color this at some point.

So ... a little trivia for you about Himni, since I've been trying to do this more when I post images of individual characters and such:

The gemstones in Himni's mask are a purple-red sapphire and a red spinel, the latter of which represents "intensity" among the Laiuna people. (Side notes - Different colored sapphires, aside from the familiar blue, may also carry special meaning. And, red spinel is one of my personal favorites when it comes to gemstones)

Himni's home is a city called Juk Sul, which is located in a southern range of Genkian mountains called The Gods' Abode. The city is built at a high elevation, which means that cooler temperatures are a norm, and as such, some of Himni's normal attire includes fur lining. Juk Sul has an interesting history that involves rebelling against the Laiuna empire at one point, and one of the carry-overs of that rebellion is represented by the structure of it's citizens' names; Instead of the traditional name format in the rest of Genkai (Surname, followed by Given Name) the natives of Juk Sul use their Given Name first, followed by their Surname. I won't bore you with further details on all that, but yeah.

Okay, now - Setting aside trivia and sketches, I've also come to a decision: While I still have a number of planned works in store for the Legends of Destiny series, along with a couple other series and projects, no more new projects will be started for the next while .... like, years. I've decided that the amount of back-logged projects I have built up is utterly ridiculous and I'm going to start working through the book titles that have already been announced before I begin anything else. This means that titles such as Sovereign Soul, The Gem Duology, at least some Taloner books will be completed in their first draft form before I move on to anything else. My goal is to drastically cut down on the number of books sitting around in limbo, since some of them were announced a long time ago (cough, Sovereign Soul....)

Oh yeah. I guess that means I'd better make an announcement on which title won out as my current main project, huh? Well, look for that post soon!

Monday, August 27, 2018

Fourth Chaos Beast



Another Chaos Beast! Sheeze, I finally got the time and energy to sit down and finish this one. I'll continue to work on the concept art for her, since some of the colors didn't turn out quite right with what I'm seeing in my head.

Okay, so if you've read the trilogy you may be thinking, "Fourth beast? What happened to the third one?"

Don't worry. Beast 3 will be making an appearance in the duology, as I stated before. But that doesn't mean I'm not still developing the rest of the Chaos Beasts, or that none of them will appear in future projects.

So what are some things I can tell you about this Chaos Beast without ruining any surprises? She's female, for one (Yeah, you caught that. I know). Four of the Chaos Beasts are female, actually. The abilities of this one include power over illusion. She is also unique among all other beasts, for a reason that I won't divulge quite yet (sorry). And yes, she does appear in at least one of the book titles that has already been announced. She is also around twenty-five feet total in length, making her a little smaller than Denlupis.