Monthly Challenge: Umbra
This month for one of my discord communities art challenges, we had to make something based on the word "umbra", google refers to this as "The dark center of a shadow" which.... is a complicated concept to express.
I decided to take a less literal approach to this topic and use it as an opportunity to design an alternative outfit for my character Purah, specifically for a fae-court inspired outfit. It could be more elegant and less tactical than her typical Reghed outfits, dipping a bit into Arwyn's designs.
I didnt have specific reference for this design, mainly just trying to practice drafting patterns and using the full range of tools within Marvelous Designer to make something unique. Purah's ice form is always, in some regard, inspired by World of Warcraft's Winterqueen from the Shadowlands expansion though.
One area I am having repeated trouble with is in regards to the weight of fabric being more or less than anticipated. I believe in this design I have seven different materials to design the fabric around, the primary dark blue, light blue, translucent blue, red, black trim, an elastic a gray channeling which I genuinely couldn't tell you what its use is for.
The dark blue primary fabric is meant to be a velvet and folds roughly how I anticipated but there's a problem where my mesh has a lot of faceting in how it falls and I fear this causes issues, especially in the sleeves with bunching. I did try and watch several videos in how to optimize and export meshes appropriately but so far cleaning the meshes up in zbrush has been super difficult.
Character Sculpt: Aisling Sionna
My second character after working on Arwyn from last week, Aisling is Arwyn's wife in our game. This design was much less about learning how the mechanics of Marvelous Designer work and instead focusing on designing a character to give the right impression about their story.
Aisling is a tragic figure, in our game, Arwyn has disappeared for multiple months with no trace and the court that Aisling lives in is slowly dying with him gone. Her character revolves around being this somber figure who, intellectually, is more capable than Arwyn but doesnt have that higher calling as Arwyn does.
For this design I was inspired by Chappell Roan's 2024 VMA red carpet look which features a dark wine sheer dress and very long green and gold coat. Although Roan's dress is sheer in the reference, I decided to treat it as normal cotton as the intention does not align with Aisling's personality.
One interesting part of this sculpt was translating Purah's base body into a different character. A big part of each character design has been focusing on the shape language of the characters and how the same information can be interpreted.
Purah is a triangle, she is sharp and dangerous, as such her design includes much sharper edges and anatomy. In her ice form she is a reconstructed vessel made of ice rather than flesh, therefore she doesn't need much fat. Aisling is the opposite, she lives an an idealic world, she is a circle, a caregiver, a teacher, a proxy mother, so softening out her form is required to properly convey that.
Aisling, left, and Purah, right
This was actually a much harder than expected to find reference, I ended up falling back to some of my books from my early undergrad sculpting and drawing classes, specifically "An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists" by Fritz Schider as it focused on very detailed realism drawings and helped annunciate some of the subtleties of flesh. People just really don't like making references for fat women and it sucks.
This was also one of the first times I got a real chance to sink into better hair creation, largely by using Renaud Galand's hair brush (and knowing how to use it). It helped create a much more natural build up of the hair, although I know the back still needs some adjustments.
Example of use here, this model will be talked about next week :P; A really big difference was due to switching between 'Once Z' and 'Continuous Z' in the Picker Tool, this essentially created two different modes to use the curve tools and cleaned up a lot of the problems I had with it
In her references I largely relied on a single large braid over her right shoulder, however this leaned into the modern phenomenon known as the "Dead Mom Hairstyle" which... was not entirely right? She was supposed to be somber and mature but the immediate implication that she was the tragic figure is what a lot of younger critiquers immediately took away from her design rather than her being a pillar of how much has changed around her.
Some of the feedback I got from her design leaned her more towards an Apothecary rather than a teacher, which was not intentional but not far off the mark.
"apothecary person, prob lives in the forest in a cottage. Colors make me think she'd be kinda bleak and gloomy but her expression is happy. So maybe she aint gloomy but she's def,, morosesad sometimes lol. I can see her having a handful of mentees but no more than like 3"
This hits the notion that she is a somber figure, but it implies that her air of maturity reads more as a isolated person rather than someone in a maternal or head-of-house role. This character does enjoy gardening as a hobby, but the natural elements are getting too much importance in the grand scheme of the design.
Halloween Horse
Admittedly, this is a very silly project, however one im excited to see progress.
This project is inspired by my workplace having a pumpkin painting contest, for the uninitiated, I've worked at Tractor Supply Company for 6 years as a Team Member/back-of-house staff. It is the most blue-collar-but-still-retail job I've ever seen. A lot of our clients are local ranchers and farmers, many dealing with the local cattle industry or show horses.
My boss signed me up for the pumpkin painting contest and I immediately knew I had to do something weird with this opportunity for chaos and my masters degree: enter horse.
This idea is inspired by a couple different things; its starting to get around (retail) Christmas time so we've started selling the 2026 Breyer Horse collection, Breyer is a collection of life-like horse models that range in every coat & breed colour to more fantastic fantasy designs. For the past several months I've been getting videos for custom horse models, mainly DeeJayBe Studios, for Breyer's convention: Breyerfest which includes custom independent artist submissions.
Something I'm constantly shocked by is how many industries exist where the tools we get from FIEA are applicable, but the lens for what people want to do is so narrow that they get overlooked.
However this isnt the only reason, I have a secondary desire to make a custom horse model that I can shape as needed and expand the design of. For example, in my dnd game there is a special focus on unicorns due to Arwyn, my unicorn cleric, and his herd of family members. There is a character in here named Lurue, the Queen of Unicorns who, without going super into detail, was captured, corrupted, and turned into Ilisuvee, a manifestation of hatred.
I designed this character a couple months ago with Game Master approval, however I think having a visage of her, either full body or a bust, would be great practice.
As such, a base horse is needed! This is also a good time to practice my 3D printing skills and learn how to properly use my printer (also because Nick keeps asking me to make stuff.... hi Nick).
I started this process making a small test, focusing on how the details would print, refreshing my understanding of printing, and overall making mistakes so I can learn better.
Since this print came out correctly, I could move on to a new benchmark: Key-ing! something I'm vaguely aware of but never put into practice. I used Oasim Karmieh's IMM 3D Printing Keys to ensure I didn't mess up that much (DW I did regardless)
The problem with this print was my animalistic lack of patience, instead of --- y'know, waiting --- I squeezed all three parts of the print onto the same bed and thought things would go smoothly. This, combined with a print error, resulting in many of the braces not printing correctly or putting a large gash into the print, caused the first attempt to be a dud
The current plan, since my boss so graciously gifted me an extra week before we start, is to do the following:
1. print a benchy and ensure the printer itself is fine,
2. If any errors, replace the printer resin with new resin purchased earlier this week
3. If all successful, print each piece of the horse on it's own print bed one at a time
In the meantime, I was gifted a Breyer model of my own (Blake) by an old boss of mine to study the musculature and style choices that Breyer follows regarding the mane, tail, and feathering...I cant have a bald horse after all.
Character Sculpt: Fall-Version Purah
The design for Purah that I've used previously is actually the first death version of her. Upon request of my buddy I started to sculpt a living version of her that was used for most of the campaign. The initial design of her was rooted in a question: would a character cast out on her own lean into her religious extremism or be softened and break free of it? Her original design is fall, will she fall to winter or spring? Unfortunately for us, that has already been spoiled.
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