heyo peeps, once again, no video nor much to show for fenris high, unless you want to see a bunch of 3d furniture being placed in empty rooms. The good news is that there's just less than 10 props to implement , but the bad news is this seems to be taking cgb a bit of time so i'm not sure when that'll be done. Still, things are proceeding at a good enough pace.
androcosm on the other hand i can showmore easily since all i'm doing for it are concepts anyways and they tend to be (imho) more visually interesting.
this week i worked on another of the races that populate the androcosm universe, the aidids, a species of insect/ mammal hybrids that live in a planet with crushing gravity, only mitigated by their physics defying carapaces. As most space bugs go, they have queens that lay eggs and that the much smaller males work and attend for. I started sketching the queen. This is the very first rough concept-
wich didn't go too well, cgb didn't like you could see the eyes being laid and he wasn't into the centipede look either.
i went for another try and wanted to make something more akin to a statue , or a religious idol, something that was imposing and kinda creepy. her abdomen is out of screen and basically composing most of the background wall , while the "braids" are actually ovipositors.
so this one didn't work either for cgb , that wanted the queen to be a bit more mobile, but we were getting closer-
and lastly this is the concept that finally convinced cgb. She looks a bit too much like sheoldred from magic the gathering, but i',m satisfied with her looks. She's creepy and regal enough i think, and the more you look at her the more you realize how inhuman she actually looks. To note, you're not gonna see much of the queen, and you won't be able to visit the planet at all, nor normally encounter any "normal" aidids, because their planet is so hostile and for a reason i'm gonna get into next, but we still needed a visual to understand how she would appear in off planet calls and depictions. Also ofc here you can see the male aidids that are basically giant stag beetle beefcakes.
...that you won't encounter almost ever in their carapaced forms. You see, the chemical composition of their carapace shields them from gravity, but that same property seriously fucks up the FTL technology used in the game. That's why many aidids, and most of the ones the player can encounter are "peeled" aidids, i.e. male drones that get their carapace surgically removed so they can travel the cosmos.
They are all found on the moon of their planet, egzoz, a moon that is completely smooth and perfect for speed racing, a thing that the peeled aidids are a big fan of-
this is the first sketch of the people on egzoz, i wanted to keep the insectile / alien feel of the race , who without their carapace look just like beefy dudes with scars over the majority of their body. We have a mechanic repairing a speedster with some organic resin, an aidid who recently underwent the peeling process and is recovering under a gel blanket that helps reducing the swelling, and a racer boasting his death defying stunts-
but, well, this didn't go well with cgb. They felt too alien and apparently the aidids are big fans of the human race and their freedom, so much that they styled most of their culture on 1950 america, most of them turning into greasers, truckers and bikers. also most of their technology tend to distance itself as much as possible from that of their home planet, taking a banged up appearance that is very unlike the organic biotech that is used there.
so i redid the concept with those details in mind and this was the result. As a last detail, i just learned that their faces can open up like the mandibles of an insect, something i had no idea they could do until like a few minutes ago. It's not a big deal, since when the mandibles are closed their faces are completely human, but if i draw them again, i'll keep that detail in mind.
Anyways, that's it for this week, hope you like these concepts, more to come!