Friday, December 14, 2018

December 14th, 2018. Focus: Concept Art & World Building

The video is still loading, so onto the rest of the creatures.

-mythical birds
-dragons, wyverns
-golems
-regular animals
-elementals

Starting on mythical birds, there are a lot of different legends about magic birds so I'm going to find a list. I did not find a list. To clarify I didn't find a lot of mythical birds other than the usual Phoenix and Thunderbird myths. So I've decided to not include mythical birds in my world, there isn't enough variation to separate it from creatures such as elementals. So mythical birds are being scraped.

Onto Dragons and Wyverns, firstly I'll clarify that there is a difference. I learned this while looking into the dragons in Skyrim. The dragons in Skyrim are actually Wyverns, they have two legs, plus wings. Dragons have four legs, plus wings. The only other difference I found between the two is that Wyverns are apparently smaller. So I'll be working with that as a basis for their appearances, as well as having smaller Dragons and Wyverns be weaker at magic. I'm going to have both creatures live in mountainous regions due to historical references and their ability to thrive in said environments. Dragon and Wyverns, similarly to humanoids in the world can use any type of magic, depending on their souls and magic capacity. Which ranges in the levels between 6 and 26, I wanted there to be a lot of variation in dragons. That includes personality as well, I want Dragons and Wyverns to be equal in mental capacity as humanoids, maybe even smarter in general. As for social structures, I think dragons would be more likely to live separately or in small communities of two or three. Wyverns would mostly live in groups, with weaker Wyverns banding together in large packs of 20-30.

Golems are different from the other creatures in the world, being unnaturally brought to life through magic. A lot of how they would work would depend on who in the world made them. Such as a character with weaker magic wouldn't be able to create a Golem that has a personality or the ability to use magic. Golems are basically the magical equivalent of programmable robots. So I'm just going to play loosely with Golems in the story, basing their abilities on the character who created them.

Just going to sneak in between, the video has finished loading so now I'm waiting for it to upload to YouTube. Back to work on creatures...

Regular animals are regular animals, same as real life. Though that does raise the question, how do regular animals survive with such powerful predators living in the same environment? Answer to that is population growth ratios. Regular animals would reproduce more often than the other creatures, like how rabbits do in comparison to wolves.

Last but definitely not least, these are my favorites actually, Elementals. Elementals, unlike Aetherals, are physical animals. With their magic linked to a single element each. Though due to their physical forms their magic is weaker than Aetherals, they can directly interact with the world. Appearance wise they would be influenced by their individual elements. Using Lina, my character's familiar, an air elemental ferret as an example. She has a light blue and white tint to her fur, and weighs very little in comparison to a regular ferret. They would have levels between 17-23, with rare ones reaching levels 24-26. their personalities would depend on their elements but would also be distinct from it, having their own force of will. They would live close to their elements, depending on the animal and element whether or not the live in groups.

So that's all the non-humanoid creatures in the world, I'll do concept pieces for these creatures in my next post. I'm not finished with this post just yet though, the speedpaint is finished uploading so here's that...


Now I'm done.