Livahk Female Front Final

Alright, she's finally done, and you probably won't see any new posts of her for a while. But before I call her done, time to go on and on and on about the design with my good ol' wall o' text. A form of rambling so intense it requires two words to be shortened with apostrophes to describe it.

To reiterate, she was by far the hardest Livahk design so far. What with using the general proportions laid out thus far with the guys but also being lady-shaped and waffling on just how lady-shaped to make her, and worrying about small details and the color scheme and drawing that ring pattern inconsistently and making her clothes and armor consistent without being too redundant and the perfectionism and the fact that once again I did not draw the 3/4 model view in a symmetrical pose! SYMMETRY! Also it remains a pain to do good linework with a non-widescreen Wacom pad causing horizontal distortion and awkward stepping in my drawing. That definitely needs replacing, but I sure can't afford a Cintiq right now, and that's what I would like to upgrade to. So on that note, if some generous and awesome person maybe had a (ideally the larger size) Cintiq they didn't need, and wanted to give it to me, I would be extremely grateful and happy. And return the favor with art made with it, if it helps. Not that it's very likely, but it couldn't hurt to put that out there. But I digress (quite frequently, in fact.)

You've probably already seen the basic non-combat outfit, but here's the upgrades. Once again Level 2 is impossibly form-fitting and needlessly elaborate leather which would never have any realistic justification as far as difficulty of production versus utility in battle. But it does look fancier while leaving the metal options mostly open. Also, in her case it's probably the busiest yet, which is good as far as showing that yes, I can compete with those Korean MMOs and their incredibly complex outfits, and the busier school of character designs in general. And she still has a bit of that Kingdom Hearts feel, I'd say, which is a good thing. As for level 3, once again, ridiculously thick white and gold plate mail with suspicious gaps in coverage and general visual flow issues. And in both cases, as is currently the plan, only changes for the upper body. Now, for some extra fun, some background justification for some of the general Livahk themes. If you've noticed their love for single vertical stripes, such as the ones down their arms, those are meant to evoke the stripe that runs down the center of many of their faces. In their culture, it's considered an enviable trait for both genders, and has become a theme of their clothing design. As for that super thick plate mail, their armor philosophy is all-or-nothing. In battle, they try to take blows on the plates which are so thick as to withstand pretty much any standard weapon. As for taking hits on the non-covered places, well that's the magic of non-specific game damage and creative license. Back to being semi-serious, complete coverage like that would be too heavy and make it hard to move, so they only cover key parts. The forearms get the huge bracers to make use of the fact that mole people evolution has given them very strong forearms, both in terms of muscle and bone. If you look at her level 3 version, even her arms are pretty thick. (On that note, the poofy sleeves were my way of keeping that consistent while avoiding her looking too manly, and I did quite a bit of experimentation on level 3 before deciding to drop the sleeves for that version.) So, due to those strong forearms, instead of holding shields, they just kinda stick them on their arms and free their hands up for the two-handed weapons they seem to prefer.

Now, on to the weapons. First off, I had a hard time deciding if I should make a separate image for the spears, but since putting the full views in here was important for scale, I put the detail shots in too. The detail versions are mostly for the difference in texture, which is primarily being cleaner and shinier with each step up. In the process of designing the spears I did some spear research for ideas, and because spears are possibly my favorite type of melee weapon, depending on if you group battle scythes in there. Speaking of which, in the process of reading up on spears, I found that there is actual historical precedent for serious scythe fighting, which is very cool. But moving on to the slightly more important point, the level 2 spear is either an old-fashioned halberd or more likely, a voulge. Their are many many sub-categories of spear, but it seems there's some overlap. At this point I can't decide which of the two options sounds cooler, and it should be noted that "voulge" actually ends with a soft g sound, not a hard g. Level 3, however, is clearly a glaive. It also was originally a shorter Zangetsu on a pole, which happened without consciously thinking of Bleach at all. So most of the work was de-Zangetsu-ising it after I realized that, and trying to make it seems fancy without being beyond Livahk style fancy. For another piece of story fluff, I'm thinking that particular weapon shall be referred to as the "mole ear," due to the blue gilding on the blade making a shape similar to the tips of their ears. And while reading up on spears I found that lots of old weapons tend to have strangely simple descriptive names like that, especially if you translate them. Back to story fluff, though, some historians have argued that the design is actually based on a wing, but in either case, the debate has mostly been put aside since the meteors hit and survival became a daily struggle.

Well, that concludes my likely record-setting Comments section, my commendations to anyone who actually read all that. Who needs to post frequent Journals when I can just write comments longer than most Journals?

Mostly drawn and entirely colored in Photoshop.