For lack of a better thread, fuck it, I'm just gonna post my own doodles. Don't like it? Whatever, the thread can just die. Got questions about these fantasy characters and wanna see what they can do? Ask and I'll doodle some poses.Here's one, she lives in a city in a time equivalent to our late 80s-early 90s. Can't figure out her fuckin name, so for now it's "Skunk". Yeah, really. She has many enemies and frustrates those who work with her because her motives are unclear, her motto is "Trust, then Truth". She's seen what can happen to someone who knows something they shouldn't, even accidentally. In a city full of organized crime syndicates running the place and the use of lie detectors, knowledge always has the potential to be dangerous.
Here's Iris. Her story takes place in an equivalent to our 17th century. A former princess now turned fugitive, she works against the Hemelians and their greatest magical work - giant clouds that can be shaped for human habitation and can control the weather. They are used as sources of surveillance and even weaponized, and the effects on the environment are already noticeable in the damage caused. Iris vows to break up every last one.
>>7171378this could've easily been in oc discussion with the rest of the people posting characters >>7157864
>>7171386nah, let OP have the spotlight
This is Maurus, a member of a royal family who has gone rogue. Instead of participating in war games for the most favorable trade deals and tariffs, he intends to win over multiple kingdoms by summoning Rex, a powerful monster that nearly wiped out the region hundreds of years before. Everyone is hell bent on killing him, but his prodigious ability with casting spells and summoning makes this dififcult. He is assisted by two warriors who bicker between each other about whether the outcome is better or worse to kill Maurus and keep increasing his power.
In yet another story that takes place in a place not unlike the middle east, an escaped slave is nearly killed, but manages to steal a lamp that contains a formidable warrior. This gets Almad entangled into the nature of hunting for "eyes", magical relics that seem to make wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye possible to see, along with other effects based on the properties of ultraviolet light, infrared, radio waves, etc. He will have others help him solve a mystery and take on the might of the sultans.
Finally, there is the story of Ginger Bronson, a notorious privateer who finds that the age of battles at sea may be coming to an end when one kingdom, against sanctions and other measures, has the technology to create the world's first flying fortress led by the mysterious General Swanson and his order of knights, the Birds of Prey.
He'll be either Felix or Oswald, a Prussian-inspired man familiar with cloud form technology, who will be Iris' first and greatest ally in her adventure. He fights with guns and machinery infused with magical relics.
Florence, the eerie king of Hemelia and the one who helped to create giant inhabitable clouds that have caused so much suffering. His cape has many magical spells within it that can be cast, and flowers even bloom from his cape and in the grass in his wake.
ngmi, due to bad taste
>>7171396Cool design! It should be too silly, but it somehow works and looks actually badass. Can you tell us more about Swanson or is he meant to stay mysterious? What's the idea behind those characters anyway, are they for a comic?
>>7171426Swanson's a guy who's just exhausted. He's been king for nearly forty years now, and all the while he's been trying to keep a kingdom running on exhausted coffers, pilfered by the former king and those who made out like bandits after that former king had a debilitating stroke. Swanson navigates around sanctions and other things damaging to his country with the help of a natural resource that could very well support the world's first ever flying machine. Swanson has won people over with his calm, stoic and focused demeanor, not at all like the last king. He's kind, even if he doesn't show it with his face. And he hopes that this flying machine will be his ace in the hole to prevent his kingdom from getting cut up like a cake for the others waiting for it to collapse.He walks with a limp because when the stroke-addled king, in his sole act of selflessness and pride for his kingdom, declared Swanson king before dying from another stroke. Others who were hopeful really didn't like that, so they attacked Swanson in the middle of the knight, with one injuring his leg so bad it looked like it was going to have to be amputated.He's 7'1" and nearly sixty, so while he moves slowly, he's decked out with plenty of magical relics that give him mobility and insane power. His gestures are slow and measured.Glad ya like the design - I can't be bothered to take the designs too seriously, I do want an element of whimsy to everything.
>>7171393Love the shapes and expressiveness in your characters. Cool stories too. I would love to read a comic with these guys.
>>7171472I really gotta get over myself and just draw a comic already. People keep tellin me to, but I keep talkin myself out of it cause it won’t look as good as like Prince Valiant or Flash Gordon. Maybe I should, even if I know for a fact it’ll be messy sketches.
>>7171920Please do! Don't let the idea of perfection stop you from ever starting. I'm struggling with this myself and it's killing me inside to not be creating the things I have been dreaming about. There are plenty of webcomics with a "simple" style and they still manage to have a large following. What's most important is the story and the strong expression of the characters, and you have plenty of that. I really love these drawings in >>7171393, how you can really tell what kind of characters they are just by looking at them. Such great sense of action and dynamism. I think I will study them later. You most definitely have the skills, go for it!
>>7171920Motherfucker you have the necessary skills (judging by what you've posted itt), just get over yourself and do it. You don't even have to show it to us right away, just make comics for yourself for a while.
>>7171441Thanks for sharing all this, I love the backstory just as much as the design, the relics are really the cherry on top. Would bend the knee and pledge allegiance to him>>7171920I've made the mistake to take almost a decade until I finally got my comic out there. My advice is to just start and start small. Don't draw the whole epic, draw one intriguing scene that can stand on its own. Smaller projects, smaller stakes. If it's good it can be a starting point for something bigger, if it doesn't turn out the way you had hoped, you still finished a project and learnt where you need to change your approach. You only get good at drawing comics by drawing them, don't wait because it won't get any less daunting. It would be a shame if those stories only ever stayed in your head
>>7171378these are all gay tumblr tier "oc's for the sake of oc's". Not interesting at all.
>>7171378These are interesting, Very Nice!
>>7172330>>7172386>>7172511Thanks for the encouragement, man. I’ll make a point to draw a chapter. Here’s a phone doodle, the planet all this takes place on ain’t that much different than Earth from a distance. Comin up with a name for it’s torture. I thought because it’s got a moon, one astronomer might have named the planet they live on “Mother” or “Brother”. Mitrida or Adelphos. Or because it’s fourth in the solar system, Quartus/Quarta.
I came in here looking to be a hater but these are pretty nice. I like the funky silhouettes. Carry on, anon
>>7171378These are really cool, i like your style and the designs are simple yet characteristic, you should do at least a one-shot with these characters>>7171386No, threads from people that actually draw are 1000 times better than the general schizo posting and drama threads, there should be more threads like this one
>>7171412don't talk about yourself like that
>>7171389My favorite of these, very nice work OP.
Oop, almost let this thread get away from me. Here's a few poses of Iris. Her weapon of choice is an umbrella, a magical relic that's belonged to her family for generations - the Oog Vanderstorm (Eye of the Storm).
And one more before I hop off to work.
A list of hard and fast rules for the creative universe all of these characters exist in. Trying to go against as many clichés as possible.
>>7178031>>7176581>>7176483>>7171441>>7171400>>7171399>>7171396>>7171393>>7171384>>7171378Just post the fat characters already
The origins of the planet that all these stories take place on.
On zones.
>>7171378I like it. I like that you've got a bunch of OCs, a little world with magic systems and powers and you can draw decently, so thanks for sharing. keep at it, I want to see the webcomic of all this someday. You should find a way to host a website and have all this organized for viewers to be able to look at character profiles, world dossiers, etc.
Cults also exist in the world of Key to the Kingdom. They’re a bunch of weirdos that have mutated themselves and their followers.
Oh no ya don’t. Admission - this design ain’t mine, Midjourney made it. I’ll post that next.
>>7180601>>7180605I won't get on your case for using AI for ideas, but I feel someone of your skill already doesn't really need to. Did you really have nothing in mind?
>>7180605>"this is sweet, I wonder who made this">scroll up>midjourneyWe're truly in the end times for artists, huh
>>7180658I try not to be 1:1 with what the AI generates, but man, sometimes it just spits somethin out and I just can’t leave it to get buried. I hate it when people post an AI image and go “mine”, but I try to at least take it further. Give it a name, a purpose, a story to be in. Maybe it qualifies legally as bein transformative. Though I hope one day that it comes naturally r ought to me to no longer need AI. But AI fucks up all the time, too, so it’s been really effective at drawin out those visceral disgusted reactions from people. It lends itself to monsters extremely well.For the next doodle, relics - the crown jewel in human achievement. Over thousands a years of trial and error, relics are used to bolster civilization and technology. Of course peasants don’t get to enjoy them, it’s mostly royalty and well to do tradesmen. In the world of KttK, magic is not people runnin amok with magic wands chanting spells. The exact formulas used to summon beasts of burden, enhance tools and construction, provide protection and so on are state secrets. Of course the occasional spy, disgruntled noble looking for a payout, and the chaos of war can lead to formulas leaking out. It also gives me an out to not have to make sense of what exactly goes into a formula, he chemistry is beyond me, hahaha.
An incomplete history of relics. The first were taken from active magic zones, fragments of rock, sticks, and even bones of decomposed monsters. This led to the first magical weapons as well as casting spells. Then in the bronze age, wands and staffs came about, but because of security problems in how easy they were to steal and create, this was eventually done away with. To make it harder for magic to be stolen, wizards and other elites would get a chance to dip their hand into a hot cauldron, almost always wrapped in a protective seal, and this would infuse (and often times mutate) the person's hand. This process became more sophisticated as time went on, allowing for submersion of individual fingers for more spells that could be cast with one hand. The hand almost always suffered some form of damage, and it's theorized that the healing process combined with magic led to mutations in the hand such as extra fingers, shrinkage, growth, and so on. It wasn't until further down the line that the law would be more ingrained into society and able to stop thieves, along with stricter control by the state, that elites stopped submerging their hands, and wearable relics became the norm. As more time went on, this applied even to more delicate materials such as fabrics.
>>7180660no we aren't ganeej
>>7171392Hey, I like this one. Reminds me of the old sword and sorcery pulp novels.
This thread has been pushing me to work on my concept, I put a lot a things down on paper that I hadn't before. It also helped me to figure out the major story beats for one a my stories all the way to the end, so I'm elated to have broken that logjam. It all just poured out of me. Now to do the same with my other... six stories. Working on multiple stories sounds crazy, and maybe it is, but it's also helped me to make each one feel distinct. If I want to do something cool with one, I'm forced to confront my other stories and to do something different. If I stall on one, I jump to another.I have a great deal of confidence in saying that Key to the Kingdom (KttK) will probably end up being my life's work. A story for our time where fantasy and reality don't have to be opposed to one another, something to make us reconsider what "progress" is, while also appreciating human ingenuity and drawing attention to smart solutions people made not just to survive, but thrive in the distant past. For as much fantasy as there will be with summons and zones with weird landscapes and monsters, there will be attention and utility to inventions like the parachute and kites. To encompass a truly global perspective that shows that we're all in this together, and that we can find a place of respite or the best of friends even in the worst of times. That's what I'd like, anyway.
>>7184545>>7171378I should have mentioned that these two go together. "Skunk" lives in a time several centuries beyond the other characters seen in >>7171393 , she lives in our equivalent of the late 1980s-early 1990s, in the site of a large impact zone from a meteorite known as "Heartland", and the city that has grown in the giant crater is known as "Bullseye". For reasons too detailed to get into here, Heartland is its own independent nation-state that was formerly a mega-prison complex, so the city is more like a war zone/amusement park than a public space, run by five criminal syndicates working together to maintain a delicate balance. Skunk has many enemies, and the few friends she has, she frustrates with a major goal she has and never makes clear. Bullseye is no utopia, but it's not quite a dystopia, either, most people are happy or have gotten used to living in a violent and chaotic environment. Even here, people have good friends and places to hang out and forget their troubles for at least a little while.>>7183507I gotta read more fantasy novels to see if anything jumps out at me as interesting or gives me ideas.Is there anything /ic/ would like to see me draw relating to KttK? An active magic zone? A monster? A setpiece?
>>7184545The magical land of… Rockford, IL
