Aaand here it comes…
Goodbye, immersion, it was nice knowing you.
Aaand here it comes…
Goodbye, immersion, it was nice knowing you.
Sorry I’m terribly silent recent days, but aside from finishing two different un-charr-related things, I also decided to work on something bigger this month. Have a sneak peek.
There’s gonna be a lot of purple…
“At least I die knowing my sisters are free.”
Back in 2013, I did a painting of Almorra Soulkeeper, the most badass general of the Vigil.* And back then, I said she’s not my most favorite charr in the game.
* (before LS3 happened)
And…
neither is this one. But me long and convoluted point is, they both
have what I love about ANet’s little world: a totally awesome backstory
(which I will delve into later).
Kalla, unlike Almorra, doesn’t
really have an ingame design, so this was a fun challenge. There’s only a
few tidbits of lore to go by, some being heavilly contradictory (mostly
the statue and the newly released elite spec art clashing together,
which makes me believe – and don’t quote me on this one – that maybe the
“charr renegade legendary stance” was supposed to be her grandsire,
Pyre). It would have been easy just to copy the mixed message from the
game, but I wanted to take it a step further and practice my design
chops a bit. To create a striking, visually interesting character,
especially if it’s supposed to be a story lead or a prominent figure, is
a bit of an alchemy (not the eternal kind).
So I took the hair,
horns and overall skull shape from the statue, reinforcing it a bit with
some more lioness-esque physique (to push forward the idea of a
fearless badass fighting with and for her sisterhood). The latter,
together with her afforementioned grandsire Fierceshot, provided me with
the basic coat color.
The Renegade spec artwork features a very
prominent set of stripes, but I took a bit of a detour and instead of
just going with dark black tiger stripes, I drew inspiration from skin
painting and tattoos of various warrier cultures and turned the ordinary
stripes into a bit of a warpaint.
Bam, legendary renegade.
(And I was also itchy to try out something that I could use as a “classical painting” for a background somewhere else…)
Artwork sponsored by ArenaNet.
Original image: https://c-t-elder.deviantart.com/art/Kalla-717750651
Progress GIF:
