aesaris

[aesaris]

Quest: Identity Crisis

This will be a little bit long winded, more an overall history of Ava and how I got to making Aesaris. I'll try to keep the stuff leading up to actually making Ava brief.

Ella-Rose

Back in January 2022 I wanted to make a new OC to be the subject of my drawings. Give my D&D character a bit of a break. I'm a sucker for blue elf type girls (my D&D character being a siren prior) so that's what I made. She was cute and simple.

The idea here was to eventually create a 3D model of her and do short animations for a tiktok page or something. As if she were living in a world similar to D20 fantasy high or Onward. I tried to expand on her story but felt that the more modern setting I created her for felt a bit flat and I wasn't very excited about it.

But I liked her design so I kept trying her out.

And she was fun to draw! But all these drawings in white voids weren't scratching the story itch. I felt myself leaning more into the fantasy realm. Seems like a no-brainer to focus on that with how much I love fantasy, but it took me a hot minute to get there.

This was the closest I got to her proper fantasy AU before actually redesigning her.

So we move to her recent evolution.

Avariel (Ava) Elys

The main trigger for this new version of Ella was the Oppenheimer soundtrack.

I feel like this is a super common thing I'm discovering among artist. I now know it's a familiar thing for artists to picture their OC while listening to certain songs. Epic cinematics all in my head.

This happens to me a lot, and I did it a lot with my D&D character. But it was nice to have a character outside of that to put in these scenarios. I wanted to be thoughtful about it, for those moments to make sense to an overarching story. Which lead to the redesign.

This song prompted a scene where Ava arrives back to a city - then her home city - where her mother rules over the people, and it is in disarray. Criminals running rampant, people starving, poor management all round.

She climbs the steps of her home, passing different rooms from her childhood now in shambles, on her way to face her mother.

Upon reaching her, Ava's mother responds with anger and blame. That if Ava had been there, the city would not have fell. And Ava feels anger and blame in turn.

An inner turmoil in this moment was born, and this was the catalyst for the rest of the story.

Why was Ava gone? What does her mother rule? Does that make Ava the heir? What happened when she left? Is she going to kill her mother? Why? What happens to the city if her mother dies? Does Ava take over? Just non-stop questions, which were amazing prompts for myself to expand more and more.

And with that I started drawing and developing.

Another big inspiration was the WoW Warbringer animatics - not super relevant to much other than her face structure but the art is amazing and I wish I could draw faces that well and consistent and you should watch them.

I did have some key traits in mind before I started.

Fighter, dextirous, magic.

I didn't want to do a simple sword and shield, and the poses I research for spear fighting made it the clear winner. It would allow me to draw some very dynamic poses later. Lots of flips and jumps and smacking people with both ends of the stick. My previous D&D character was made with the same traits, she had chain scythes. Only the coolest weapons for my fighters.

Her design started to take on more of a uniform look to it. So I thought maybe she works under a royal guard, and she has been tasked with the assassination of leader of this city - which happens to be her mother. There needed to be some time passed for the city to get so chaotic. Maybe Ava ran away from her responsibilities and her mother, went into hiding under a different name. The loss of her daughter sent her into a spin and she lost control over the people. This also led into the thought that there was a larger kingdom at play, and Ava's mother was only a noble under the King. But the territories of this kingdom are vast, and they all have at least one city the nobles reside in to rule over their dominance.

I also really wanted magic to be involved in this world (one of my key traits). A world in which only these nobles or royalty had access too. Which led my thoughts for Ava's abilities towards something that isn't too flashy, so she can still lean on it when she works her way through the ranks of the royal army.

Big inspiration from RWBY's Pyrrha, the effects of Atium in Mistborn, and actually Mirio from BNHA - but more from the perspective of his ability requiring a lot of discipline to actually use. I wanted her to be able to use her abilities to have an advantage in hand to hand combat. So I started to explore her ability of potentially seeing slightly into the future, or manipulating her opponents moves in some slight way to give her the advantage.

The magic system expanded more from there and got very complicated, but I'll leave it at that for now for Ava. The general idea being I wanted her power to make her a more powerful fighter, and I considered what weaknesses to give that seemingly OP ability later.

I explored a couple story moments, as this was the main reason for making her in the first place. I mainly wanted to draw story moments. And a couple of these just pop up here and there when I'm thinking up this stuff. (ideas in this array)

Looking really casual on duty at a party, feeling like her time is wasted watching over the snooty royal court.

Ava facing her mother back in her home. Can you hear the music playing so loud in the background.

Overlooking the city - king is kinda all about himself lets get a big statue in there.

Simple hangouts for Ava and her questing squad

If all these nobles have access to power, the kingdom would benefit from showing the people what they are capable of. A tournament every year where the nobles fight each other to show the people who is in control under the guise of entertainment.

I had wanted to make a 3D model ages ago to animate small bits with and never got round to finishing it. As the world grew, I decided if I could start making 3D models, I would start building a collection of characters and assets to then animate within this world. Like my own personal series. Obviously I don't expect to do that anytime soon being a one woman army, but that is the overarching goal for this whole thing.

So, Ava. A little summary at this point with some additional info I've confirmed for now. As always things may change later.

Ava, heir to a noble house - House Volaris. Father passed away, mother became head of the house (married into family, not a true Volaris).

Living situation got worse, responsibilities falling on Ava with added pressure from mother. Fakes death and runs from home.

Heads to the main city, thinking it would be the best place to disappear. Fighter, living under a false name. Trying to keep her noble birth secret. Working for the royal guard (maybe a silly choice if she was trying to be discrete but she was young and they provided food and shelter for soldiers).

Over the years, building acclaim within the army, promotions all round. Catching the eye of the king to take on more 'delicate' matters.

Tasked with the 'removal' of her mother from her position.

Ava heads back home on a discrete mission.

Basic introductions to Ava! Lots to unpack. Lots more to come.

[aesaris]

Quest: New Beginnings

This is the world of Aesaris.

A fantasy passion project bringing together the familiar likes of humans, elves and other fantastical people with original creatures and locations to boot.

I needed somewhere to track this nonsense process I have. It is a constant work in progress, but I would like to start documenting this journey as best I can. I have a lot of messy notes, it would be nice if it were organised a bit better for self reference.

I am approaching this in a sort of 'bottom up' way. I have a character which started with some basic traits I wanted to include that I find really interesting, and the story and world has evolved from there.

The aim is to build up 3D models and rigs to be able to animate some cool little sequences and shots. A big task for certain.

Ava (Avariel Elys)

Ava is the main character, or well the focus character for building Aesaris. I would like to explore some other POV characters, but the story has not expanded to that point yet.

This illustration is my first exploration I did after getting most of her design down.

Brief introductions. Ava is a fighter working for the royal guard of Dolari, Dolari being the overarching kingdom of Aesaris. She is a dexterous, spear-based elven fighter who is extremely skilled in combat working her way through the ranks. She is tasked by the King to complete assignments and quests around the kingdom.

She may or may not have access to a certain bit of 'magic'.

A lot of her design choices were made around 'what can I draw or animate cool', so there is that.

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Personal Introductions

Hi, I'm Libby. Art is my whole life. I'm very fortunate to be employed as an artist, and most of my free time is also dedicated to art (alongside some gaming of course). I find myself to be more of a generalist for the most part as my focus flits from different mediums. However, I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil, but picked it up digitally 2011. I then went on to study animation at university (heavy 3D focus), and now I'm a professional 3D lighting and compositing artist for animated films. Truly I feel like I'm living the dream and I do not take it for granted. I'm not a professional when it comes to most other roles, but I am fortunate enough to be exposed to the whole process when I'm at work. I'd like to think I'm absorbing a lot of general knowledge while I'm at it. Obviously having a full time job means solo projects are slow, but it doesn't matter how long it takes. Finally I feel I have the ability to start bringing to life all of those cinematic shots and stories I have playing in my head. My younger self would be so excited.

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Inspirations

I'm pretty heavily inspired by World of Warcraft as an overall genre. The depth and complexity to that world is so fascinating and so truly fantasy. It's the best source of whimsy (very important term to me) that I've ever found.

The story, and specifics of the world and the magic, has recently been very inspired by Mistborn. I'm only halfway through the second book and I'm very slow to read (mostly schedule), but that has been a huge influence for building my own magic system.

Other references that have popped up as I go, RWBY, ATLA, Healer series (Maria V Snyder), Arcane, Dragon Prince, Monster Hunter, and the hundreds of artists I follow on instagram. There are countless things I draw ideas from but those are some of the big players for this particular project.