#CONCEPTUAL PROCESS

[shepscapades]

Souls in the Sand: Concept Art

As I’ve mentioned here and there, I’ve spent the last two years developing an original story inspired by a small Origins+Empires server a few friends and I started planning. The more I developed plans for my empire to be a sprawling overgrown cityscape of ruins and stone framework inspired by the nether, the more I built up this backstory for the character I wanted to play, a small deerfolk boy named Esra. From there, and over months of working and reworking the story and its characters, I’m proud to say I’m coming up on a 100 piece gallery for my Masters Exhibition to display this story in the form of a song-inspired comic, titled: Souls in the Sand.

Over the next month and beyond the date of my exhibition in April, I wanted to start sharing my work here! I thought it would be fitting to first share all of the concept work I did for the characters last semester as I took each character from their old lineup and reworked them from scratch to see if there were any designs I could make more unique or appropriate for the story. This process consisted of four stages: silhouettes, full-body mock-ups, face and head shapes/designs, and experimenting with the final characters’ designs with a set of unique expressions that best fit their personalities and narrative role.

Since each character was reworked separately, the “new” concept lineup is a little disjointed (and some of the characters’ faces actually ended up different from their full-body designs), but I thought it would be fun to line them up to compare the overall cast to their old designs. With each character(s) I post the concept process for, I may share little bits of the work I’m doing or talk a little about their narrative roles as I go, but for now, have Esra!

I know I don’t post original work here often, but I wanted to share parts of this journey with you guys because it’s been very meaningful to me! And I hope all of the work I’ve been doing may at the very least serve as a bit of inspiration or encouragement for us to keep making silly minecraft stories, to keep drawing the characters we love, and to keep being creative in whatever way is meaningful! <3

[arodykeism]

so please forgive this helpless haze im in

[stil-lindigo]

family resemblance.

--

prints

wolf's story (left)

ash's story (right)

[meruz]

That is the most beautiful Burving artwork I've ever seen! ❤🥺❤🥺❤

THANK U I LOVE BURVING.... irving is my favorite severance character. a real yearner.... and it was more a s1 thing but i love the whole thing where his outie is so obviously cultured and surrounded with art and books and music and yet his innie has no access to that and latches onto the smallest points of corporate art and design he has access to... IDK I just wuv him. i had a more straightforward sketch of the plant room scene WEEKS ago but it always felt like it was missing something and then when last weeks episode aired i saw that beautiful train station i was like EUREKA thats what it needed! pillars!!!! and i fully pivoted to work with a reflected composition lol. thank you severance locations team <3

[shroomerr]

Wham bam bam! Couple of Agent stuff!! I was initially just going to post the two images but then it felt a bit empty, so I decided to doodle an interaction between Agent and Mysterion.

More process drawings under the cut for those interested!!

[zaraillustrates]

I had a lot of fun with ideas for my recent ‘Summer Books’ commission for The Wall Street Journal - I love coming up with concepts related to reading. 

Here are all the sketches I sent, including the last image which was the one chosen to proceed to final artwork.

© Zara Picken 2025 www.zarapicken.com

[fisherrprince]

anybody know a better way to export video from procreate dreams because GYAAAHHH

[icewindandboringhorror]

I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :

-

(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )

[dennisboobs]

question for all of you who have considered how dennis operates:

when thinking about dennis' POV, how do you handle his internal thoughts*? would you assume it to be the exact same as the way he presents himself externally, do you think the external and internal are conflicting (ie. he'll think one thing and say another), or is it something else?

writers (including those who haven't published anything!) feel free to elaborate in tags/replies/my ask box if you've got some method to your dennis' madness.

this is NOT about how your characterization may differ from canon, it's about how you would write dennis internally vs externally!

*internal dialogue/POV meaning his own narration/input; how he interprets things, any rumination, opinions on a situation, insight to unexpressed feelings. not just internal monologue/thoughts as unspoken dialogue

[awoefulstudent]

Hello everyone!

My name is Amina and I am a BSc Psychology with Honours student at the University of Hertfordshire. I am also the principal researcher of a study that aims to investigate whether judging category relatedness within semantic memory can be influenced by the level of typicality the items have alongside whether high versus low autistic traits have any effect on the performance of different types of processing.

I am currently taking volunteers for this online study. Any adults aged 18 to 65 can volunteer and you do not need an official Autism diagnosis to take part.

In the study, you will be given an item/ definition/ scenario at the top of your screen and will have to decide which of two following words match best to that using your keyboard. After that is completed you will be given the RAADS-14 questionnaire to complete.

It will take roughly 15 minutes to complete. However, a maximum of 30 minutes is given for the entire study to be completed including the information sheet, consent form, debrief sheet, and the “breaks” given (which are just for momentarily resting your eyes and hands), otherwise I cannot use your data. Please note that this study cannot be completed on a mobile phone or tablet, it must be done on a computer/laptop as the keyboard is required for the study’s completion.

You can completed this study at anytime until 23:59 GMT on Friday 1st of March here:

https://research.sc/participant/login/dynamic/0D915D45-8D85-44F9-9B63-376AF0C70573

This study has been approved by the Ethics Committee at the University of Hertfordshire and is also being conducted under the supervision of Dr. Nicholas Shipp.

Your participation is very important for this study and is very much appreciated.

Thank you for your time!

Many Thanks

Amina

EDIT: Study is now no longer taking participants!!! Thank you all who took part and spread the word of my study, it definitely means a lot to me 💟

[vertigoartgore]

2014's Magneto Vol.3 #1 cover by cover artist Paolo Rivera (and his inker/dad Joe Rivera). Source

[gideonisms]

I want to write a longer sff concept so badly. My most delusional trait is I think if I didn't have to do the dishes I could be finished with my 50k pash/ianthe ntn spinoff

[happyk44]

rin, who is accustomed to being the sole focus of yukio's attention, wondering why it's driving him up the wall when yukio starts spending time with the others without him

[brown-little-robin]

oh I just realized that my interest in anime and my interest in clowns are linked by the concept of "exaggerated silliness". hmm!!!

[zignifier]

Wrt LRB sometimes I'm so baffled by what people bother to ask me because my charitable assumption will be an image in my mind of the results of a search query using keywords in that question and what failures may have occurred in the transfer of information and I'll start talking like "What did you search for this? When I used [keywords] the results seemed pretty self-explanatory." Or like idk. Baseline I'll assume they've read some Bullshit that comes up when u search something. There are multiple things in this world if you use the most self-evident english search queries for you will just get misinformation. So maybe then I'll start talking as to counter those points instead and they're sooo lost and I'm like ??? and they're like I didn't bother to look it up I didn't search for any texts on this subject. And I'm like. How the fuck can you expect me to have a conversation about this then? We have to like. Have a baseline of implicit assumptions of understanding to talk about this how do you not CARE about that???

[brainless-tin-box]

more knight au doodles

(i know jamie is canonically proficient in horseriding i forgor :sob:)