(Mild flashing/eyestrain warning for the second half! I'll post a slower version below that's less flashy and let's you see the details)
A short Morrowind animation for a MAP (Multi-Animator Project).
It was fun trying different methods of animation (no reference for Nerevar, rotoscoping a 3D model for the ring, and a video reference for the hand) and letting myself use a loose sketchy style!
YouTube Link
Version with the second half slowed down (link because Tumblr is dumb about having more than one video in a post):
deciding to accumulate all of these into a singular post to make my life easier + so that I can have some more food for you all,,, anyways.
My. My son. Clementine my baby my sweet boy,,, Some of these ARE actually reposts but the first 2 are for sure not :3! (I think at least LMAO), enjoy this :3! I must go back to my hole /silly
what do y'all do when it comes to naming an oc? specifically, an oc that refuses to be named? you know they have a name, they know they have a name, but it's a secret they're keeping from you, which is completely unfair because *you made them* but they just stick their tongue out at you all annoying-like and then tell you their favorite flower. :/
oc time again! + her town & culture (heavily inspired by pre-roman italic populations)
she is suri sauthon (later suri laran, after her marriage). her story is linked to my swtor imperial agent, but most of her life for like. the one year away where she meets him, is spent in a town in the mountains of mirial.
despite mirial being cold and desert, and many cities developing underground, her town flourishes thanks to a force nexus, venerated in the form of an ancient, sacred, alive crystal. the ecosystem of that mountain depended on what "the horned crystal" was capable of giving them, but mirialans couldn't live off of that alone, so they developed trade and some rudimental technology, even if oftentimes it was bought thanks to the highly profitable trade of a plant used to make medicines that slowed down aging and had overall healing properties.
note: everything that's generated by this nexus has these healing properties BUT they have to be processed, except for those who bathed in the waters of the cavity under the crystal - the "real" nexus, but not the worshipped one. the waters were sacred but they were not thought to be miraculous, unlike the crystal, who instead was thought of as the keystone of the ecosystem: without it, everything would fall apart (and that is partially true: the cavity was the "real" nexus but thanks to the crystal, also strong in the force, the properties were spread all over the mountains). those who bathed in the cavity's waters - so, all of the town, who had a sort of baptism there - could eat the plant, make whatever food with it, and not only that plant, but everything generated by the nexus, that, again, had similar properties. this allowed people to live up to normal life-spans without advanced medicines or, much, really. to those who didn't live there, though, after the processing, had incredible effects, slowing down aging - for those who took it regularly - and making people able to live up to half a century more than the average]
originally, there were four tribes of nomads that lived thanks to horned farm animals that decided to settle down into one bigger town and other smaller settlements, to live off of transhumance. this division of the tribes stayed into the political and social organization: every person belonged to one tribe specifically, and had slightly different rituals and culture. for examples, each tribe had their own priests and healers, with different techniques and traditions. the town, tho, was guided by a group of people in the high priesthood, a position you could reach only by having earned the trust of all tribes. those high priests had many roles: they guided the people into sacred processions common to all the tribes, they managed the trading with outsiders, they did the maintenance of the temple of the summit (the one that functioned as casket to the crystal) and created a special liquid to offer the crystal that helps it grow.
this particular temple was important because 1. it was very visible, from every angle of the town, and it became an important identity symbol; 2. it stored the venerated horned crystal; 3. it had the altar where sacrifices were made for the crystals. that altar had a hole connected to the cavity, that allowed the liquids to reach the underground; 4. it had various symbols: statues representing each tribe + the high priesthood, and typical mirialan tattoos carved into the wood of the trees that served as columns for the temple, symbolizing 8 values that who dared to enter HAD to have; 5. it was on the way to an important lake (called "mother lake" because the lake the town was built around to depended on the waters of that other lake) where they traveled to in important processions; 6. it was said that a the wizard who unified the tribes made it with its magic, making the plant grow to hold the temple's roof. this wizard was, actually, a force user, obv.
BACK TO HER THOUGH: she's daughter of one of the high priests, who was in charge of managing the trades with outsiders, and lives in a house on the mountains with her mother and him. her parents are from different tribes (that's one of the things that earned him trust from the 4 tribes): when a child is born from two different tribes, they don't pick one to allign to, but they're usually linked automatically to the one with more relatives in it (in her case, the father's tribe: she had many uncles and aunts on his side while her mom only had one sister).
later, though, she got quite tied to her mother's tribe due to a mysterious illness that only her mother's tribe healer was able to cure. she spent 4 years (from 10 to 14 years old) living with the healer and learned her secrets. to better study, she wrote them down. when she returned home, she studied to become a priestess with her father. at 22 (the average age: you can't become priest before your 20s), she was supposed to take a test and become a priestess, but the healer of her mother's tribe died and the tribe asked her to take her place. she couldn't technically do that, but both tribes estimated both her and her parents and she was allowed to become both. she then decided to try to become a high priestess, and became one at 25 (a quite young age). being part of the council, she tried to convince the various tribe healers to unite their knowledges and write them down, and eventually made it. healers still remained tribe based but they now had an "upper, inter-tribe level" similar to high priesthood.
years later, the sacred horned crystal is stolen from the temple by some Hutt mercenaries looking for a profit. given the trust she has earned from all the tribes and the fact that her father is the high priest that deals with outsiders (and she's been hearing stories and advice about it since she was little), she is the one tasked with getting it back. without the growing crystal, the keystone to their ecosystem, the village would have lasted only a few years. in hrr quest, she meets imperial intelligence agent tar'x laran and, as they "solve the mystery" and fight to have it back, they get closer. they'll get married and have a daughter, Vegoia (who's the only one who actually will get to the plot of my story. this was all background)
I love the idea of twiyor having another child and Anya having a little baby brother 🥹🥹 I was debating on the hair color and whatnots but ultimately went for black hair since it’s a dominant gene :D
UPDATE:
Thank you for all the love on this art, i didn’t expect it ; A ;
Thank you for all the name suggestions for baby Forger as well - I got a bunch of them on twitter and I think “James” is my fave :D (bc James -> James Bond, i really like the joke fdsoghdf)
lmk if you want to see more of Anya onee-san from me in the future! I really enjoy drawing sibligs sheningans haha
some misc thoughts on ka bue worldbuilding! specifically relating to expressions
more thoughts under the cut!
my main concept for the Expressions as a whole revolves around names. essentially, an Expression can only exist with a literal expression of their Name somewhere in the world - their name being some sort of singular symbol / kanji / radical that represents their form, function, and essentially being. the first physical form of their name is their anchor (Expressions can change anchors though), and the more permanent the anchor is, the more powerful the Expression is. however, the more offerings - aka, further expressions of their Name an Expression recieves, the more powerful they become on top of their preexisting power from the permanence of their anchor. i imagine there's an entire scholarly split in ka bue revolving around whether One Big Elaborate Naming is more powerful or many smaller repetitive names is. for the most part though they both have about the same effect, which is why you see both shinto-style paper prayers attached to the pillars of the little shrine and a significant amount of more elaborate Offerings piled up around the anchor to the Expression.
- bonus thought here about little kids learning to Craft stone into geometric shapes as being the equivalent of vaugardians learning to craft clay into moving change god figurines! ka bue is pretty clearly Against / neutral to change and movement especially compared to Transgender Heaven Vaugarde, so i thought this was apt
- there is also something here about the open-plan nature of the temple (wind can move freely through it, and people can visit and leave as they please) but i don't quite have enough thought here to fulfill it fully in worldbuilding. so i will leave the thought here for someone else to hopefully pick up
- similar to shintoism, i imagine there are a lot of expressions dedicated to unique locations and places. for example, there are a lot of local Expressions (this one is one of them) that are specifically tasked with guarding a certain rural village or blessing a certain graveyard. the bigger and more popular expressions (victory, search, protection, luck, etc) are invoked much more often and by extension have far more elaborate temples though, probably located centrally in major cities.
- bonus thought that i haven't really explored here about a bunch of the most famous temples being underground caves, due to the gem connections.
- these temples would also probably have the expression names carved into them, similar to arabic architecture (see the alhambra's carvings) carving the name of god in stone into their walls. which btw i still think is one of the coolest things humans have done i LOVE spanish and arabian architecture
- some bonus thoughts about gems! i mainly conceptualized them in the doodles as being primarily anchors for expressions (metal and gems are prime expression worship material due to their permanence meaning that you can permanently express the Expression) but i also had a thought while typing up this tumblr post that maybe entire family trees could be represented this way as physical metal-and-gem trees, since odile mentions that people are commonly turned into gems.
- bonus thought here regarding odile's "gems alive" swear - if gems are the remains of passed ancestors, not only is she swearing by her / other ancestors (which is very distinctly east asian) but also saying something along the lines of 'the dead are coming back to life because of how insane this is'. which i thought was funny
- one final scribble regarding prayer flags! i imagine the paper prayers people write to Expressions as filling a very similar niche as shinto ofuda/shide and buddhist prayer flags, that is small throwaway prayers that gain power when accumulated in large amounts. and more importantly they look cool as hell
- i don't know how common prayer trees would be (in my research shintoism commonly worships trees, and china also often venerates especially old trees (there are trees in beijing that are supposedly over 1000 years old, and some that are confirmed over 800 years old) so i think ka bue might do the same? maybe??? trees aren't really permanent though which is kind of more what i was going for in my head regarding their cultural beliefs. you can cut down a tree but you can't easily destroy a gem
do you ever think about how all you used to draw when you were 10 was ponies and that you should still know how to do that, then get an idea and proceed to draw something like these in nearly one sitting and it turns out better than any drawing you've done in the entire past month
sooo anyway does anyone have cutie mark or pony name ideas for them?? lol
fun scene idea that I’ll probably never get around to drawing: someone grabbing a wanted poster from a board or wall only to reveal a missing persons poster featuring the same person as on the wanted poster underneath it (also the reward for them as a wanted person is higher than the reward for returning them when they were missing)