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
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for the oc alphabet soup? im such an enabler *rubs together my little hands like a raccoon* m as in mich
oh ho ho you've done it now /lh
Agent Michigan is my main RvB OC. My favorite OC I've ever created. My personal blorbo, my love and joy, the light of my life. I'd do anything for that stupid fucker, including bending around previous plots to make sure she stays alive (I've done that at least a few times).
Agent Michigan (mostly known as Mich) (real name Cascade Locke but only a handful of ppl know that) is the younger sibling of Agent York, her dumbfuck older brother who raised her to be just as much of a dumbfuck he is (affectionate but exasperated).
She's pansexual, demi-panromantic, and agender, and goes by she/her pronouns. Depending on which part of the timeline we're speaking of, she is 18 during year 1 of PFL, 25 at the beginning of s6/Reconstruction, 26 at the beginning of the Chorus trilogy, and 28 during s15.
Mich is 5'3, has mellow brown skin, hazel eyes, and usually bleached blonde hair cut short. She has had it in multiple styles over the years, but the norm is for her to have it in a short, masculine cut. A favorite she often falls back to is an undercut (similiar to lots of fcs of Wash portray).
In many ways, Mich is a lot like her older brother--laidback, friendly, a lock-picker (of course), an avid coffee drinker. She's also impulsive, expressive, an overthinker, and perceptive. She argues a lot with her brother and companions, she can be quite competitive under certain circumstances, and she's not the best listener.
When I said Mich was friendly, I really meant it. This poor little idiot had minimal friends for the first 15 years of her life, with the only person she knew and cared for that cared for her back was her older brother. When she was able to meet other people, starting with the Church cousins (Carolina and Simmons), she became immediately attached. These were new people who thought she was a good kid and hung around her bc they liked her. After meeting them and getting to know them, Mich decided that she would be close with them for forever and figured them to be some of the best people out there. (This partially makes up some of the angst I have for her.... Mich has lots of angst surrounding her and the ones she loves)
Carolina and York joining the military and Simmons being sent off to boarding school (supposedly) left Mich alone for the very first time. Spoiler alert: she didn't like it! So, on her 18th birthday, she enlisted into the military, and soon after was deployed. She was assigned a training base affiliated with Project Freelancer, and after months of hard work and no small amount of blackmailing and forgery, Mich was able to join the project her brother and "sister" were a part of.
Lots of things happened after that! Mich made the first best friend she'd ever had. She made enemies she never wanted and a one-sided rivalry over someone's ridiculous moustache and accent (give you one guess who). Oh, and she fell in love, too. Despite being a self-declared "amazing flirt", Mich is a TOTAL dork and has a hard time expressing true feelings about many things.
Then lots of other things happened! People died, people were lost, people were killing. Young Mich wasn't the biggest fan??? She also hated the Director, even before Freelancer, but even after getting the opportunity to leave, she stuck around. She stuck around for her brother, and for Carolina, and for her new friends. She wasn't about to leave them.
And, you guessed it, more things happened! More people died, ships crashed, and just like that, Mich and her brother are wanted fugitives being portrayed as intergalactic criminals! They decide first to go find Simmons, but when they get to their home planet, they find it surrounded by Coveneant ships. Did I mention they're from Reach and they returned in 2552 to find it glassed? Well, now I did.
They eventually find Simmons on a faraway planet that civilians were brought to, and they convinced him to join their "criminalistic bandwagon", as Mich fondly put it. Chaos ensued. Simmons was given his first set of armor after they raided a PFL base. They painted it maroon, with steel as his secondary color and aqua as detail, in honor of Carolina, who was very much missed by everyone there, by the way.
Mich, York, Simmons, and the AI Delta and Tau stay on the run for over four years before they run into major trouble. Their pelican is a piece of shit, the UNSC is on their butts, and it's looking like they're gonna get caught. So what does York, as acting leader, do? He shoves his younger counterparts into an escape pod and sends it off while he tries escaping on his own. Not the greatest plan ever? But this is York. He's not the greatest planner.
Mich and Simmons' escape pod lands in a dry desert canyon occupied by two certain color-coded armies who are apparently at war with each other, but don't really act like it. This is, of course, Blood Gulch, and they soon come to realize they had landed in a simulation base owned by PFL, and therefore, the Director.
Awesome! Great! Best situation ever! Is TOTALLY what the two thought (they didn't) (they were scared for their lives, until they realized their problem wasn't with PFL atm, it was with what Sarge would do if Mich looked at him wrong). They soon realize these two armies aren't the most competent of soldiers and decide to try fixing their radio to hopefully get in contact with York. They needed him to get them out of there.
Before it could be fixed, however, transfer orders come in! And Mich and Simmons soon find themselves on the pelican taking Grif to Rat's Nest, where they reside at for the next 14 months until Mich's former best friend returns, seemingly a completely different person....
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