Christmas 2020: Festivus Terror Vevryx

 

 

Merry Christmas!

I haven't done a "holiday" themed mache piece in what feels like years. As I mentioned over on Twitter, I thought I'd end the yearly criticism and make a festive piece. That piece took the shape of the tree demon, Vevryx. Here's a short lore post explaining the project and then I'll talk a bit more about it further down.

<Lore>

Legends speak of a time of year when all the wars and conflicts stop for a single day of peace. No matter what one believes, this time is always sacred and the realm rests for this one day. Still, there exist those that refuse to accept the traditions and seek to destroy the fragile peace for the sake of chaos. When this happens, it's said that the spirit of the Festivus Terror is summoned. A massive tree demon, the creature known as Vevryx is said to spring forth from a single crystalline seed amidst the offenders. Its spindly branches beckon towards a fang-filled maw while rows of multi-colored jewels line its armored trunk. Hanging from the branches of Vevryx are large spherical eye-shaped ornaments. Called "Judgement's Gaze", these round crystal eyes are grown from the souls of the punished that are devoured by the tree. The glowing white eyes pierce through all and cannot be harmed by weapons or magic. The rare red eyes seal the movement of any foe that meets their gaze, rendering them helpless. Finally, the most rare of Judgement's Gaze are the all-black onyx eyes. The empty glare of these dark spheres steals the souls themselves and the more hanging from Vevryx's branches the more the victims. Once it's purged the sinners and restored peace, the Festivus Terror is said to vanish into the ether. A single emerald seed is all that remains with a lone phrase etched onto its surface:

"Adorn Judgement's Gaze... and observe the Festivus."

<>

Spotlight Video:

 

Vevryx is a medium-sized papier mache sculpture. WIP shots of its development can be found in the Imgur gallery linked here. While not being as large as some of my other projects, this one was fairly complicated and took a few weeks of work to finish. It turns out the biggest challenge was making the branches and applying the cloth skin. I had to use small pieces of cloth and work around both the branches themselves and the glass stones embedded in the trunk. It took a couple sessions to apply the skin. I went with a mix of brown and green shades to keep with the whole tree theme and had to pay extra attention to the undersides of the branches. Finally, I wanted a way to "decorate" the tree so I went with polymer clay eyes with a copper wire anchor and hung them from the branches. I plan on making more "ornaments" so I can switch up the decorating style of Vevryx each year. If I can find some garland or enough lights, that could also be an interesting experiment.

 Overall, it was a challenging but worthwhile experiment. I hope to do more with the look of this one and will update here on the site when I do so. With 2020 (finally) drawing to a close, I wish everyone a happy set of holidays and happy New Year! A Retrospective is in the works for 2020 as well and I hope to post that before the end of the year.

Thanks for visiting!

~Zan

 

 

Halloween 2020: Chaos Omen Yzrinn

 

Happy Halloween!

It's my favorite holiday and time to present this year's papier mache costume. Building upon the Faceless Summoner lore, here is Chaos Omen Yzrinn! As an intro to the piece, here's the final piece of lore.

<>

The Chaos Omen

After days of violent fights between the various champions, one emerged and stood atop the bodies. A young warrior named Yzrinn of the Illithid clan that called themselves the Nightmare Veil was crowned the winner of the contest. Possessing rare genius knowledge of reality-distorting spells, he managed to stop or completely subdue all challengers, leaving all in twisted agony.

Upon completion of the Merciless Tournament, the sages ordered all the bodies of the defeated to be transported to their arcane forge. There, they used alchemy and an ancient soul-sealing technique to transmute the corpses into an artifact. The artifact, a twin-bladed glaive set with yellow stones was born and infused with the rage of those killed in combat. Named “Sanity’s Requiem” by the sages, the weapon was tailored towards Yzrinn’s mind-destroying abilities and presented to the victorious warrior along with the title of “Chaos Omen”.

The victory ceremony complete, the sages set Yzrinn before the rift and used their incantations to open it.

“Go unto the plane of the mortals as the Omen of Chaos,” they declared, sending the traveler through the swirling void.

What awaits the warrior from the Sealed Dimension? Will he emerge in the mortal realm and finally open the gates to the forbidden ones? Only time will tell.

<>

Youtube highlight video:

This year I wanted to try and make a Mind Flayer/Illithid type of mask. While I've never been much of a D & D player or Lovecraft reader, I find some of the creatures of the respected mythos to be fascinating in design. As a result, I wrote Yzrinn's story and designed based on those design elements. For his weapon, I thought designing a glaive would be an interesting change of pace. Taking some inspiration from the Insect Glaive from Monster Hunter, I designed Sanity's Requiem to be a sharp and spiny weapon with an organic look.

That should do it for this year's Halloween project. I've been working on some other masks for the Summoner and am planning how I want to post them. I definitely want to focus on more mache content as we get ready to go into 2021.

Thanks for visiting!

~Zan

Halloween Project 2020 Lore: The Merciless Tournament

 

Greetings,

Halloween is one day away! As an introduction to this year's project, here's some lore:

<>

The Merciless Tournament

While the mortal plane began the fight against encroaching destruction, the denizens of the Sealed Dimension faced their own challenges. The constant fighting between the demon factions continued to ravage the various continents. Over time, a small unified group of arcane sages that had been born in the Sealed Dimension began to watch a rift that had appeared far to the north. It looked like a previous point of entry to the mortal plan was sealed with a runic barrier as was the case whenever something was banished. This particular seal had started to weaken over time, resulting in the rift. 

Seeing the rift as an opportunity, the sages were able to peer through the tiny opening and gain insight into the conflicts plaguing the mortal plane. They saw the increasing power of the demons along with the looming return of the god-creature, Trinitus.  The sages formed a plan. If they could combine their strength, it would be possible to widen the rift briefly and allow something through before it closed again. Perhaps someone from the Sealed Dimension could cross over and find a way to free them. 

For weeks, the sages contemplated their strategy. Would they create a homunculus infused with arcane power? Perhaps a catalyst sealed with a summoned spirit could manifest itself beyond the rift? Ultimately, the sages decided that it should be a warrior from the Sealed Dimension that would make the journey.

In order to determine the strongest warrior, the sages gathered thirty skilled individuals from the various territories. Fighters, mages, assassins, and more were brought to a great arena within the arcane territories. They were set against one another in fights to the death in what has been known as the Merciless Tournament. The winner of the bloody contest would be selected to enter the rift and journey to the mortal plane.

<>

Tomorrow's post will have some additional lore along with links to the project itself.

Stay tuned!

~Zan

Early Fall Update

 

 

 

Greetings,

 

Summer has officially gone and we're still here. I apologize for the slow posts here on the main site. Though there haven't been many updates things are busy. I'll summarize a few of those things here.

For current projects, I've been working on an LP of the fan game Shadow of Naju, the unofficial sequel to the NES classic, The Guardian Legend. It's a fun trip through video game nostalgia and I recommend giving it a look here:

I've also been working on a series of Drawing Challenge videos in the Sunday/Wednesday video slot. This multiple part series has me trying to make 2D designs out of random shapes in Rhino! If you're curious, check out the the first episode here:

Finally, the Halloween project for this year is underway. I haven't spoken much about it but I will be creating a new papier mache mask and costume for Halloween. You can expect some lore posts as we get into October setting up the piece.

That should do it for the current studio updates. I'm going to try and make the posts more frequently here and there should be some Redbubble store news coming soon.

Stay safe and thanks for visiting!

~Zan

New Article Series: The Inspiration Chronicles feat. Boglins!

Greetings,

As we move into Spring amidst the global health crisis, I want to debut an article series I've been planning for a while. Called the Inspiration Chronicles, I intend for this series of written articles to be one part nostalgia, one part design, and one part personal lore. The plan is to explore brands, themes, or any past things that have shaped my personal artistic tastes and style. As these are a bit more in-depth than the usual posts, I don't know how often I'll be posting them. That said, let's get in to the first entry.

Boglins

Enter the subject of the first entry in this documentary series: Boglins. I don't know how widespread these toys were but my research shows me that at least in the States and Europe Boglins had a presence.

Original caption from the box

Originally debuting on 1987, Boglins were these grotesque monster-like hand puppets made of a rubber latex-like material. Capitalizing on the "gross out factor" of many toys in the 80s, these were promoted as a way to antagonize people (like sisters in the commercial) or at the very least creep them out. There were several runs or "series" of Boglins that were sold in major toy outlets over the several years the toys were primarily in circulation. The products ranged from smaller hand puppets that had some minor eye controls and mouths to bigger more complex models with moveable glow-in-the-dark eyes. Some of these even had a plastic infrastructure inside the puppet that would allow you to manipulate the expressions of the creatures.

From the left: Vlobb and Squidge

An aquatic themed "Soggy Boglins" series was also released and featured three sea-life type creatures.

From the left: Snish, Slobster, and Slogg

As a minor aside, the blue fish Boglin, Snish was one of the most rare and hard to find of these three. Ever since I saw the promo art on the boxes, I was obsessed with finding it as a kid with no success. It wasn't until much, much later after the advent of eBay that I was able to get my hands on a brand new one in-box. Since I obviously don't care about collector's value, I opened it and put it on my display shelve. It's one of the few times I've been able to fulfill a childhood dream.

The Boglins eventually waned in popularity and their production was halted. They would eventually fade from the public consciousness with some more avid fans becoming collectors and traders on-line later. If you look around places like eBay, you can see different Boglins of varying conditions go for some rather large amounts of money. I feel fortunate that I was able to secure that fish one all those years ago.

It wasn't until recently that I discovered a fascinating new development in the chapter of these unique toys. One of the original creators, Tim Clarke started up his own production of brand new Boglins out of his home. Using some of his proprietary techniques, he started developing and selling Boglins via his website. These are not mass produced and as mentioned by Tim he makes them to order. As a result, they do run relatively high in price. Avid collectors or fans should probably approach this more from the art angle than just a toy.

After discovering Tim's site, I did order a couple of his new model Boglins to one, support his work and two, take a look at the design and quality of the products. Here are the ones I ordered:

From the left: Grumph, Vlogg, and Swogg

These new era Boglins are very similar in design and material to the original runs from the 80s. The material is still a rubbery vinyl but feels a bit less elastic than the old models. The material is tacky but doesn't leave significant residue when handling them. It will stain surfaces if left in prolonged contact. The puppets themselves have mouth controls but no internal infrastructor for expression manipulation. I imagine it would be more difficult to construct a rigging system on a per-order basis. That being said, the overall puppets are well constructed and feel sturdy. Because of their higher value, I'd be hesitant to give them to small children though.

Looking at the background behind these toys, I'm sure it's no surprise that they were one of my favorites back in the 80s. While the mainstay franchises like Transformer or Ninja Turtles were present, the unique style of the Boglins left a significant impression on my art style. I can definitely see some traces of inspiration on things like my mache projects. I'm very interested in seeing what Tim's new line of Boglins will become and keep regular tabs on his main site. I have no problems tossing him some cash to support his efforts based on what I've seen of the products. I might do some more in-depth photo shoots of my collection and put it into an Imgur album if that's something people would be interested in seeing.

That should wrap up this look into some nostalgia. I'll be doing more articles like this in the future.

Thanks for visiting!

~Zan

Store Updates!

Hiya!

What's this? A post from TK? It's more likely than you think! I hope everyone is staying safe with all the virus craziness that's going on right now.

This is a short post to announce some updates I've been doing on our store. After taking what looks like way too long, I've resumed uploading the Clans' chibi designs. A bunch of wave 1 designs are now live on the store. I'm working on formatting and uploading the rest. I might order some and do a sort of product test to see how the quality is on the vinyl stickers. In the meantime, if you want to check out wave 2 of the chibis, hit up my DA!

Wash your hands!

-TK

Spring Updates

Greetings,

Spring is well underway and the world is now a little bit crazy. I hope everyone is staying safe and indoors while the pandemic is ongoing. While I haven't had to do much to my regular routine, some folks I've talked to have been getting tired of the quarantine.

Fortunately, many of the studio's projects are still underway so I won't be running out of things to do any time soon. Ongoing design series on DA are still going strong and won't be slowing down at all. Last week on my Twitch channel, I started experimenting with a new art medium. As a way to build on the design process, I've started doing digital concept sketches. The results have been interesting so far and I'm looking at a way to adapt that style into some posts for DA. I'll link them here when they eventually go up.

On the Youtube front, the Bloodstained Let's Play recently concluded. That game was a fun ride and I definitely recommend it. Next up, I will be playing through one of my favorites from the SNES era, Demon's Crest. You can check out the first episode here:

That's all for now. I'm looking at planning some new mache projects so those details will be coming in the future along with some Redbubble store updates.

Stay safe and wash your hands!

~Zan

2019's Design Retrospective is Live!

Happy New Year!

2020 is underway and the schedule is looking to be busy as usual. As I've done before, a Design Retrospective series of videos has been uploaded to Youtube. This 2-part series focuses on the Pixel Sprite and 2d designs posted in the year of 2019. I took a sample of works posted on DA from both sets and talked a bit about them.

For the Pixel Sprites:

For the 2D designs:

 

That's it for this post. Here's to a busy 2020!

 

~Zan