Art: The Starborn (Monsterhearts)

Modestep is the rest of my dubstep collection. A lot of it isn't great, but Show Me A Sign is an awesome song. I found several cool things, including the Nero song a few days ago and this, through the Forza Horizon soundtrack, which is pretty ace. It has a disc of electronic stuff (makes great driving music in real life too), a disc of retro stuff, and a disc of indie rock stuff, which is a pretty great variety.

Cucumberkappa is a cool person who, a few days ago, posted a custom Monsterhearts skin on Story Games for feedback, called The Kirin. I gave some feedback over a couple days and CK mentioned that they had a couple others in a bit more of a draft form, and was willing to send 'em to me. Of course, I'm not here to share the actual things. One of those two though is The Starborn, whose general theme is high ambitions, and everyone else knows it. It leans pretty heavily on Greek and Roman myth for some ideas, but isn't based on any particular source characters.

What matters about this story is that it inspired my artistic side! I'm not yet at the point that I feel strong enough with the pen tool nor anatomy to draw it from scratch at the quality I want, so I looked around for some stock photography and found a good image on deviantArt.
The eventual selection was by kristyvictoria, titled Looking Up By The Stairs. Here's a link to it:
http://kristyvictoria.deviantart.com/art/Looking-up-by-the-stairs-stock-10412734
It's a pretty good picture. A little heavy on the contrast, but I like her plaid belt/skirt.

Anyway.

(sorry, it's clipped on the side. Stupid Blogger. Click it for a decent-sized version, or CLICK HERE for a full-size version)
I like it a lot! It worked out just as I wanted. I kinda cheated on making the mesh, but honestly I'm okay with that. I tried to do it manually and it didn't work. So cheating it is. The plaid skirt is a bit messy to look at, but plaid in general is messy to look at. I think it worked out pretty good, all things considered. This pic's got face, long hair, a hand, mesh, plaid... it was a lot of work but was a great learning experience, and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Watch for The Starborn on Story Games later this month! The existing thread is about The Kirin, which is also very cool, and the third skin is The Summoned (eg Bloody Mary). All of them actually have pretty firm social metaphors under the monsters, which is the first thing I look for in a Skin. They need a bit more work, but with some tweaking I'd be really okay with putting these on my table. Check out the thread here:
story-games.com/forums/discussion/18980/monsterhearts-the-kirin

Later.
End Recording,
Ego.