Ae’nur touched down a sensible distance from the water’s edge, watching with a smile as her exuberant eight year old son landed knee deep with a splash, flicking up a spray with wings and tail and giggling with delight. His hair was only just long enough to pull into a topknot like his father’s and he wore the pathetic little makeup brush with such pride. She had struggled not to laugh when she had done his hair and she struggled not to laugh now as she watched it fluffing about on the top of his head.

Worked on this the last couple of stream sessions, posted works in progress to Patreon and realised that I’ve been completely forgetting to post public wips (which is completely unsurprising as while I do post occasional works in progress they are occasional so it was actually pretty easy for me to forget with all the other stuff going on). I also wanted to show @jedau the kind of stuff that takes me forrrreeeeeeeeevvvaaaaaaarrrrrrrr XD

The young High Prince fled the conference room, the nightmarish chaos fading behind him, only to be replaced by pursuing wing beats. Tears blurred his vision. Zul’jinn normally loved flying through the open areas but now they were too open, there was nowhere to hide. Behind him he could just hear the sounds of crossbows arming up. How could this happen? I don’t want to die! He was barely aware of the nearby mewling sound, not really registering the fact that he was the source of it.

Unlike the silence of the pod, which was broken only by the pods own humming, Dakarai’s head was full of tumultuous, confused thoughts. They’d looked. They’d kept looking. They hadn’t given up. The last few days…or was it weeks? He wasn’t sure. Either way, it had been a seriously unpleasant blur. He’d hurt Zara. He glanced sideways at her, perched nervously on the comfortably worn seat beside him. That had been the start of the downward spiral. They’d been training, he couldn’t understand the technique Juan was showing them. Zara picked up everything so easily. Frustration was normal, but then it had been intolerable. He hadn’t meant to hit her that hard. Then Juan had confronted him about his stim usage. Dakarai bristled slightly. Juan wasn’t his father, he didn’t have any right to tell him what to do.

There was that warning prickle in the air. Tsa’run didn’t give any indication of noticing, glancing around with his eyes. This particular walkway was usually quiet at this time of day, and nothing seemed out of place. Except for Es’tad stepping out suddenly in front of him, his impressive mohawk rippling slightly. Tsa’run faltered then, the ingrained habit to stop and greet his superior checked by a gut feeling. Sensing his uncertainty, Es’tad grinned with definite malice, then launched at him.

Super quickie sketches of Zara, 10-11 years old doing gymnastics and probably 17 or close enough to as she is in the current block I’m working on practising a form or something. And the one in the middle because I like odd numbers and because I’m trying to work out how to convey expression with those bloody goggles covering half her face all the time! Also, that ring hold was tough even with a base.

The plan for streaming on Thursday was do a quick sketch, then carry on with the rig test anim. That didn’t happen. What happened instead was this. I don’t do anything more complex than textures for backgrounds, the bed is just one ridiculously oversized prop masquerading as a background. I don’t hink that’s going to be a normal thing either. I am not really looking forward to shading those tattoos XD

Not quite a redo of Shimmering Wings. Next job is to try and work out if the first gen Avians had head feathers or if they developed later on down the track. Taha’ne is the earliest known ancestor of Tsa’run and the original developer/inventor of “The Art” (a branch of kung fu specifically tailored to the Winged who eventually evolved into the Flyers, and which was further developed to accommodate both Base Terrans and Evolved with extra limbs).

The problem with doing 3d or animation or 3d animation (for me at least) is that the works in progress shots can be exceedingly boring. I spent pretty much the entire streaming day yesterday finishing up the tail end of the rig test anim, and am currently letting it finish up a timing render which didn’t finish overnight because I forgot to turn Avi’s particles off. Oops. I’m aware the feathers are being awkward, they will get folded down in the detail run (I need to figure out how to do feather controllers, or if there’s just a better way to rig them, they’re doing my head in). These are from the end of the test, where the three of them have a quick conversation while turning away from the camera (because I wanted to end with the My 3 pose) which then pans around to be in front of them (I do also need some panning practice).

I’m usually streaming on Picarto on Sundays after 12 and Thursdays from 9am-3pm AWST, though lion dance season is coming up which may throw the Sunday streaming a bit. I did a random ~4hr stream today as the in-laws have a busy week this week and decided to come today rather than not coming at all because they’re awesome like that, working on an Ingress wallpaper: Yesterday I switched up between working on the Zul’jinn concept: