Thursday 15 September 2011

Daily sketchbook dump Sept. 6-10

Entirely Fathoms-focused! How 'bout that? Warning: babble follows.

I've been worldbuilding lately, because as a world, Fathoms is pretty empty. There was just Talassa and Gale, and that four-armed Whalerider guy who would turn up in chapter three. I've been playing around a bit with the Whalerider people (as evidenced by my earlier sketchdumps), but I decided they needed some more people.

So, I invented the Moonface-tribe.


It started as a doodle, which grew into something more - and it was only after drawing a few of them that I realised they all looked like fat axolotls.

Then I started thinking about the markings on their foreheads.

All of the markings are simplified phases of the moon. Children have crescent moons, adults have half-moons and the ones I've labelled as "Speakers" have full moons. Male Moonfaces have moon-markings that curve to the left, while female Moonfaces' curve to the right, to set them apart. It's definitely easier for non-Moonfaces to identify them that way, since they otherwise have no outward physical traits setting them apart.

The Moonfaces are divided in two main factions - the White Moon and the Black Moon. And no, the Black Moon-faction is NOT evil. They just represent another way of living, the same way an eclipse represents another phase of the moon.

I haven't completely figured out what the different factions stand for, but I'll get there. It's fun to play around with politics and religion and imaginary societies.



I've also been tinkering with the plot, and have decided that in some future chapter, a Seer is going to turn up. Below are my initial ideas for the Seer's design:

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