Here in this post, I am going to dump unfinished pieces or bits too unworthy to be uploaded to the ‘Art’ category—I will also provide commentaries as to what I was thinking then and whatever it is.
To start off, here is this unfinished thingy-mcjig of Joe trying to murder Iris the second attempt.
While drawing this at the time, Joe was almost a wholly different character then—he was a reckless ‘ragehead’ who is utterly pissed at the Order of the Aesir—for forcing him to a far away part of the seas and only wants to return to a regular life. Also he originally had magic and whatever, whilst being far more violent than the current rendition. These two attempts was a attempt to visually characterise Joe as such, the second piece was originally going to feature my friend’s character pleading for Joe not to shoot Iris. Due to my lack of skills in drawing things at different angle, I lost the fire to try and continue this as I thought I am incapable of doing it.
Here is also the first try, the same fate happened here with my motivation to try what I’m inept at. It’s a little more straight forward and edgy with the violence shown though.
During the early stages of this concept of sneaking into Fort Talos and breaking into Argos’ office directly, I attempted to draw up Joe’s disguise (it’s fucking bad) and there was already a odd theme going on with Joe being the opposite of Argos in appearance, with the front facing plume and the excess amount of cloaks that veil the more plain armour. To add to this, my friend has the idea that his character would be disguised as a Ravennan noble being escorted by Joe. Overtime though, I strayed more and more from the in-game’s visuals and I slowly lean more towards looking a little closer to actual history.
When I say etched ‘slowly lean’, I actually meant I rapidly switched the styles of how clothes and armour are drawn whenever I do Arcane Odyssey. The first image was in the 1st of May this year, and the one in the bottom was made 26 days after—I haven’t drawn any armour within that span of 25 days with the exception of a little silhouette I did in 16/05 of this year, which was probably strayed the equivalent of 60 metres away from the original ‘art style’.
By the way, the first image was actually made to be the first bit for a ‘art collab’ between two of my friends—from when we actively played the game together. We stopped and then I found out that AO and WoM weren’t really in the variant of games that were my cup of tea as it turns out. This little collaboration will remain a reminder of when we did that. Oh how fast things flies… Also the way our art style clashes together is such a fun thing to see! I love it when there’s a juxtaposition!
The art direction of Joe is a strange one, first it was faithful to how he was in-game but this connection slowly deteriorated and then it goes on the hype-train with the pace—the only thing that barely changed the hair colour and mustache. At first his skin was pale and he’s got wrinkles due to him ageing like milk, the skin colour was inherited from his design back in WoM—though with the backstory I recently made for the character, I soon severed this aspect with the fact that he always was a outdoorsman. Fun fact, his head shape was constantly a different one every fucking time I drew it, sometimes I even forgot the fucking eyebrows. I soon settled for a almost gorillion skull with how the back of it perks upwards.
This is about the most accurate for Joe’s appearance and the best one by far within my opinion. The reason why I made this is because it always seems to me that he’s so different from every other characters I see from the other chaps. This realisation was the catalyst why I made him a ‘manipulator’—psychological specifically—from some cushy little upper class family in the Throne Empire.
Over the course of time that I spent in the art hub (I’m now banned there and my activity in the forums are actually a coping mechanism), I have come to a thought that I should draw Revon to look mildly more masculine than what most* fanarts seemed to have depicted him as. These two different attempts are likely done a spite-ridden fit over the myth that I made up—that a lot of folks only see things in extremes with a lot of things (E.G Warcraft where buff troll women can’t exist).
This is the second attempt done in the 13th of August this year, I attempted to be more a little more faithful to his in-game appearance, hence the lack of a stubble.
With this one (done in the 31st of May), it’s a shot in the dark with changing the theme of the crowns to be more akin to Byzantine ones. Which probably sacrificed something in return… Here, I drew Joe—without eyebrows for no reason—as a reminder that I am drawing regular humans and not freaks of nature. I also drew Revon to be trying to a beard because he wants to be like Argos and Calvus, but he’s too much of a wimp* and it hasn’t grown out because of this.
Here are the source materials (probably).
Those who have seen one of my more high effort bits should be familiar with this one, especially those from the art hub—as I’ve may or may not have described how the fight between Joe and Argos would go. Here, I saw a conversation about how the pacing of AO’s story feels too rapid and that the protagonist felt like one who instantly knows all things or something along the lines of that, that later changes to the speculation that there’d be people whinging about not being able to steal the Cursebane. So I drew this thing in the light of it, Joe breaking it on his knees after somehow snatching it from Argos’ hands, I always thought the imagery of something imbued with the magikz being broken with sheer brute force was a striking one—especially when the item is no longer usable or repairable after that. Naturally, I got to have it so that Joe’s armour also fell apart during the whole fight, because it’s cool if they both lose their armour as they throw each other across the entirety of Fort Talos.
This one is one I consider to be inferior, though I may or may not be giggling whole tracing ZUN drinking a massive fucking mug of beer. This was made in the light of @OneAndOnlyFrancis’s doodle of two o’ her characters intoxicated from a single mug (I think?), naturally I thought to myself that I should be drawing Joe drinking from a colossal cup filled with alcohol because I thought it was funny if a ‘completely regular human being’ was able to stomach fermented grains far better than those who can pummel buildings with ease. I think this was also because I have characterised Joe to be a heavy drinker of a lot of things and also a heavy smoker, which I may or may not have used as a excuse to say why he didn’t age so well like some other people
Characters that clash each other with how different they are—have always been quite compelling to me, especially when they simply aren’t just opposites of each other. Upon seeing @anon5868932’s portrayal of his characters in a AU where they are born far into the future or something—I’m not sure if magic is prevalent there since I have not asked any questions about it—so I went fourth and added another panel to the side (the rest of the image that aren’t Joe was made by @anon5868932), showing the routine that Joe throws himself through, where he seems to ‘zerg’ through a lot of it all in a hour—that’s sort of the implication I was going throw out but you can easily see it as Joe not bothering with breakfast or brushing his teeth—oh, the horrors… Within this shameless edit, this is about the first time I drew Joe’s life prior to the events of the game and also about the second time I drew a 23 year old Joe (yes he’s already balding in his tossing 20s), it’s also about the first time his wife makes a appearance—look at the bed in '4:00’s image. This was meant to show that Joe was a manager of sorts within the family business, though I think there’s a lot more different implications when he’s just sitting down in a office—working through paperwork and reading letters.
