Hello everyone, this is a NVGR post about work I'm doing. It's mostly just for me to have a public record of what I'm trying to do with my work, so if you have something to contribute, feel welcome to.

My characters and designs all follow a similar framework of evolution and manifestation. All of them, in turn, share the same space. By space, I mean that they are all built in the same realm of being, a sort of meta-afterlife. These creatures were once human, were once dead, were once souls, and are now something else entirely, what that might be hasn't been revealed yet.

Each of these creatures has a proper name, title, and specific essence ties. Essence ties are very specific and often inherited tendencies or traits that these creatures have held on from their mortal lives. They often manifest themselves as halos, beams of light, rainbows, fire, water, or any other manner of objects that can be thought of.

Abstractions such as despair, longing, or fortitude are made concrete and often possess bizarre appearances. Since these creatures are as far gone from humanity as can be, but were once human, these essences may be unrecognizable on first sight, but often have some sort of indication of what they could be or represent.

The term for these creatures is Aersolaritrucha, or "wind-breathing suns". Each Aer has it's own plane of being, a self reflection, where it is strongest. It is a primal (and often visually visceral) reflection of it's essence ties. These places are not bound by size or orientation.
Each of these planes is unique to the individual Aer, and does not have a concrete state of being. It can shift, turn, and warp, but the essence, which is defined by it's host, never changes.

Aersolari have four states of being, congruent with the four states of physical matter. The solid form is the one I have most interest in, being that the other forms are near-unrecognizable as anything that could be called alive.

Each Aersolari was human at some point, and their solid state (roughly humanoid shape with approximation of specific forms; for instance: eyes or arms or legs or any other part of the body may be repeated, twisted or warped beyond what would normally pass as being biologically sound) reflects who they used to be in some fashion. They are usually very large bodied, being somewhere between 16 and 40 feet tall, yet they are essentially massless and weightless.

Now for an example:

Paröusialidylla, the Eschaton, Keeper of Vertigo, Logic, Loathing, Fury, Despair, and Disillusion. Valiant, bloodthirsty and judicious general of the Painted Father, granted peace within a flower paradise for her loyalty, she retains her undying physical shell to live within everlasting bliss. She is the core aspect of Ålesaniutrea (sum total collective of the meta-afterlife of the dead, positive and negative, yin and yang), forming the circular halo of flower souls that pervades all things.

Sketch:



I felt like the two Core Aspects (physically bound metaphors of yin-and yang) should be designed first, so I chose the female half, the yin of the equation. She is a dark, machine-like undying force. She is negativity wrapped in a shell of beautiful deep fissures that mark her skin in waves. Her skin is metallic, her eyes giving way to an idea of her true nature. I kept the sketch beautiful by default, and left many of the specifics up to whatever I happened to paint at the time. Happy accidents are my favorite.

Painting in Progress:



Here, you can see where she deviates from the sketch a bit. Her features are harder, and her eyes are piercing and amorphous, giving an unnerving quality to her overall face. Her silver mask is more obvious with rendering, and the rest of the elements of her design are blocked in and ready for detailing.

Detail:



The amorphous nature of her eyes (and of the Aersolari in general) is a key feature. Eyes are said to be windows to the soul, and these creatures are essentially souls of souls - having non-congruent and often featureless eyes symbolizes the unease that we all feel when facing the unknown.

Thanks for reading if you cared to make it this far, I felt like sharing something that is intimate and personal to me with you, who have supported my efforts (and less stellar achievements) in the past. Peace be to you!