UndeadPuppy wrote:

I think the best colours for this faction would be...

I think I am tending to agree on greens, but that's generally the first thing people obviously think of when they think of trees, nature etc. Which isn't a bad thing ofc. Especially in the context of other factions, if the Unfallen are set apart by their own colour theme and shades of green has always worked well for Saprolings.

EndlessCrashes wrote:

Cool artwork, but reminds me too much of the Necrophage/Craver look, and the ships kinda Sophon-y

Cravers have a fleshy, metallic, rusty look about them and generally look like trouble; the Necrophage's are akin to Cravers in certain apperances but forsake that rusty look for more sleek jade shiny carapace pieces over certain parts of the model, more beetlelike but still muscular and fleshy parts are exposed. Yet the important thing is that one feels very cyborg and the other insect hive.

You are probably assessing the beak shaped head which the Necrophage drones have or the multiple limbs like Cravers have,  but Unfallen can have... any number of appendages but I liked the look of 4-5 for my conceptual pieces. The beak head was partly to mimic a plant feeler sprout head or early roots from a seed. It is also a small reference to the Myr heads in MTG. But besides that, I liked that shape when I was playing around with a light pencil so I stuck for it.

I don't see how the ship design is... not copying Sophon ships unless the Sophon have a monopoly on curves and partly elongated shapes, so I have to disagree with you on this part.

Thanks for the cool and criticism.

Hinin wrote:

DevildogFF wrote :

This is EXACTLY the kind of stuff I visualized when I created them. 

Also, the musings over a caste system and incorporated stone, etc. are awesome. I love the ideas. 

Great work!

As someone who wants to see as little controversy as possible on this forum, I want to ask something to the Amplicrew : Is the last contest winner allowed to be supporting someone publicly ?

Surely you are not advocating to disallow a member of the community the right to share his opinion during this contest now that they have won a stage? Or support certain ideas?

Devildog only agrees with my direction in character design sketches and gives a little praise, *blushs* aside; then comments on BG123's idea about a caste system. This is a no shame thread, shame is... inconceivable here!

So I really don't see anything wrong here or wrong doing to be had or will had... *menacing* yet... 

I doubt we will see anything like last time with the shameful bumping and a problem like the way voting worked to begin with in stage 1. Amplitude has clamped down on boundaries this time and the footing for each participant is way more fair than before. 

Hylus wrote:

My only concern so far with this design is that the sillouette might end up looking too much like the Eldar ships in Warhammer 40k. Otherwise I am loving every single one of your ideas and designs so far.  You're very generous for sharing your ideas with us.

I'm also eager to see what the rest of you artsy types have been cooking up.

I used to be quite closed about showing my artwork to people, the usual feeling you get not wanting to show "bad drawings" off to other people. These days I have way more confidence in myself and I am not afraid to show other people my work, yet I know if I keep practising instead of putting it on the sideline, I can get way better and potentially move up to learn digital art design in my free time some time this or next year - deleting and redrawing sections and certain digital tools sound very appealing.

Damn, another one is on to my Warhammer... nooo... and yea, I share your concerns about the silhouette but like the last time I remember we did ship designs for Amplitude for the Automations, they took the wining designs and retooled them to suit the studio better and to show off the designs better during the voting. So if my designs for Unfallen ships set a vibe for the shape and feeling I want across to other people and Amplitude, then I have succeeded! If they would like to edit it a bit and play around with the design; that is absolutely fine.

Speaking of other assets, I've always been a fan of Warhammer artwork - both fantasy and 40k - and especially the lovely artwork on MTG cards, certainly the older cards with the more stranger paintings like Dance of Many with a bunch of dancing winged slugs going down a staircase or the range of elementals and saprolings in MTG artwork.

Oooooohhh yeah, just for you

This would be a medium ship, 300m*. Heading up into the larger classes I want to show off some inside areas of the ship like a bit view-window into a "park" area with plant-life and other life. Kind of like a biodome on the ship that looks out into space.  I think ships larger than 100m probably should start to show more stones and structures grown into the superstructure of the ship but personally im not really too sure how to represent that properly without colour; for instance the Unfallen young civvie I drew has a big stone in the chest cavity but because it is the same tone as the head it looks like more wood.

Its been a long time since I have dabbled with colours and I would need to warm up to it again if I was going to blend my shades properly. Although, maybe when I go to scan my images they will come out in better definition than my terrible phonecam.

Final word to any other would be competitor or votie for this, I do utmost highly recommend you go onto the Endless Space 2 wiki and take a look at the ship designs for Sophon and Cravers on their respective faction pages to understand what has already been done so far - and shown to us. If you have the additional time, try to take a look at some of the older designs in Endless Space 1 if you are not familiar with them or have forgotten.

I made this a long post to avoid a ton of smaller posts clogging space. Also I hope I didn't waffle too much bout nonesense or something else.

EndlessCrashes wrote:

Definitely Myr-y

Cannot believe you just did that, what are you doing making a post like this? Are you really going to call me out on a similar beakie head shape paired with vague text, I can take this in a weird way or shots fired way like wut.

I really hope you realize people were meant to look up the images themselves, that's why I didn't post any images outside of a non-descript sycamore seed to illustrate a ship shape, I was expecting people to look up stuff themselves and look into a whole pool if they were interested in digging into what I am talking about, besides that, I wanted to avoid posting other peoples artwork to illustrate what my idea was, I wanted to create my own art from my own head and use that instead.

I fancied that "beak" shape for the head, so I used it. I admit I don't know how to do every pose and shape or "how to make something look reasonably bark like" because despite what I might come off as, I am still learning to draw certain elements; I have barely drawn natural stuff, I am into armour and cloth and metals, so this is both hard and new to me.

For the Avant I grabbed a ton of Eel pictures, diving suit pictures and sci-fi pictures, sea dragon's etc for helping me design them and get in the mood for what I had written; in this case I have a whole bunch of seeds, treemen, treants, elves, elementals and so on to look at.

Leave the cute silver myr alone, you are exposing one of the images I used for a crouching pose for the legs.

Meaning vague, brain tired, strikethrough edit required to compensate for stupidity. See this ^ actual Belgian waffles pouring out the mouth. Like what even is this, I made this message in a playful tone - in my head - and I screwed it up somehow due to being tired and not reading it again.

On another note, where is like... anybody else... I thought a few other people participating would pop in to share some work. :c

Edit: If you posted this with a longer comment, like a whole sentence then maybe I would get your tone but as it stands at two words, I have no idea what tone you are using here. It confuses me greatly.

Strikethrough Edit: This is why you shouldn't forum while tired, because you write actual stupid waffle like this. When I could have literally asked what he meant instead of victumising myself accidentally. Bllllaaaggrrrrhhh. 

BG123 wrote:

I for one am a fan of the heads/faces depicted on your suggestion. The shape of the face of the military-type looks akin to the classic leaf shape whilst maintaining a genuinely solid appearance to it rather than just a flimsy bit of leaf.

I'm glad people approve of the caste idea. If I may be so bold, Digitalhawk96, do you reckon you'll draw different versions of Unfallen and post them here? 

Ah certainly, after I have the full email submission finished and sent away just so I am actually in, I can fit in more drawings just for you. It shouldn't get in the way of other more important work since I am scheduling myself properly to do the work, so continuing on with more drawing should be easy enough. 

EndlessCrashes wrote:

I'm not trying to start drama here, you mentioned Myr and I already had an idea which Myr your picture was minding me of, so I posted it.  My intent is to encourage originality in this phase of the contest.  I like your artwork, which is lovely, but if it reminds me of something else right away (cravers/necros/hissho/myrs) then I personally think it might need some additional unique touches to set it apart.  Oh and I was mistaken about the ships looking Sophon-y, I meant Amoeba-y.  But that's just my opinion and I figure I'm free to share it here.  If anyone else is too derivative in my opinion I'll let know as well.  And I can understand you misunderstanding my intent, I confused four words for something it wasn't.

Ah no problem, it was mostly confusing is all. I seen a comparison and coupled with those two words and I thought it gave the wrong impression right away; that's why I was asking whats the point of making a post like that since the meaning was just too vague, i didn't think that was your intent but I was worried it might spark someone else off, like me, which it seems I did since I waffled on after assumed... tired assuming? Why did I write all this, I waffled on about source material for more than half of it when I could have just said something along the lines of "What do you mean, your message is a bit unclear."  

I feel like Captain Hindsight will show up at any moment now.

Thanks for your opinions btw, I do care about them but I think I should stop sitting on the forums and go to sleep, I am not exactly paid to do this unlike Frog. 

So here i am, after ten days of drawing and redrawing (I'm not very good at it...).

My interpretation of the design was based on several problematics :

- Why do the Unfallen have a humanoid form ? =>Answer : because they are the products of the thoughts of a Virtual Endless (which has a humanoid form) trapped in a cube.

- Why did this Virtual Endless create them ? =>Answer : It didn't want to, since it isn't conscious anymore. The Unfallen are a product of the sorrowful dreams it has of its comrades and its implication in the Dust Wars : the Dust around the cube reacted to these dreams and modified the environment around it to the point new beings were created.

- What are the consequences of these "dreams" on the Unfallen society ? => Answer : Because the Unfallen are all subconsciously linked to the cube, they share common points, the most important being that they aren't able to be violent in any way (because the Virtual is a traumatized individual who hates war) : when they are conquered ,they prefer sacrificing themselves or losing their individuality (see below) instead of becoming slaves.

- So, if they aren't able to be violent, how do they protect their system, how can they become soldiers ? =>Answer : Each Unfallen civilian wears a mask (once again, a reminiscence of the Endless masks) which represent its individuality but also its connection to the cube, and as long as it is connected to the cube, it can have complexe thoughts. When an Unfallen feel that its home is in danger, that it MUST protect its companions, it can abandon its mask, its individuality and its connection to the cube to become able of agressive actions : its morphology changes, its appendages dissapear and it can't think by itself anymore. As a consequence, becoming a soldier is, in the Unfallen society, the ultimate sacrifice (but not in a glorious way, more in a tragic way) : a soldier is a non-sentient living weapon whose sole purpose is to protect the others.

- And what about the ships ? => Ships are all obtained through the infusion of several spirits of Unmasked Ones in prepared strucures. Depending of the number of spirits infused, a ship is more or less able of complexe actions (think of a hive mind) : for example, the Achene are infused with only one spirit, so they can only "defend" others because it is the primal goal of all Unfallen soldiers, and the Yggdrasil, infused with dozens of spirits, are able of complexe maneuvers (and so lead other ships). All of this explain why the Unfallen have access to the different types of ships more quickly, but also why they consume  when producing them.

- Who is their leader ? => I think of a counsel of very ancient Unfallen who interprete the Virtual Endless thoughts but can also take proper decisions (think of the College of Pontiffs of the ancient Roman state, who, as their name suggests, "built (mental) bridges" with their creator, but were also the ultimate source of interpretation of the Law).

Concerning the design themselves : 

 - My main idea when I drew all of this was to create a design with symbolism (hence the sunflower head) and which could be the base of a tragic story (imagine a intro cinematic where we see the horrific dreams of the Virtual Endless and then plants growing aroung the cube to form the first Unfallen, hundreds of years ago, and then the present, when an entire society has been built : it could be quite dramatic and impressive, no ?) ;

 - For the soldier, the sunflowers on its body symbolize the fact that it is now a weapons platform (I won't describe how it could shoot things, but it is clear that this thing is dangerous) ;

 - Finally, concerning the heroes, maybe the dust could develop their individuality to a point where they are totally independent beings and as such could go anywhere and act as they want (a militarist Unfallen could be fun to design).

 - Edit : As I said to Frogsquadron, each Sapling is unique and combine different plants. The ones I use for the soldier are the ebony tree and the sunflower (with a little bit of mangrove for the roots) because I thought that it would add interesting colors and clearly show that the soldier doesn't have hands (+ once again it adds some symbolism to the picture : it makes me think of surrealism and impressionism (I love Van Gogh).

Inspirations :

- One Piece Movie 6 - Baron Omatsuri and the secret Island for the idea of creating individuals based of memories (you'll understand if you see the movie : it is by far the most interesting and mature of all One Piece movies)

- Robot Dreams from Isaac Azimov for the idea of an artificial intelligence having subconscious thoughts

- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind from Hayao Miyazaki for the concept of defensive hive mind (the insects in the movie are pacifist and sentient beings which become very violent when one of them is in danger).

- Shinsekai Yori (From the New World) for its symbolism and its colors.

PS : I imagine the first contact between the Unfallen (created by a Virtual Endless) and the Vodyani (who venerate Virtual Endless) could be quite interesting.

Thank you for reading this much !

Edit : on page 7 there is a new version of the Soldier which will serve in the finale submission