figjam | My Fault

I have so much to say about this one, see if I can actually get it into words. This is a scene from chapter 9 of Tarnish. Raykinians don't cry if they can help it. It's a throwback to the old days of hunting and gathering when crying was a waste of water, and nowadays it shows you to be weak and selfish. You're allowed to be sad, sure, and all but the most callous individual would forgive you for crying at your mum's funeral, for example, but apart from that? You suck it up and get on with life.

Nol hasn't cried since childhood. Even when Naraan, possibly the most important person in his life at that point, was killed in Kazin, his own sense of decorum kept the tears back. Why? When things go to shit and nobody can keep it together, who're they going to turn to? Someone has to stay strong and lead everyone on. Obviously, that'll be the crown prince. When everyone else is crumbling and giving up, Nol's the one to take a deep breath, stand back and get everyone on their feet again. He doesn't cry, because that's not what you want to see in your future king, whatever the situation.

And so, my friends, we come to chapter nine. Everything is genuinely Nol's fault and he doesn't know how to fix it. I'll leave you to speculate on the 'everything' because that'd be spoiling, but suffice to say there's rather a lot. He's got Mithé's voice in his head telling him all that stuff he never wanted to listen to, like how he makes the wrong decisions and isn't fit to rule. And even then, he's imagining the rest of Raykin seeing their future king like that, hunched over a table crying his eyes out, and so he hates on himself even more and makes it worse.

I swear things will pick up for you, hun <3 *hugs cos there's nobody else around to do so*

And now, just to spoil the whole illusion, a wip shot! Because I don't claim to know perspective at all. I sketched Nol's chair and that took me half an hour and it still looked crap, so instead I just modelled the whole scene (well, the tables, chairs and light source) in Maya. Took less than an hour. Print screened that, shoved it in Photoshop, sketched Nol onto his chair and painted right over it. Perspective made easy! Backlighting, on the other hand, is HARD and I'm never doing it again. Shoulda shone the moon through the other window.

My Fault

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