Daily Art # 4

Day 8:

Today was a good day.

Today I got compliments on one of my models from two artists that I highly respect.

A little over a year ago I decided to model a character designed by someone else to prove to potential employers that I could follow other people's designs as well as my own. I chose to model Szeth-Son-Son-Vallano, a character in Brandon Sanderson's novel "The Way of Kings". (By the way, if you enjoy fantasy literature, read some of Sanderson's stuff; it's fantastic. I'd start with the "Mistborn" trilogy...) I completed the model and described it on my website and YouTube as a model "based on a character design by Isaac Stewart in Brandon Sanderson's novel "The Way of Kings"." Apparently, I was mistaken in my credits. The character was actually drawn by Ben McSweeney, one of the other two artists who, like Isaac Stewart, contributed work to Sanderson's novel.

I was corrected today (and complimented on the model) by Isaac Stewart himself in a YouTube message. Then Ben McSweeney commented on my turntable video, clarifying what Isaac Stewart had done and what he had done himself, and then he, too, complimented me on the model.

He did, however, suggest one change: When Ben McSweeney drew the character he gave him a buckled belt, yet Sanderson's text describes him as having a rope belt. He suggested that I could correct that discrepancy to make the character model more accurate, and suggested that I toy with the design a bit rather than just swapping the current belt out for a simple rope tied in a knot at the waist. So, that is what I have done for today's Daily Art: I came up with a couple of options for a fancy new rope belt to swap with the current belt that is on my character model.

The next step is to choose which one I like best and model it. Though, in truth, I think that the modeling will wait a few days; I expect to be painting the rest of that mirror for my Daily Art tomorrow.