Project Overview
Vex is a tabletop character that has been my absolute favorite to play. Even a year after the campaign she was in ended, I still adore her and I've been thinking about sculpting her for a long time. I decided to get myself back into the groove of things, I should finally sculpt her like I had wanted to. I think it would be fun to compare this sculpt to my very first character sculpt, Ingrid, seeing as how both of these characters are tieflings. It would be a visual of my growth as an artist and designer.
When starting the project, I knew I wanted to update Vex's design. The first drawing I did of her is alright, but plain. I also wanted to revisit how her legs would work, as she has weird draconic legs that I think are so much fun. Vex is a Path of Spores Druid and I want to incorporate that more into her design and eventually into her model stand. I'd be keeping the shape of her dress the same, but I'll just be adding more to it to make it more interesting.
Designing
I wanted to adapt Vex better to be sculpted because when I drew the above image I wasn't thinking too hard about how she would be balancing on her feet. I was trying to make some weird lizard feet, and I wasn't thinking about structure. This posed some challenges because her lower legs are inhuman while her thighs are still human in structure. I tackled this first by creating a new general shape of the leg on how I thought it would work.
The legs were absolutely killing me at first though. I tried looking at cat and lizard legs to figure out a better shape (I chose to look at cats because Spyro in the Reignited Trilogy has a very cat-like look to him, and I think Vex has a similar energy to him). Looking at those helped, and I got something that looked a little more structurally sound, but it still looked odd.
At first I thought the solution was just to make the lower leg more boney, but I asked some friends for their opinions. One friend suggested drawing out the skeleton of the legs and looking at digitigrades. I then realized I was solving a problem that didn't exist, as I was trying to find ways to have Vex walk on the ball of her foot. In the original drawing, she was balancing on her toes, and I thought that didn't make sense when it did, seeing as they are reptilian legs. Both cats and lizards, animals I was already looking at, were digitigrades.
I started the legs over, making the skeletal structure first. I decided to angle the thigh forward and shorten it slightly to better match how a cat's hind leg works. From the knee down, the structure looks mostly cat-like with lizard toes. I also made what I suppose is the heel of the cat foot a little more prominent and pointy. I was also design with a fourth "thumb" toe before, and I decided to just abandon that.
From there, I put some meat on the bones and ended up really happy with the result.
I then added in the 3/4 views. I wanted to make this a full model sheet because I want to try to be as detailed as possible. I think a weakness of mine is that I tend to not go detailed enough, so I wanted to give myself as much information from as many angles as I can at this stage. I think doing this will help me when I sculpt to be more detailed. One thing I struggled with a bit making the center of gravity look consistent in these views, but I was able to get something I was happy with. These views will probably need some edits later on though.
I decided here was a good place to start adding on the features and details. I started by drawing Vex's face. While I followed the original drawing I also updated her features slightly to fit my style now. Vex as a character is meant to look cute and whimsical. I tried to emulate that in her features. Her hair is also very long and puffy. Her horns at this stage look fine, but I think they should stick more straight up like in the original drawing.
When I was drawing out her whole outfit I ended up changing the horns to stick straight up like I was thinking. I followed the same shape of her dress from her original design, just changing the corset and adding lots of layers. I also added a mossy layer to the dress and shelf mushrooms! I thought these added something interesting to the silhouette and they nod to her being a mushroom druid. Some of the layers of the dress will have patterns on them when they are colored in to add a bit of complexity. I contemplated giving her some necklaces because she wears a lot of other jewelry but I decided to leave that area bare. She is heavily scarred so I think I wanted to leave her neck open to make that easier to see. It's also a good break area in the design.
Next Steps
Now that I have the design nailed down, I have to draw it out on the other views. From there I'll color things in and see how things look. I'd probably be finding some callouts for the various fabrics of the dress and for the jewelry.