=III.The Ending, Once Upon a Time= (Fan Creations)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Sunday, April 03, 2022, 15:22 (964 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli.

~ According to the reader's gifts, books have their destiny.

(Approx. 1668 Words | +/- 15 min. read | About: Character Design.)

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For the last... oh, it has to be at least a half a decade, I've shoveled through a lot of the Gameplay and Investment teams' shitty renditions. Wall of text after wall of text, and 1/3rd of that might just be because of the pure ghost pepper taco shit that was sunsetting. All the same, my criticisms have tended to be directed towards one generalized area involving the design and choices in how this game has been built (or broken) to play.

On the flip side, the art and concepting teams at Bungie have been untouchable in my eyes. A whole different kind of shit! As in, "SHIT! Y'all are good." Just fantastic. In fact, real quick, here is me raving about Europa. And here is a bunch of us talking about the Dreaming City. And then here I am talking about...art? Or, at least, having fun with it. "Wonderfully heartening and somewhat puzzling" indeed! It's still true. lol. ^_^  

I've had NOTHING but good things to say about what the art and concepting teams have created.

Until now. 

CONGRATULATIONS! 

You've earned ONE... (J.I.C; "One" is what mere mortals call "a number," art team. It helps communicate an amount. You're welcome.) ... internet exclusive INSANEdrive rant. Since this is your first time, I should let you know that this means I'm about to "Lewis Black" your shit, you motherfuckers. It's nothing personal, and if you take it personally, you're doing it wrong. AND! Since I'm talking about/to an art team, I've INCLUDED VISUAL EXAMPLES! They are probably lousy visual examples, but 'ay. I'm (mostly) self-taught, and I suck at everything! Such is life. Also, as an artist, my stuff is always the worst stuff ever! Therefore, my-art-sucks. Shut-up. I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it.

So! Let's get this party started. The first two minutes of this video below are simply the ending of the Witch Queen Campaign. Feel free to watch it if you wish, but what I have to say starts afterwards. 

Out from the shifting noise of the warbling black ooze, a form collects toward the camera as hands collected, resting palm side in, creating the shape of a pyramid. The rest, "of-form", follows, built in ever shifting arrays, into a tall, slender body. The hands break their rest, and seems to temporally onion skin against reality. The camera pans down and shifts to the right of this slender form, which is passing the camera by. A cape, also seemingly rubbing against time itself, not only "onion skins" upon this reality, but at the foot of it, glows an eerie orange hue. A hue often seen when the power of the darkness is at play. 

While this shape is in some place, and indeed also speaks prophecy and warning, these are not the parts which require focus in this text here today. The focus is exactly on this form, clearly sentient and now centered upon. This form seen in whole, is at its top, misting or perhaps boiling a smoke(?) of faces. On the whole, it is undoubtedly an unearthly thing. Speaking about its truth as true worlds dance around as mere diorama, a simple.-Childs.-Thing.

Know that for me, dear reader... I was so completely blown away. Everything seemed so RIGHT! 

And then...

AND THEN!

Bungie revealed... this. 

No...wait...

THIS!

What. The Fuck. Anime bullshit, is this?!

You...

I...

*Consternated Shock* MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

THIS SHAPESHIFTING SUCKA IS THE DARKNESS! DID YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT FUCKING KAWAII!

I could forgive the human hands, I could forgive the general construction of a "human form", as after all, YOU DID EVERYTHING TO SHOW "this foe is THE ree-al"! IT IS THE!-SHIT! AND IS COM'N. TO! CO-LLECT!

THIS MOTH'A HAS FLIPP'N FACES BOILING OUT 'IS GOSH DARN HEAD! And Y'ALL... with the ability to make THE FARTHEST REACHES OF YOUR IMAGINATION! You go for the fucking, basic bitch, "dish-sized and basically human" cornea, iris, conjunctiva eyeballs?!?!? WHO IN THE -FUCK- APPROVED THAT SHIT!

Of all the GOSH DARNED options...*rrrra*... Well. Well 'd welly well well well. 'pprnt'ly the Darkness is da Grays, and there for the Light must be *GASP!* *whispers* LIZARD PEOPLE. Of course! HOW COULD WE BE so blind! All them co' blud'd little shits do is bask in the light, and kill. Them the CATS of the lizard world!... lol... OK, so I'm having fun here being "outraged," but geez louise.

You just... had to go and belly flop into the trope pool of gosh darned "Most Writers Are Human". FOR FUCKS SAKE!

(Warning: Almost 29 year old spoilers for this Star Trek:TNG episode.)

"...but perhaps...one day..."

You know what I was HOPEING to see?! Something along the lines of...

For starters. At least it would line up with everything else I saw. And you have to admit to (or at least I do) feeling SOMETHING when you first see that. It's the most BASIC-YET-ON-BRAND thing you could have done, and you just SKIPPED over basic, and just went for SIMPLE SIMON regular ass eyeballs. Shoot, ass eyeballs would have been an improvement! Darkness has seen some shit! ...lol.

Apparently, BECAUSE THEY MISSED THIS ONE THING OUT OF A MILLION AND THUS IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE, I have more imagination than ALL of Bungies art team! What? I'm TOTALLY being serious right now. I'm not biting my cheek at all! ow my butt.

...You know what I was hoping for? To NOT see a face. That's right...

NO FACE! Oh shoot, I forgot the nose! ... oooo. That... that's look'n kinda fali... no no I can fix this, I can fix this...

Hmmm. That's uh... kind of worse... One moment... one moment...

...THERE!

YEAH! So it's not entirely "No Face," but you get the idea, right? I'm looking to turn this shape-shifting (?) look'n fella into Koh. That would be something! No face, with all those faces coming out of the top of its head? THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN LEGIT! And, in case you missed it, It was right there! Looking you in the... 

(Click the picture for what I'm referencing.)

...FACE!

There may have been a downside, though, as I noticed there was nothing to draw the eye to all the empty space, which is why I kept the mono-brow here. Plus, a pyramid felt too cheesy. The last thing anyone wants is to turn the darkness into a gosh darned power ranger.

But, for the sake of argument, let's say Bungie is convinced the character known as "The Witness" needs a human-recognizable ability to see.

So fine! We'll just cyclops this fool!

"Mr. Anderson" ...No wait... that's not right... hmmm...

"Dormammu I've Come To Bargain"... no no, sorry sorry, I just, THERE WERE SO MANY RENDITIONS! I don't have Perforce! I know it looks messy, but I know where everything is! I just need... to... I can find it... I can find it...

AH-HA! FOUND IT!

Yea? I mean, if you're going to have it be a giant human eyeball, you might as well commit, right?

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

While making my mock up, other ideas came about, as they do.

So here is a rendition where I was thinking, "Instead of eyes, why not warped folds of 'skin' where the eyes would be". That would be alien and unnerving. But! As I started that, I got hit with another idea, so I made a quick (and honestly, my worst of all of these) scribble when suddenly I found myself reminded of...

...THIS!

I found myself thinking, "What if the 'Temporal Instability' caused by, well... 'it' the darkness, was its eyes!". That should be on its face! Not only would that be cool, but in the order of how things play out in the ending cinematic, that would make A TON of sense with the "face" reveal. Oh, surprise!!

But then I go and say, "OK, let's add this to the idea, and shade things out a touch." What does that look like? So I go in and shade these "folds" or whatever and...

Well... it's definitely alien. In some ways, it kind of reminds me of a... cuttlefish? I'm not sure why. But then I realized between the lines... I fell back into the trap I had criticized. I made eyes.

That said, I still think this is a huge improvement in concept from what we got. On one hand, I made something that is humanly recognizable, but is also, on the same coin, strange. AS EVERYTHING ELSE of this thing is strange!

But then... I knew, I had not yet reached perfection.

SOMETHING WAS MISSING!

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SOMETHING OBVIOUS.

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IT WAS LOOKING RIGHT AT ME, and then I KNEW WHAT I HAD TO DO!

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I realized...

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...The Darkness, in its (APPARENTLY) true form...

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 ...truly is...

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PERFECTION!

PERFECTION!

I could make, no more.

Well... I could turn it into a DBO usable avatar.

Here ya go DBO!

^_^

Yeah, I know. I am a very silly man. But despite the silliness, I am quite serious in my renditions and, if a touch colorful and obviously exaggerated, thoughts. You could have made it be ANYTHING, and you just went with eyes. And I think, for a studio that has proven it knows how to make art, this just... is kind of sad. I can't know what your intentions are, and I hope your reasons are worth it, but... man, EVEN IF it's all shape-shifty, THIS was the face you wanted to show first!?

I do not understand.

Ah! I re-triggered myself! 

Bungie, you put freek'n Disney Eyes on the embodiment of the darkness, fuk'n really?! What were y'all thinkin'! It looks like something you might see in a Korean skin care commercial. When it blinks, does the action push its head back?

Ugh. I really don't understand. It was all SO CLOSE.

Other than that... I mean, shoot, everything else is basically straight fire. I know some folks here aren't fans of the swamps, but that's OK. Not everything has to be a gleaming jewel. It's interesting, and it looks like what I know. And as for the stuff that is purely made up, it looks like what one could imagine. Though, do I *sniff* *sniff* yes, I do sense a hint of Minas Morgul in the inspirations? Someone in the art team used it in the reference sheet!

And...that's all I have to say about that. Y'all are awesome.

GG folks.