Noah The Shepherd King

[00:00:00]Before I knew the world was ending, I was a king. Now they call me the shipwright. After nearly a century, the task I was given is almost complete.

[00:00:12]This is my last chance to [music] save whoever would join us, to salvage whatever knowledge I can to help us rebuild.

[00:00:19]But the gods rule here, and they never do things the easy way.

[00:00:27]You may have noticed a couple new illustrations tucked into that intro.

[00:00:32]Having that awesome shipwre voice over by the talented Philip Nathaniel Freeman has inspired me to make some art just for this. Before I knew the world was ending, I was a king. To accompany those words, I wanted to draw of the shipwre before he was the shipwright of the shepherd king in all his glory. I threw together some very rudimentary 3D models to build out a street to use in the background.

[00:00:57]As the illustration progresses, you will see they were of very little use, so I'll chalk it up to practice. The shepherd king and queen ride in on a white Theioidon, one of the important creatures in their shephering empire. In this one image, I wanted to portray that this kingdom was thriving but small, going for quality over quantity. That meant I wanted a crowd, but not too big.

[00:01:21]But I also wanted that feeling of intimacy. Like the king and queen are not that far removed from their people, which of course meant I had to get closer to the people in order to see individual details, which means complexity. There's just no getting around it. This is one of those many cases where story forces my hand. If I want the image to read, got to do it. I generally tried to keep all the different characters on separate layers, keep them color-coded just so I didn't get lost in all of it. An image like this would generally be a great opportunity to do any redesigns that I have in mind, but once again, I was kind of encouraged. I opened up the old designs that I did quite a while ago now, and I actually still really like them. So, here they are wearing the first pass versions of their outfits. I like that these outfits are royal, but still on the humble side. They're celebrating the fact that shephering is their primary industry. I like the idea that what the king and queen wear is the ultimate showcase of what their valley produces and that their people would be proud to see them wearing the byproducts of their industry. I was going to design some brand new characters for this crowd. And there's a couple in there, but I realized this is the ideal opportunity to bring some more of these older designs to life. So, I found a place for characters like the weaver and the osciller and the sheep dog. It's one thing to draw a character just standing there, but it's always satisfying to bring them to life by putting them in an actual scene. To me, it's kind of the final proof of whether they worked or not. I ended up covering almost the entire background with cloth. This wasn't to hide architecture. I would not have minded drawing the actual street, but this is in a village that specializes in shephering, which also means thread making and weaving. So, it's easy to imagine the heart of their village being adorned with wool. So, the citizens of the Shepherd's Valley wave to their king as he passes. Nama leans down to accept a gift. Some of the finest fabric the weavers have been able to make yet. And of course, from a lighting perspective, I wanted this to seem warm, inviting, like a glimpse into the golden age. Literally, this was them at their height.

[00:03:24]I probably struggled the most for an idea for this second image to accompany the line, "Now they call me the shipwreight." That could mean a lot of things. It implies building a ship. The next line is after nearly a century, the task I was given is nearly complete. I think that's my opportunity to show him building his ship. So here I wanted to imply the idea of the title, implying that his title was given to him by people who feared him. As chaos and evil continued to expand throughout the world, he rose to face it. The shipwright is a name that many fear, so this was my opportunity to show why that might be. For this shot, he's interrupting some people that are up to no good. I did some very simple character designs. We have a blood thief, the dogheaded victim, the leech, from the video about the blood economy, and finally, a character I'm calling the maggot, whose outfit is made from tightly wound felt. Over the course of the next few videos, I'll be adding more illustrations to this intro series. The goal is that either longtime viewers, but particularly for new viewers to be able to get an idea for what this story is, who the shipwre is, what his goals are, [music] and what obstacles he faces at a very high level, of course. So, next time I get to put my model of the ark to use.

[00:04:39]Before I continue with the story, here's a bit of an interlude. Having had to pause for a couple weeks this summer already, I was hesitant to explore what I can only describe as a creative diversion. There are a few things that frustrate me more than a story left unfinished. So, I'm very conscious of everything that pulls me away from completing this one, but this is one I had to get out of my system, and I figured I would share it with you. One of my kids started a new sketchbook and said, "There's something beautiful about a blank page." You know that feeling when words just keep reverberating in your head like a well-made bell that's been rung and it just keeps humming? I was thinking about the idea of the beautiful blank page and I thought about minimal illustrations that would leave most of the page alone to allow it to be beautiful but would elevate it with meaning. So I took some time to create these three illustrations, just some classic story tropes, but the idea was to create these small pockets of detail that turned the whiteness of the page into something more. There may or may not be a place for this concept in Dead Gods. likely not, but I thought it was neat and it was an itch that I had to scratch before I could move on. I will say with diversions like this, one of my criteria for allowing them to pull me away is that they should at least recharge me creatively. I should feel more excited to get back to the project.

[00:06:01]And that was certainly the case here.

[00:06:03]I'm sure he's working very hard, but I am haunted by this image. Before doing this exercise, I had to be honest with myself and say, "You're not doing this, right?" But no, I'm happy with how these turned out. I will set them aside. Idea satisfactoryy explored for now. I will say to the artists out there, I'd recommend trying an exercise like this, doing more with less. And if you do take a swing at it, please by all means, send it to me. I'd love to see your attempt.

[00:06:30]But anyway, rabbit trail explored. Let's get back to it.

[00:06:34]Now, on to page seven. The shipwreck was clearly distracted by something, and necessity demands that we jump straight into spoilers. It's the Warthog. But he's had a rough time since we last saw him. The god of the hunt took his arm.

[00:06:46]He's had to cauterize and bandage things up. Most of his jewelry and armor is gone. I wanted to show him in a more desperate state. By making him look more desperate, my hope is that he also looks more dangerous. With the Warthog model sheet updated, it was time to jump back into the story. I've been looking forward to this shot for a while. One thing we can be very thankful for about evil is that it's cannibalistic. It eats its own. Expecting people full of selfish ambition to work together universally is a tall order. You could say it attacks itself. It self-sabotages. It gets in its own way.

[00:07:21]Not as often as we'd like, but you've got to take those opportunities when they come. This is unrelated to the video, but is related to the project and creativity in general. I mentioned a few videos back that I won't be using generative AI on this project. The main reason I cited was that by design, generative AI is design by committee.

[00:07:41]Adding more people to a committee is like adding more sand to a sand blaster.

[00:07:45]Rounds out every interesting corner and edge. I thought I'd explain another reason why I'm choosing not to use it.

[00:07:51]Have you ever had someone excitedly try to explain a dream to you? The most polite thing I've been able to think to say is, "I'm glad that experience meant something to you." Because those stories are incoherent. They're a string of things. In narrative terms, dreams are almost entirely and then stories.

[00:08:10]They're effectively just whim. It's your brain moving from thing to thing to thing without cost and generally without purpose. Good storytelling is different.

[00:08:20]It's communication, but it also comes from and requires effort, cost, and often suffering. An idea worth sharing should also be worthy of effort. If you didn't put in effort to communicate the idea, then the idea is not worthy of our attention. Effort says, I believe in this, so I will put in this much work to make sure that it comes across, that it's understood, that it's presented well. Generative AI is closer to dreams than storytelling. It's whim without cost. It's and then without effort. As technically impressive as it's getting, when I find out something is AI, I immediately lose all interest because I know there's no sweat in it. There was no cost. Finding out something was generated is like listening to someone tell a story that almost sounds interesting and then you find out halfway through that it was a dream and you realize, oh, it didn't really happen. Okay, it's that kind of dismissal. And the most polite thing you can say to the person who generated it is the same thing you could say to someone who's passionate about telling you about their nonsense dream. I'm glad that meant something to you, I guess.

[00:09:28]So, I'm choosing to make and support projects that are made by people who believe in their ideas, their stories enough to put in the effort to pay the cost.

[00:09:39]While these frames play out, a quick reminder. Subscribe on YouTube. Follow me on the social media of your choice.

[00:09:45]If you've been following this project and you like where it's going and you'd like to help out, join me on Patreon.

[00:09:50]I've got a few tiers to choose from. And honestly, even if you're not there yet, you can follow me on Patreon for free while you think about it. This project is currently a one-man operation. Even that's a stretch because I'm working on it in my spare time. I'm doing what I can bit by bit. My hope is to create enough story that I can create a book one. I'd also like to create an art book that collects a lot of the worldbuing material I've created over the last couple years. Then I'll be on to book two and three and however many I can get to. Eventually, I'd like to find artists that can draw entire episodes, to find an editor who understands this language better than I do. I would really like to be able to get voice acting and sound design to accompany these episodes.

[00:10:27]There's a lot I'd like to do. In the meantime, I'm going to keep telling the story and designing as I go, but if you'd like to be a part of helping this project grow, the links are below.

[00:10:37]The shipwreight is not going to let this opportunity go to waste. You can tell these two are not the collaborating type.

[00:10:45]To round out this page, we see a bit more of the conflict between the wolf and the warthog. Despite their size differences, they are somewhat evenly matched. In my thumbnail sketch for the last panel, I actually drew it too vague. And I couldn't remember what my original intentions were. So, whatever I had originally been planning, it's now been replaced with this shot. So, he's bending the jaws in two different directions. And I will say it was silly of me. I thought speed lines would make my life a lot easier. Turns out, just like everything else, if you're going to attempt to do them even somewhat right, they require a great deal of thought, but I'm very happy with how they're turning out.

[00:11:21]And with that, we've got page seven.

[00:11:24]We'll see if our party can escape next week. Thanks for watching.

[00:11:34]Heat.

[00:11:46]Heat.

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