#Hergótha the Great

[dduane]

Some casual digital work, done in prep for character and prop "model sheets". (Full size image at the link.)

In foreground: two Oakeshott type XVIIIa swords. (L) A digital model of the sword (attributed) of Edward III. (R) A digital model of the Great War Sword (attributed) of Albrecht II. …In background: their users, snogging again. (eyeroll) ISTG, you cannot take these two anywhere.

(ETA for fellow Daz Studio users: the digital sword models come from this collection by Valandar.)

[transcribing-things]

Text is from an ebook, most likely, and reads:

"There's a song I've heard before…"

She followed his look. Up there on the eastern walls of the city, darkness poured and coiled gracefully down between two of the old watchtowers; vast draped wings, a sinuous glittering length of tail. From higher up, near the curve of upraised neck, faint light glowed down–the fire of Hasai's eyes, slightly more tinged with blue these days, reflecting from the great main black diamond spine of his face-shield where it jutted up and gleamed in the moonlight.

What was a bit strange was that something was slightly obscuring the front of the shield, over the eye-ridges, near where the main spine sprang up. Whatever the little dark shape was, it too glittered faintly. There was a scratch of silver at the front of it, and near one end of that a sudden unexpected spark of crimson, the light of the Moon catching cold in something too red for its color-draining pallor to defeat–

Abruptly Segnbora recognized the unique hue of a mantichore sapphire… and the only one of those anywhere near here was in the pommel of Hergótha the Great. Segnbora's mouth dropped open. "Is that–my Goddess, what is Lorn–what in the– Dusty, is he sitting on Hasai's head?"

Herewiss looked up over his shoulder. "Looks that way."

She was not merely astounded, but scandalized. "Dear Goddess about us, who sites on a Dragon?!"

Her spouse looked sideways at her, and those downturned eyes crinkled. "I seem to remember one morning some weeks ago–"

Segnbora blinked. "…Now wait just a moment."

"And somebody or other was sitting on a Dragon when he said, 'Surely that won't ever go in there –'"

"Dusty, that was different, he was in shapechange, he–"

"'–even if you did it this way, it would be ever so–'"

"Herewiss Hearn's son, will you be serious for a moment for once in your life?! You know perfectly well I meant when he's in his proper skin, when Hasai's wearing his lhhw'had it's completely undignified, not one in their right mind would ever dream of–"

"'Oh wait!'" And Herewiss dissolved in laughter.

After a moment, helpless, Segnbora followed him, and it took some while for her to stop again. An inability to breathe was mostly responsible.

"All right!" she said at last, when she could speak again. "All right. I daresay the Dragon-Chief can find some way to pass this off as some obscure kingly ritual if any of his people ever find out! …And how is it that our

George R.R. Martin: dragons are huge ferocious beasts who answer to a master  

Tolkien: dragons are annoying, talking assholes

[dduane]

Casual still life with Hergótha the Great. Because the books always wind up in the kitchen. And the professional librarians in rr'Virendir complain about it to Freelorn constantly, but he just ignores them because he's King. And as for Hergotha, it goes where he goes. It’s kind of a Thing with him. 

[dduane]

...So anyway, took another run at this.

The whoie thing with medieval surcoats is that they're supposed to be charged with devices that at a distance will unambiguously identify you on the battlefield (among other places)—not so much to your enemies, but to your friends and allies. This way people will know whose side you're fighting on, and (if you're the leader of your troops, as Freelorn is) will also know you're down there on the ground with them, exposing yourself to the same danger that you're exposing them to.

(Fussy or overcomplicated heraldic charges are by and large a phenomenon of late-medieval / early Renaissance times. The best ones for battlefield use were relatively simple in design and color, like the ones below. The objects on top of the helmets are crests, which might have been worn ornamentally on real helmets, or could sometimes be worn as badges by followers.)

With all this in mind, the device the surcoat-maker is working with needs to be made to cover as much real estate on the front and back of the coat as possible. If you spend much time going over old heraldic rolls like the one above, you can see that especially with animal charges, a lot of time is spent on designs intended to most completely fill the shapes of items they're added to: surcoats, obviously, but also shields and banners.

The problem I was having in the first image was due to using a version of Arlen's White Lion that I'd designed to fit in the hoist of a banner—long and relatively thin. (Similar to the one in this image of Segnbora making her way through the Throne room in Kynall palace with the standard she picked up in Freelorn's old bedroom during the battle for Prydon, thereby earning her name.)

...It didn't seem all that likely that that version of the design would work on a surcoat. I tried it anyway, to see if I could save myself some time by altering its dimensions. No dice, though.

So for purposes of experiment I went back to the drawing board (somewhat). Our-Earth heralds would blazon the Arlene arms as Sable, a Lion passant guardant argent bearing in the dexter paw a sword hilted or, bladed argent, in the pommel a jewel gules. ...So: I picked up this plainly square-designed passant guardant shape from Wikimedia Commons. (The doofus-y expression is going to need a little work further down the line to sober it up or fierce it up a bit....)

I fixed his colors (keeping the tongue: what's not to like about a lion who's langued like that?)...

...and added the requisite sword: changing the position of the forward limb and paw so that the sword wouldn't appear to be sticking through Héalhra's head.

...After that it was just a matter of pasting this onto the image that adds color and texture to the surcoat, and running the render again to see how the reworked image fits.

So: that's not too bad in terms of size and shape. FIne detail (hilt and crossbar color on the sword standing in for Hergótha the Great, the Lion's eyes blued by Fire) can wait for later.

But when those are done, though, the real work begins. I need to process this basic image further so that it looks like it's been embroidered on the surcoat instead of silkscreened onto it. ...But that's work for another day, as it's going to require some fiddly masking of the Lion, and several passes through the Photoshop-based action that does embroidery.

(ETA: everybody interested should check out the #heraldry tag. Fascinating things are going on there.)

(sigh) When your character gives you the look that says "Yeah, whether you like it or not, the lion is simply the wrong shape to fill the field on this surcoat and you're going to have to redraw it from scratch."

(staggers off to bed, muttering under breath)

(And he also wants to know why the skirts of the surcoat have suddenly gone partially see-through. Damned if I know. It's a terrible surcoat and I'd ditch it in a NY minute it if I could. ...Not least because the version of the Arlene arms he really ought to be wearing -- "Arlen ancient," we'd probably call it: the one he's got on here is the version worn by princes -- anyway, the ancient-format version of the design is much larger and is going to be damn near impossible to get to spill all down the front of the surcoat the way it should. Because the underpinnings of the garment have been extremely idiosyncratically built in a way that is going to make it hell to subvert.

...Feck, feck, feckity feck feck. (eyeroll) The joys of digital graphic design, folks. ...Feh.