illustrator • game dev • dragon enthusiast • oc obsessed • furry (scaly) • cat parent
currently FFXIVpilled
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intro • tags • commissions
i dont think i ever posted these but if i did too bad im doing it again. i made these as a set of square prints for cons. printed matte on cardstock with gold foil for the geometry, they are lush and i love them. photos don't do them justice but you can kind of see the effect below:
Being a fantasy world, Kenah has the customary set of magical elements, but they're a little different from the classical fire-water-wind-earth set. One of the biggest themes of the story is balance, and this is reflected in the magic intrinsic to its makeup.
The planet is full of raw magical energy, or mana, and it can take form in many ways. One of them is through elemental or planetary magic. There are six elements on Kenah: heat, light, energy, time, weight, and movement. Each one is broken up into two aspects: one for presence and one for absence. Unlike in real Earth science where, for example, darkness is just an absence of light, the aspect of Skadis is in and of itself a force, impenetrable by regular, non-magical light.
It's important that the planetary aspects be in equilibrium as much as possible within the planet overall, but it's common to find pockets of one aspect building in an area, called Cores: for example, a volcano is a natural place an Ignia Core may form, and you might find a forest unnaturally dark because of a Skadis Core at its heart. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg game as to which came first, the mana or the ambience.
The designs of the symbols took a lot of iteration to get to a point where I was somewhat satisfied with them. (I'm still not 100% happy, but maybe I never will be, and you gotta stop at some point.) For each set, the presence and absence had to make some reference to what they were embodying, mirror/reference each other in some way, and be able to combine into a single symbol as well. A lot of them, heat especially, used to be more organic looking, but it was harder to fit the criteria that way. eventually i decided on the geometric stuff because, well, that's my jam.
some old development doodles:
here you can see me struggling with Movement, and making things not look like pokeballs and peace signs and tripods.
i was trying to figure out why some of my flight rising dragon profiles looked different than the others, and i realized it's because i'd wanted to update them to use shrunk versions of the faction emblems, but hadn't updated everyone yet, and, oops, the shrunk versions were too big so it was pushing some stuff to the side. but they didn't look good small anyway. so i went back to the old pixel ones i'd been using before i revamped them. but i didn't have all the factions in pixel form! so i had to make those!! and then i had to update the colours on the old ones!!!
it was interesting to observe my own process on these designs overall. they started out as simple pieces that translated pretty easily into pixel art. then i upgraded them to add more detail, making a handful more at the same time. THEN i went back to add pixel versions of the new ones, but surprise, the added detail doesn't work well in such a small form! so then i had to simplify designs that were made more complex from the start. thankfully, since they're all my own designs, i don't have to worry about omitting things that might be important - i can choose for myself exactly how i want to present things.
i trapped myself with 2px wide verticals and horizontals due to using a 100px squared canvas. the only place i used 1px wide is on the crest at the top of the temple (in the middle), and even then i think it looks a bit out of place. it might have helped to bring it down lower lol. idk whatever it's fine
also, the symmetry tool in photoshop sucks for pixel art. please it doesnt have to be this way
Tales of Kenah (working title, alternately called "ToK" or just "kenah") is my high fantasy isekai story that i've had kicking around for 20 years now. it has a pretty basic premise: young adult falls into portal, gets turned into a dragon, wants to go home but ends up having to save the world. the plan is to make it into a webcomic, but the dream would be a full 3D video game... -sighs wistfully-
this is a series of emblems that represent some of the different factions and locations of kenah. the project began simply as a fun design challenge for my old flight rising dragons (most of whom were kenah OCs and background characters), and eventually expanded into an oracle deck. i still want to make 12 more designs at minimum, though. (12 is a symbolic number on kenah.)
each card has a name and meanings:
fun fact: there is an in-canon divination deck that is not this one. i don't know exactly what the designs look like, but it has anywhere between 34 and 78 cards in it.
the original six, in their super old version, plus pixels, under the cut:
