abyssalbrews

One More Thing: School of Resolutions

Added 2023-01-29 19:41:07 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers,

It is said that those who fail to prepare should prepare to fail and some wizards take that mantra to heart. They set about making plans for the future, drawing upon their connections to the magical forces in this world to see a knowledge of what may come. They spend time getting themselves ready for the day and look to set themselves up for success no matter what eventuality may come. These wizards are practitioners of the School of Resolutions.

Design notes from Matthew

I feel like every time I design a subclass, I think “man that was a lot of work” and then a few months later I just end up back in the same cycle again making another subclass. In a way it’s good as it forces me to challenge myself in making these things. It gets me out of my comfortable zone of creatures and magic items and gets me thinking about building out skillsets that can work together with a class.

The initial idea I had with this one is that I wanted to make a wizard centered around stating what they were going to do and then following through on it. Wizard is a prepared caster class and one that, I think, doesn’t get as much focus on the preparation aspect of it. I decided that I would try to take that on with this subclass.

One of my favorite things about games is teamwork as well so I have to say that Gift of Time is probably my favorite feature I’ve ever written into a subclass. The idea that a spellcaster could benefit someone else and not just them brings me a lot of joy. It also requires forethought when preparing your spells for the day. What spells will you inscribe and who will you give them to or will you use them for yourself?

Illustration notes from Fernando

Matthew had a good vision for this illustration involving an almanac, I tried a few different poses but I wasn’t entirely happy with any of them. I scoured through my vast library of reference pictures (at this point, I have to actively stop myself from buying more from ArtStation, I’m at the point where I have so much it’s detrimental) and I just couldn’t find anything that 100% captured what I had in my head.

So I started taking a bunch of pictures of myself in different poses at different angles in my office, they were absolutely ridiculous and they have all been deleted (unfortunately not before my wife saw one of them, I don’t know how I’m still married…) but they finally captured what I was going for here.

I remember watching a documentary in the 80s or 90s about how Disney animators all had a mirror on their desk in order to help with animating character expressions and I completely understand why.

I’ve been pushing myself a lot with AbyssalBrews, and this was no exemption, it was really tricky to figure out how to light this illustration when there are four major light sources in this image (the two eyes, the mouth, and the almanac/calendar.) the mouth in particular was tricky because I didn’t want the light pouring out of it, but I did want to connect the character to the calendar by having the same light inside them that was pouring out of the stone.

The left hand’s pose is to illustrate what an overwhelming feeling it must be to have this sort of power, and the golden halo is just a little graphic design addition so the background is not just a galaxy of stars which can be a bit monotonous.

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