Just before I graduated High School, I discovered Blender. This is an open-source, free to download modeling software. The first thing I did was make some shitty sword models. I was 18, so I thought these were godlike achievements. Fast forward to the present day, and Blender has become another of my curses. If you look along the sides of this blog, you’ll see some of my more recent work. You’ll note some of it’s starting to look… dare I risk the wrath of the Dunning-Kruger Effect? Good. Aside from the grip segment on the longsword, which I concede is shameful compared with the painterly quality of the blade. Still, I am slowly self-teaching myself a modicum of weapon design talent.
You may not know this depending on when you got here, but I’m also a martial artist. I have a thing for swords.
Concept art, then, is a particularly insidious form of self-torture. “It’s for the blog! Yes, yes, the blog! Ooh, the book! The book needs them too, yes!” I cackle. “I will be rich one day, and I will own them all! Yes! I will own these weapons!” As my artistic vision mutates and strengthens alongside my raw digi-skill, the time to completion ticks upwards. 30 hours is the record so far, but readers–I doubt it’s the end.
I will almost certainly not own these weapons. Any given one of them, considering the detailing and precision of their lines (a decisive advantage of 3D swords: their lines are actually perfect, to an extent not even Japanese masterworks can match), would cost ten grand or more.
But my, dear people, a man can dream.
Ashenvein Gate: Stories & Dreams 