Brisa

(the last pencil-sketch)

Brisa 'n Rommi

The one in the center is Brisa, my character. The one on the left is Romana, the chaotic, point-eared easterner and Brisa's beloved. Brisa's got the runes of her goddess floating around her -- Horse to the right of her head, Water to the lower right in her hair, and the circle that represents Order or Time rising behind her head.

Also, the stars are associated with Brisa's goddess, which is why she's wearing a star earring. Then there's the outer markings around the rune of Order/Time rune, which are the rune for Chaos, signifying that Order came from Chaos. This is why the Order and Chaos runes are also partly over Romana too -- while Chaos follows her, she's renounced them, and now choses to follow the healer goddess, signified by the little cross earring she wears. The butterflies are a personal iconography of Brisa's for Romana. ;-)

I was thinking of using pointilism for the final drawing, to show an almost dreamlike effect. Not only did I want to avoid putting down on paper, hard and fast, someone else's NPC (and possibly getting it wrong)... but I wanted to catch the 'feel' of great forces in motion, behind and around the two of them. Mythic/iconic/dreamlike imagery fitted that best, I thought.

And finally, there were some cool bits I wanted to try weaving in regarding light and shadow. For example, Romana is an easterner and so very pale, while the east is dark and evil to the folk of Heartwood... while the unicorns who fight for bright Order, represented by the shining sun, are black... so I'd thought to lightly shade the part of Brisa's face that was towards the pale Romana, and highlight the part nearest to the sable unicorn. I just like the comparison/contrast of light and dark. ;-)

I'm very disappointed that I can't play this character any more... as you may be able to tell just from my thoughts on first sketches of this drawing, she was quite a lot of fun to play. Unfortunately the game turned out to be heavily scripted.

Brisa
why Brisa left the game
Brisa's background
meaning of the gold stars
My Character Page
Reality Fault, the very cool game-based chat server that games are run on!