Duration: 0:28

58 views

0

Started a project I've wanted to do for a long time, but didn't feel I was good enough to do justice until recently.
Behold the inscrutable Kappa! (Rough draft).

For those not up on your weeaboo-nism, the Kappa is a creature from Japanese folklore. It's basically a magical, amphibian humanoid inhabiting lakes and rivers. Its most distinguishing feature is the water-filled bowl on its head. Should the bowl be emptied, the Kappa is rendered unable to move until the bowl is refilled. Which, to put it mildly, has great rpg/tabletop game potential.

Pictured is a Kappa model with the major features finished. Next step is to add and gel all the details (and clean up the model a whole bunch, obviously. Back area in particular is still a mess).

The basic concepts are the following:

- Water-themed accoutrements (for example, that's a lily-pad where you'd normally put a fig leaf). There will also be turtle-shell shields, fish nets et cetera.

-Asiatic tattoos.

-Possibly some pig-kanji lettering, possibly ringing the bowl of water.

-Sneaky, Gollum-y poses. Some models will be emerging from water, with only the upper parts of their bodies visible above surface. The bowl of water opens up all kinds of possibilites; water spilling out from tilted heads, droplets flying as the kappa moves, and so on.

-Scaled bodies. Probably only lightly so. Maybe thicker scales, covering larger parts of the bodies will denote status? I'll experiment some with it, see how it turns out.

-Clawed and webbed hands and feet. Possibly gills? Lots of fishy body features, at any rate.

-Don't go overboard on decorations, armor et cetera. Aim for a "clean" look.

I suspect these guys will take quite a lot of work, so release date is probably somewhere around mid to late January at the earliest. Doubt I'll get much work done between christmas and new year's eve.