Goblin concept art and adventures as a goblin in SL

To make a good goblin AV for second life, you first need a concept. I figured I would post some of the drawings I did to guide me on my development. Before I drew the images, I did look at a lot of different pictures of goblins that I could find on the web and also my friend send me some.



This is the original drawing I used to design the goblin AV. I have several notes on some of the things I wanted to do, for example, I wanted to make the eyes glow, so I figured I would try loading an eye texture that had a transparency where the white of the eye would go. Hmm this did not really work, so I ended up putting green balls inside of the AV's eye that glow. The balls are somewhat transparent, so the eye shows through.

Here is an image I created after I got the goblin AV started. the idea of this image is thinking up possible armor looks for the goblin.

Part of making a good goblin is to understand it. I have started to play this goblin in the combat zone of Avalon Mist. I have to admit I was not prepared for what lay ahead. In that zone there are humand and drows, for some reason these two seem to be friends. Drows I thought were kind of like evil elves.

So someone the drows and the humans have become friends, so when I showed up, they needed an enemy. The first day I was there, I fled into the swamps. Two humans and a drow found me and hunted me. I drew no sword but the warrior in white slashed at me as I tried to flee. I eventually was slain and the white warrior sliced my corpse up until I had a -400 health. Humans hate evil goblins. Even the presence of a goblin will cause humans to be agressive against it.

So you can see, I have a lot to learn about a goblin, how to design one well, it will take some time. I think running from a fight is what it should do unless it is hanging out with a bunch of orcs, then it can sneak up on the eneamy and strike when the other is in battle. I think a goblin could be used as a scout because of there size or they could be used to lay a trap. I could easily intimidate the humans and they would seek the death of such a small creature, I could run and lead them into an ambush.

As a goblin, I have only found one nice person, and that was a fae, she took pity on me and healed some of my body, this was the second day. I had showed up, experienced mega lag, SL crashed, and when I reloged, my AV was unconsious. I guess my AV was probably pushing against someone when I was in lag and it was seen as an act of agression. Even though my sword was still sheathed, I must of been attacked.

Afterwards, I asked for a tournament battle, my first fight with a sword.. good experience, I lost miserably to a skilled drow.

I need to learn how to role play better, when I take on this evil goblin form, I need to learn how not to be such a nice guy. I need to learn to flee more, I am not a strong orc. I need to jump, run, and tease. I have found a good place to practice and always find someone to chase me, Avalon Mist, combat area.

Creation of Gollum like goblin

The idea for creating a goblin AV came from a friend, Phoenix. I had joined a group of builders and passionet role players who are currently working on a Lord of the Rings Sim. I had found out about this sim from John a good friend I had met online one time when wandering around in the sim Avalon Mist. He had invited me to play as one as an elf prince, his character is the king (I am also in the proccess of creating a elven prince). Well, Phoenix, the eldist elf, is the actual one in charge of the project, after showing him some of my builds, he asked if I would be interested in creating the goblin AV... what a fun project that has turned out to be.

This is an ongoing project, I plan to post improvements of this goblin character as I make them.

So far I have only distorted the default AV to be short, long armed, pointy ears, big eyes, and grumpy looking. Also, have created the upper half of his skin. I can tell I need to work some more on this portion of the skin, I think it is a bit pale as you can see in the photos or perhaps it needs more details, I kind of like how the veins on his arm turned out. The skin is an on going process... I will notice things that need improvement, like in the image above, his underarm needs some definition and shading, plus it lacks any kind of hair wich I think a goblin should have a lot of in this area.

The skin is created in photoshop using a shirt template that can be download at the second life website.
http://secondlife.com/community/templates.php

In the photo above, I took the image I used for the upper body of the goblin and increased the contrast of the image. I should try uploading the image as it is displayed here, but usually if shadows are too dark on the skin, it just will looked painted on or a bad tattoo. The lines displayed in the image are the guidelines that are used in creating the skin. With this skin I decided that the goblin probably is stong, but since he is small, probably does not eat that much, thus, his ribs show and his back bone. I think I will need to define more bones, like elbow, hipbone, etc.

Here he is with his eye one some tasty fish, a little to high for him to reach, but since he is so hungry he is resourceful.

He feels right at home in the dank caves in Avalon Mist's newer role play area. He has his sword out to cut slots out of some of the giant spider webs so he does not become someones meal, even though he would not provide a good one. By himself, he is not much of a fighter.

And finally he is hanging out at the Juke Joint blues bar having a smoke and listening to some blues tunes. Being a goblin, he feels at one with the blues music. Most of the ladies here are too tall for him and being green skined and grumpy, not too many ladies linger on him for very long.

Forgotten in Midian City

When I want to play and not worry about romance, I change my AV to a child form. It is amazing when I change back into my adult form, I feel much more restricted and unable to play like I do as a child.

Well this is one of my adventures as a child. Here I am exploring the cat walks of Midian City. Luckly there were no cats lurking about or they would have chase me off like I experienced at a later date.

Midian City is a no fly zone, so it was quite a challenge to climb this crane and walk across it. It is a bit hard to see the image, the city is a bit dark.

There is a beautiful Church building across the way. If you go exploring in the church, you will discover there is no obvious way to climb to the rooftop. So I got the idea that I could probably jump across from the crane. Because I cannot not try something and even using a bit of my ninja training, I was not able to jump the gap to the roof top. I ended up sliding down the church wall and upon hitting the ground, felt like I had broke quite a few bones.

I wonder what in the world must live on that roof top, I doubt it is church go-ers, I think if the vampires can stand the church, they could fly over there, the other posibility... there is plank of wood that has been layed across to the church from another building. I just cannot figure out why they just did not build some stairs from inside of the church to the rooftop.

Behind this church is the graveyard, I have seen some vampires hanging out there, I try to avoid it when I can.