The mis-matched set of daggers for the Moon Wytch has arrived! This time I wanted to build the cross guard out of snakes made of  gold. I pushed around the same ideas of snake imagery, wrapping the handle, ornate but contrasting materials, and carved stone elements, but wound up with a completely different, complementary design. 

To create specific daggers for each character I started out with research. I was looking for interesting shapes, textures, and an overall gut feeling of what the dagger seemed to be used for or simply, emotionally, how it made me feel. I found a long and very sleek sword with no cross guard and very minimal decoration, all business and all pointy-end! It was mean looking, just very cold.

From there I went looking for its opposite: beautiful, jeweled, and ceremonial. A dagger that was for someone with no real purpose for it. I found a nice range of daggers at a museum in London called the Wallace Collection. So I grabbed a few images and started my version of photo-bashing mixed with small messy painting sketches to generate some new versions of daggers. Mainly thinking at this point about silhouette and materials. 

The snake dagger reference is actually a prop from the 1980s movie Conan the Barbarian, rather than being historic. I wanted to think about it, but be sure to create something separate and new for my story and character. I painted a carved jade center piece of the dagger that physically unites the handle and the blade. 

This dagger seemed far removed from the mean and more mission-focused daggers from my research. It’s something beautiful that could be from a museum, but it’s kept for sentimental reasons.

As the Garden Gate takes shape everything else that is in the image also needs to be designed. Textures and foliage are fun to experiment with and invent on the fly with brushes and scribbling and even some photo textures. But all of the more important props, the things that can create a rich story world, they have to come from design and research.


I’ve realized that I really love the research part- I get to dig in and read history about the various fleeting ideas that had come into my head in the concept phase. Usually when I have an idea it is vague, sometimes even superficial and just based on how something could look- a shape or visual motif. Research helps to develop why it might look the way it does, to add rich details from life, and then, in a forward-looking way, to imagine how it will function and interact with the story.

I added a niche to each side of the gate. I thought this could add visual complexity to an important part of the environment, it creates a visual link to the classical architecture of our world, and it serves as a place that has been touched by our characters- they will light the candles that are in front of each sculpture each night. The sculptures will need to be meaningful to this place, they will need to be beautiful- balanced, interesting, symbolic. So I started with snakes, obviously. 

I read about the architecture and the encoded symbolism of secret societies. The transformational work of these groups was repeatedly mentioned: members would enter as novices and devote themselves to a practice of transformation, sometimes called the great work, usually about a spiritual transformation towards some idea of higher character. The balanced duality of pairs of opposites found in nature was seen as a philosophical goal: how can we unite opposites? The journey from chaos to balance was symbolized through decorative elements of architecture including wrought iron posts and gates with the caduceus as a symbol for balance or unification of opposites.

This felt like a rich visual language that I could use to design sculptures for my niches. I wanted to create a transformation as well: a mixed pair instead of two of the same. My rough ideas are usually shape based and in the end, I essentially have a scribbled, tangled ball of snakes to represent the before chaos and a caduceus to represent balance- very 19th century.

This is an environment design for an entryway section of the Moon Garden just inside the Gate. I wanted to see the Glasswing Luna Moths in their place in the world. They are prevalent in this garden and specifically this region where the Moon Wytch has power.

The Garden Gate was designed as a bit of a thought experiment about crescent shapes, snakes, and either thorns or the horns of animals. How could I use those shapes to create an elegant, stone-carved entry gate that could signify an important place? 

This garden needs to feel like a contemplative destination, peaceful, soft and pretty, but still like a part of nature- not completely manicured. The sculpture niches with the candles add a presence of the characters who take care of this place, as well as a softly religious or meditative tone to the space.

I looked at Italian rococo architectural forms to create a basis for the design in our collective, known culture, but then explore and add some new shapes and forms. 

For the overall environment I created different elements and textures using the crescent and rounded shapes in a variety of ways.