Stavhin Naas is the name of a DnD character I created for a Curse of Strahd campaign with my friends. He was a super over-statted Fallen Aasimar Conquest Paladin. He cut out his eye for a cool spear, and a mirror that showed glimpses of the future said he had a handle bar moustache, so that got added in of course.
I drew a quick sketch of him at the table at the time, and I liked the things going on with him. He had an interesting face shape and I liked the way I drew his hair. Originally, I was thinking of doing a semi stylized character, but I want to use him to push a really realistic render instead. Seeing my DnD character as a animated cinematic styled character would be pretty amazing.

I went through some iterations with him, and a lot of 2D concepts to figure out armor. I’m not super experienced with designing armor, so this was a cool learning experience. I actually learned about modelling armor through cosplay videos, like Adam Savage’s Tested to learn how the pieces function and lay across each other.

These were mostly doodles I was messing with as the campaign went on. Changes were made as events occurred. The design I’m working on currently modelling is based on the end of the campaign, where Stavhin gets some magical sun armor. I had him wear it as half plate, so I liked to imagine that he’d have sort of a half knight and savage barbarian look using the decorated armor pieces.

I’m torn, I like the first design I did originally, but I like aspects of the paint-over I did of my model on the right. The right one is quite a bit messier, so it might need to be tightened up before I can fully decide on a look.

This was a livestream showing my first model of him that I turned into a timelapse. After this, I started trying to model armor.

Again, I like parts of it, and other parts I do not like. The chest feels a bit clunky, but I kind of like the jutted out piece that I’ve seen in some armor designs. The problem I have with armor is that a lot of functional armor looks kind of dorky. It makes it hard to figure out what fits with this characters demeanor and his intimidating presence.

Since returning to this character, I’ve started to take a much more realistic approach. I plan to do the hair in Maya using XGen, so he’s gonna be a bald for a bit. I also have been doing a lot of anatomy studying to push everything farther.

I only wanted to add some wrinkles to the eyes to make them look less creepy, since I was building from a low subdivision level. But then I ended up just doing the whole face because I think the model looked even stranger with just partial detail. I managed to push the texture and muscle forms really far, farther than I ever have. If anything, even though I jumped the gun, this was an incredible motivator for seeing the final product.