Jon Cairns
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Wilfrith Over the Years
🕑 Added 2024-02-17 02:06:52 +0000 UTCI accidentally published something early just now instead of scheduling it, so if you can’t find it now it’s because it’s been rescheduled. In that post’s place, though, I thought I’d share some positively ancient Wilfrith art that I drew over the shockingly many years.
(WilfrithC, mixed media drawing)
This is the first drawing I ever did of Wilfrith, dated April 26th, 2011. Which is a lot older than I was expecting considering he had his comics debut in 2023. If I peer back through the mists of time, I can remember painting this piece in gouache, I think? And then editing it digitally to clarify some of the things I didn’t get quite right. There’s a lot of him here already, but he’s definitely diverged a little from his origins.
(Wilfrith Sketch Card, mixed media drawing)
This piece was done all mixed media on a little sketch card in 2016 for a friend when I was going through my second Copic era (oh how I long to return). I think this is the origin of his chaps and saddlebags? In any case, you can see the character having evolved a little closer to his contemporary look, especially in the hair. Archery is supposed to be a huge part of his character identity, but I haven’t managed to put him in a setting where it’s remotely relevant. Yet~.
(Wilfrith Inktober, ink drawing)
I think I consider this the first “contemporary” Wilfrith image? It’s the genesis of his body hair pattern. He’s still a little nebulous, but it’s a very small drawing at A5 since I drew it for inktober 2018.
(Wilfrith Face, photo of a pencil drawing)
This is February 2021 where I was gearing up to make a low poly 3D model of a human character for the first time in Blender, and I had decided that Wilfrith would be my target. Looking back at the older art, I didn’t yet have a feel for how he was supposed to look, so I noodled a bit and ended up here. There are definitely elements in common.
(Wilfrith Character Sheet, digital drawings)
About a week later, still February 2021 I had completed these to serve as the basis of the 3D model. I’d seen a lot of tutorials where you basically trace the vertices over a drawing you already have, so I figured I’d put in the effort and do some drawings to nail down his look.
(Wilfrith Low Poly, screenshots of a Blender model)
And by April 2021 I had taken a crack at a 3D model that I could rig and import into Unity with a player controller. I really had a great time with this, but I just didn’t have the time to commit too much time to learning game dev software. One day I’ll go back.
(Wilfrith2, screenshots of a Blender model)
Two weeks later, in April 2021 I went back with a different goal: using what I’d learned with a very low poly model and making a slightly higher poly model. This process actually really informed Wilfrith’s build and silhouette moving forward. I felt like I’d made some huge strides here—and I still really love the look. Just don’t ask me to UV map it because that broke my brain so it got shelved.
(Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason Character Sheet, digital drawings)
By the middle of 2022, I saw that Filthy Figments was having an open call for story submissions, and I figured it was time to give WIlfrith a comic of his own. The pitch packet required character art to give a sense of what your story would look like, so this is what I came up with. In this story, he’d have a little extra winter weight, but would still be very much himself. I had only the barest inkling of what his expressions would materialize as writing the story, since actually giving internal life to him was completely new.
(Wilfrith and Grwn Character Sheet, digital drawing)
Immediately after completing Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason, I jumped back in with an updated design that brought his past fit back to his present appearance to prepare for Wilfrith and Grwn. This one’s from November 2023 and I clearly have a much better understanding of the character by this point. I feel like he’s entered the marrow in my drawing hand and I finally have an intuitive understanding of what is right and wrong for him immediately when drawing him now.
Who knows where that guy will go next, eh?
