Tag Archives: character design

May 30, 2026 · 8:20 am

An early render of Siklana

At some point in 2019, I took to learning how to use Daz Studio in my spare time. Daz is a 3D modeling program that lets you purchase assets (poses, characters, clothing, backgrounds, etc) for your own use and then position those assets to create scenes.

There is also the ability to “morph” the basic models so they match how you envision your own characters.

The first character I customized was Siklana Covonilayno, Toranih’s sister from The Wishing Blade series:

A young noblewoman with long brown hair in a navy blue dress and overcoat.

Her hair’s a bit too long here, but this was a quick render to test the outfit and general background.

Here’s a closer look at her facial structure (customized from the Victoria 4 base model — which I’m still impressed I succeeded with since shortly after, I started working primarily with Genesis 8 models).

(At some point I needed a Daz PA (Published Artist) profile image, and this was one of my early renders I was happy with, so I used that. Later on I realized that she looks a little like me when the image is in tiny thumbnail size. Not intentional.)

At some point I might make some adjustments to Siklana’s design, mostly in redoing the character on a later model to take into account some issues and limitations I didn’t know about when first starting.

I continued to work with learning the program, and eventually put together a full scene with her.

In this case, she’s with her horse, Esara.

A young woman standing on a vine-tangled staircase offers her hand to a curious horse at the foot of the stair.

(The horse’s coat and mane ended up a bit darker than I was initially picturing for Esara, so I may need to do some tweaking if I do further images with her).

The idea behind this image, though only mentioned in The Wishing Blade series rather than actually seen, is that Siklana used to go outside of Cirena City to practice her knife-throwing skills in peace.

She would ride out to the forested region behind the city walls to a small, abandoned ruin. (This region was once Aneth, home to those who would eventually spread throughout Cirena. At the time, they faced attacks by the immortals, and many of their buildings ended up in ruin once they fled). This particular building would likely have been fairly recent in their history, though still abandoned. But now this side of the forest is relatively safe. The perfect place to go when someone wants time to themselves to study and throw knives.

Are there any characters from the Wishing Blade universe (any of the stories) that you would be interested in seeing?

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Though Siklana starts as a side character, by Magebane she has a major character arc…

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Happy reading and writing!

An early render of Meshon

Today I thought I’d do a behind-the-scenes snippet for one of the Cirenan-Cantingen goddesses: Meshon.

Meshon is one of the older goddesses, and she has a strong presence in both Cirenan and Cantingen pantheons.

Though not considered a primary goddess in the Cantingen pantheon (who only recognize a small handful of deities in addition to Madia), Meshon is revered as Madia’s trusted messenger.

Meshon is often referred to as the Oracle, capable of seeing visions of the future and walking between realms–though her ability to cross realms means it’s not always clear which world her visions refer to, and that issue has landed many of her followers into trouble for trying to interpret her dreams.

Shevanlagiy/Ralendacin has held a grudge with the goddess for this very reason, and that grudge is clear in Magebane.

Meshon currently has a role in both The Wishing Blade series and Stone and String, and even plays small roles in some of the Legends of Cirena short stories, such as The Scars of Her Past… though she plays a much larger role in the upcoming Legends of Cirena novel, The Dark Forest of Aneth. (Yes, novel. It was supposed to be a novella but it has well surpassed that word count at this point).

Below is one of the test images I created for Meshon using Daz 3D Studio. Her design is still in progress, but this is fairly close to how I see her. 🙂

The goddess Meshon spreads her arms to do magic. She has dark skin, wears a sheer head scarf, and has beads in her braided hair.

Meshon’s prophecies will eventually have a strong role in the next Stone and String story, and it’s her prophecy that references the coming of Ralendacin, the “Destroyer of Worlds” (Shevanlagiy in The Wishing Blade series).

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Meshon plays a role in many stories…

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Happy reading and writing!

The Early Renders of Tim Zaytsev

Meet Tim Zaytsev, the Legion Spore’s external organic operating system!

(Tim would cringe so hard at that. The Legion Spore, and its successor the Manticore, are airships made from the bodies of shapeshifters forced to merge with technology. In theory, the resulting ships are supposed to be a blank slate. Instead, memories of the people who were tied into the ship cause destructive glitches, which Tim has been hired to find and purge).

Once, many years ago (because I’ve been combing through my old newsletters to find stuff I think is interesting enough to yoink and place here in this blog) I took a shot at using Daz Studio to create a figure who would represent Tim from The Glitch Saga. This was still pretty early in my attempts to use Daz Studio, and my asset library was a bit smaller to work with, so it took a few tries before I successfully made a design I was truly happy with.

I wanted to tie the render in with a quote from the book, so I picked a snippet from Spirits of a Glitch, the third book of the series.

Tim is dealing with the Manticore (who has a much harsher personality than the airship you see in Whispers in the Code):

So easily distracted. Surely you see the flaw?

I groan in exasperation. “Where is this other glitch?” Right now there’s nothing but an arrogant machine who keeps messing with my attempts to correctly program it.

The vessel sighs. The glitch belongs to our external organic operating system.

“You don’t have a—”

You, Master Zaytsev. You are our external organic operating system.

A render of a young man looking nervously over his shoulder.

I wasn’t quite happy with this render… I wanted to switch the hair to something closer to how I pictured Tim’s hair, and I wanted to make him look a bit younger (I’m aiming for 18-19 years old).

(Also, I’m absolutely terrible at judging age in real life, let alone in renders).

Later, I took another shot at Tim’s design. For this version, I changed the hair I was using (I was thrilled that the hair I wanted to use for him went on sale almost immediately when I started eyeing it), and I did some work to his facial structure to make him look a bit younger.

A close-up portrait of a somber young man looking off camera.

There were still a few tweaks I wanted to do before calling it final (the back of his jaw/cheek was still too sunken in and the hair wasn’t quite sitting properly around his forehead), but overall, I was pretty happy with this variation.

I’m pretty sure I made a few more adjustments later, but I don’t think I have a fully rendered image with those adjustments. So, for today, we’ll focus on the early renders of the Legion Spore’s external organic operating system. 😉

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Read the tragic downfall of Tim Zaytsev as he navigates the perils of the Legion Spore…