Welcome! Welcome!
This here be Los Habanero House. Put on your sorting hat and be assigned to your seat.
Our Mission, should you choose to have any choice since you have already accepted it, is to make the interior of the Spice Vendor House.
It's a passion thing, for us who want to keep making cool stuff and get this project to the next level and get your skills to the next next next level or continue perfecting your skills if they already are in the next next level. We are just a bunch of guys and gals wanting to see those doors open and reveal an interior that feels like someone really lives in it.
So the official story is grounded in reality. The Spice Vendor goes out on adventures and comes back with rare spices which he prepares in his house. It is set in the real world. Yet we in the forums continuously joked around and kept making a ridiculous background story which people grew attached to. Sadly that story is not the focus of the Spice Vendor project.
But that doesn't mean we have to discard them, our crazy talks can appear on the house as easter eggs. For example statues or lamps on a counter can take the form of some of the things we've been creating through conversation. So it all goes as follows....
Melvin lives in this house or at least the house is his responsibility.
It's not his house, he has no money to own such a big place and money and ownership is for earthly people anyways. The house is the spice vendor's house, things inside are made for regular people, plus you look at Melvin and he looks more like he likes living in a cave.
The name of the busyness is Vadimspice Merchantile Homestead “Delights in Spice”
He is to the spice vendor what Alfred is to Bruce Wayne, a loyal faithful helper that very much likes to keep things tidy up. He is a master of spices and keeps the property functioning to its fullest potential, makes all sorts of arrangements, knows all and has immense talents in spices and its mixtures, everyone in town knows him and likes him, the owner of the house trusts him very much, he travels a lot so Melvin is the primary caretaker of the property.
Legend has it that the spice vendor ordered a package on Amazon and when it arrived they charged him a fortune in shipping weight, and he was like what is this heavy box? this isn't what I ordered, and when he opened it Melvin was inside and that's how he came to live in the house. How did he ended up in there? no one knows.
We kinda know where he comes from since somewhere in the house there is secret entrance that goes to his world, you exit the same house but in a different place for sure..
Turns out Melvin is secretly is a Wizard, with his wizard robes and everything, when he feels like wearing them. Kinda of like Batman, when its called for.
In his world he can grow the most exotics of spices, that is where he gets them and baffles his spice vendor master.
Melvin has a pet whale is his world...
The whale lives free and swims up river to the house when called for. Its name is Willem Alfred Whalfred DaWhale. Melvin sets up all his bags on the back and off they go, traveling to all towns, trading in spice. The whale may or may not have her own room in the spice vendor's house.
In the woods not far from the house there lives an owl.
The owl rolls around in an unicycle and carries a cement umbrella. He rides the unicycle because he can't fly and he doesn't realize he can't fly because the cement umbrella is too heavy. The cement umbrella was given to him by someone very dear to him and he doesn't want to let it go not even for a second. Plus he doesn't understand the physics of mass and gravity and you know he gets confuse, it happens to the best of us. He tries to fly but he can't do it anymore, "what in the world is happening?" he thinks to himself. His past is hindering his future.
So Melvin has a life here, he likes it. Though his noble heart sometimes gets him in trouble.
Melvin has a record for "Illegal Potions and Spells Lab Underground Operation".
But it was not his fault, he was tricked by No Mouth, All Action Red Nelb.
Melvin had no idea Red Nelb wasn't just ordering potions for his dying grandmother, Melvin thought he was saving a life, Mr. Nelb here was re-selling them and making a huge profit, cornering the market and Nelb blamed it all on poor Melvin. And now Melvin is trying to put his life back together, using his potions for the betterment of all creatures. But since people have two grandma's, Nelb tricked using his other grandma as an excuse and Melvin fell for it again. Luckily people don't have more than two grandma's.
But that is not the only life challenge.
Melvin has a bunch of merry friends, they are all good, each with their own personalities, except for the blue last one, he is totally a bully. Every protagonist has an antagonist, he even has the W, like Mario and Wario, Melvin and Welvin. More there of, blue is even the opposite of orange in the color wheel, destined to turn to the darkside.
Welvin liked to put some magical extra something something on the spices and got in trouble. Melvin was like "We are not that kind of store Welvin! No Mouth, All Action Red Nelb tricked me with his grandma, twice!" A fight like in the tower with Gandalf and Saruman broke between them on the third floor of the house. It was not pretty.
Just what we already have been doing on the collab. It's the chance to make your own stuff with the skills we already learned. For now we don't have a direction of how the interior is going to be. Kent is working with Vadim to give is a north to follow. We'll wait for that but in the mean time we can start working on generic things that will be in a house no matter what. Pick an asset and say you want to do it and have a go at it.
ullreym And here it is. I've also updated the version on the Google drive.
Hogwarts has its talking "Sorting Hat", we now have our talking "Crazy Owl Concrete Umbrella" 😉😁:
For the talking please watch Vincent's vincav81 excellent animation here.
Imaging Michael Owlson patroling on Omar's stone bridge when somebody wants to enter the spice vendor's property. The talking umbrella could then allow or deny the access.
Rereading this again, in full this time, it sounds an awful lot like one of those gothic horror-romances that never end well.
Bishop Stumbers looks like he's been melted. This is really starting to turn into some kind of weird Yokai (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Dkai) ghost/horror story isn't it?
Or a Germanic/Eastern European version of Yonderland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonderland)
So something like this for this ever evolving Ghost Owl?
duerer dostovel 
frikkr 
harbinger_ua 
splat21
(extreme rough sketch)
You are good conveying emotion and feeling in your sketches dude. I can feel the owl being sad because he can't fly anymore.
Could we see how he looks with normal eyes? I'm thinking maybe having him crossed eyed will take away from the heavy umbrella being the reason of him nor flying and it will seem he can't because he can't see straight.
duerer Yes, I also added a little poncho over the shoulders. Honestly it was just to make the image feel a bit more Japanese/Ghibli(?) Feel free to ignore it.
vincav81 I very much like your drawings of Michael patroling on the bridge with his searchlight eyes 😀👍! The poncho is a good idea, maybe it's a magic poncho that can turn Michael invisible if he wants this 😉. And the bells could play a melody expressing bishop Stumbers' mood 🎵 or could give the alarm if there's a danger🚨.
I'm so impressed with your writing skills dostovel! I couldn't agree more with ullreym. Such skills will at least benefit your CG work tremendously if you let it.
Overall I get a very clear picture of the spice vendor. You've done a great job fleshing out this version's personality and motivations. If I'm honest though, there was a disconnect for me between this version of the vendor and the charming home he lives in and operates his business from. There's a lot of emphasis on exploration and travel - in other words being away from home fulfills him the most. I wouldn't expect a person like that to prioritize his home life or his home to such a charming degree.
<my-opinion> The voice-over narrator idea we discussed in discord pushes against this a little imo. If a narrator is going to reminisce so fondly over his home, I see more of a Hobbit-like posture in life: Home is where he's happiest. He has "no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, and uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner!" Of course he travels when he must, collecting spices for his inventory, but deep down such travel takes him from what (and who?) he loves most. His business makes him a well-traveled person but this fact has primarily served to grow his love of home. When on the road he's motivated to get back home and passes the time reminiscing about Vadimspice Mercantile Homestead. </my-opinion>
Does that makes sense where I'm coming from?
Here's my start at making an Owl-themed candlestick.
The base is approximately 3 inches in diameter, which is based off of a real life candlestick that I've taken some photos of for further reference.
Basically this is just a "keep me sane" project until there's further word on organisation of working teams(?) for the interior.
I've just got to keep reminding myself not to get too detail because this ahs still got to be baked down to a low poly version. 🤪
Looks like it is going to turn out great.
You can start full steam ahead, I think we got the block out down. So go go go!
It' s already looking very promising! I can barely wait to see the finished candlestick. The beer tankard is also an eyecatcher!
After real life, general procrastination, and loss of interest I've gotten back to doing something about the candlestick. Admittedly it not much — feet, eyes, object colour — but I think it's in a better place to start sculpting than where it was before.
Goodnight all.
— 31 May 2021, 11:58pm AEST
Vediko is an all-artisanal maker of organic farm goodness with handcrafted pure farm products such as honey, butter, ghee etc. that inspires trust & vision in its patron communities.
It'll get you pumped up when we're finished with the main structure of the house and PDF presentation to start populating the scene. When it starts to gets crowed with stuff in there, my hope is that we get an energy jolt and we start producing some cool stuff. I'll link your owl candle, sync it to goggle drive in the WIP models interior folder.
Progress after about an hour or more (give or take) of sculpting.
Nothing too detailed because A) I think I'd go crazy trying to get details just right; and B) given how small this may actually end up looking in the final interior fly-through.
Also he's appeared to have grown a little moustache. And bushy eyebrows.
Next will probably be joining the geometry and making a lowpoly mesh to bake down the details.
— 1 June 2021, 11:11pm AEST
Well, maybe the final video won't necessarily be a fly-through, we might end up using static shots. It's too son to tell but maybe we could all do shots and see if they make it in the final edit. It's an Eevee render after all, we can all do renders.
The candle is taking good shape. Love it.
