So, as mentioned, I’ve decided to update my art of the Ten Most Worthy Women in the style of Ancient Greek pottery.
I previously attempted this back in December with a red-figure version of Imperator Brumalis, the Amazon version of Uncle Wintermorn, himself the Realmgard version of Santa:
I still don’t think I’ve nailed the process. I don’t think I have either the understanding of art mechanics in general, or the knowledge of the tools available in Affinity Photo specifically, to really understand how to replicate the appearance of a glazed, painted clay pot.
Still, on the plus side, I think it’s pretty obvious what I’m going for and I’m not sure there’s anything else this approach could possibly be mistaken for.
Now, in terms of Fulminata specifically, let me recap the main design choices:
The name Fulminata means something like “endowed with thunderbolts” and was the name of a Roman legion.
She is depicted in the armour of a triarius, one of the heavily-armoured veteran soldiers of the Roman Republican army. The triarii were the last line of the army and didn’t usually even engage with the enemy unless things started going real bad.
Thus, a situation that nearly ends in disaster was referred to as having “come down to the triarii”, one of my very favourite phrases that I legitimately try to use as often as possible — e.g., “Wow, I got my Pop-Tarts out of the toaster just in time to keep them from burning. That really came down to the triarii!”
Furthermore, she’s got a gorgon‘s head on her shield, a fairly common occurrence on actual shields and a reference to the Aegis, a piece of defensive equipment of unclear description (either a shield, cloak, or breastplate) owned by Zeus and eventually Athena.
As stated, Fulminata is derived from the word for thunderbolt, so the A and four thunderbolts is Fulminata’s personal emblem — the A is meant to stand for Amazons. The bird is a phoenix, basically the Realmgardian equivalent of the Ancient Roman eagle.
Additionally, the name Fulminata is spelled out in Greek letters, technically making it Phulminata. For Realmgard’s ancient Elves, especially the Amazons, I’m deliberately leaning into the combination of Greek and Roman influences.
Though, for what it’s worth even actual Ancient Rome was a fairly tangled mix of Greek and Roman influence. Especially when we get to Emperors like Marcus “Marky Mark” Aurelius and Hadrian, who deliberately cultivated images of themselves as Classical Greek-style Philosopher-Kings.
The population, especially the educated Roman upper class, would have been fairly bilingual, Romans used freely Greek letters and words as abbreviations — in fact, as recently as the Middle Ages, the Chi-Ro (☧) — looks like a P and an X, is, in fact, a C-H and an R and stands for Χρῑστός — was used as an abbreviated form of “Christ”, and said bilingual nature of the Empire would have necessitated the writing of Latin words and names in Greek and Greek words and names in Latin.
Also, it’s a Fantasy world, so I don’t have to be entirely accurate to real-world history.
Underneath the name Fulminata, in Latin letters, is “Tonans Victrix.” I decided on giving each of the Ten Most Worthy women a two-word title. “Tonans Victrix” means Thundering Conqueress.
More art of the other Nine coming soon. New chapter tomorrow
Giveaway ongoing:
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