The Dragonriders of Pern - Character Concepts

'The Dragonriders of Pern' by Anne McCaffrey was one of the first book series I ever read, aside from the Narnia series. My obsession with it when I was young led me to discover the online roleplaying/gaming community of Pern in late 1999, early 2000 before the release of the Dragonriders of Pern game for PC and Dreamcast. These MUCKs and MUDs were text based games with themes set to particular times in the official books. People all over the world created their own characters and we'd spin off our own stories.

Over the years, I managed to create roughly 7 different characters from these games, many of them retired and only a few that I actively log in. During this time, several of these characters went through heavy development. Each has a huge history that I've written up. But only recently, have I begun to draw them. So this post is dedicated, a little, to the few concept drawings I have of two of my more current Pernese characters:

J'sek - I posted an earlier concept of him in a post down below. Since then, I've tweaked a few details, although I'm still not settled on his design. I plan to do many more of him, as he's been one of my more actively played characters and one that I have plenty of fodder to work off of when it comes to inspiration.

I also toyed around with some expressions - quick sketches done just to get a feel for his facial structure, but also because I felt I needed more practice with human expressions.

I also decided to give a try at a Pernese dragon by drawing J'sek's blue Areteth. What made Areteth even more difficult to do was that he was born with a broken front arm and foot. While the arm healed, the foot never did and several of the fingers curl oddly. I tried a hand at just putting his base colour in with no shade or highlight rendering. I kind of like the design, but I'll be going over it when I get the chance.

G'rism - Another relatively new character, I did a quick pen sketch of him while doodling on scrap paper. I went over the pose on another sheet of paper in colerase this time and did a quick rendering just to see how it would work out. I'll definitely be doing more sketches of him and maybe throw in more of his firelizard Fahren and maybe even his bronze dragon Troyseth.