Art
The goblin: four months of waiting and a day of work
The concept is from 8 June, the same small hours as Leo's. It waited four months for a production chain to exist, and once it did, it took a day and a half to be animated and fighting.
This drawing is from 8 June 2026, at half past three in the morning. Five hours before Leo’s first concept, the same day.
Leo took four months to get animated. The goblin waited all that time untouched.
And then, once there was finally a production chain that worked, it took a day and a half.
Why it waited
Because starting it made no sense. During those four months there was no reliable way to take a character from drawing to game: three rebuilds of Leo, two routes discarded whole, and over three hundred revisions. Dropping a second character into that would have doubled the problem, not advanced it.
The rule I took from it, and which saved me months of wasted work: the first character is not made to have that character. It is made to have the chain.
The same road, no detours
The goblin walks exactly the same route as Leo, and this time with no experiments: concept in a neutral pose, one single master model in 3D, rig, animation in Blender, and a render of the eight cameras with Leo’s already-approved finish.
Two details that are its own:
- The dagger and the stone are separate pieces. They are not drawn onto the body: they are mounted to the grip, and the stone is released on its throw frame. That lets the game treat it as a real projectile.
- The poison is an independent effect, not paint on the blade.
What it does, and what that means
In the video: walk in eight directions, the chain from walk to run and back to idle, the charge with its plant and its leap, and damage — which is not only the body flinching, it is the face too.
That is few animations next to Leo’s twenty-three, and it should be: this is a skirmisher. It attacks with knives and stones, ambushing in groups. It does not need a hero’s repertoire, it needs to read from a distance and telegraph before it hits.
What I take from it
The comparison is uncomfortable, which is why I am writing it down: the same drawing, the same process, four months against a day and a half.
The difference is not that I know more now. It is that the second time there was a road, and the first time the road had to be cut. Everything that looked like wasted time with Leo — redesigning three times, throwing away two whole routes — was the price of this day and a half, and of the ones that come after.
There are two hundred and fifty-two monsters left in the bestiary. Now I know what each one costs.