Project Beyond

[Erian1Mortal]

What is Beyond?

Beyond is an Artbook project for a Videogame concept in the vein of „Tales of“ meets „Devil May Cry“.
Meaning the gameplay of the Tales Series with DMC fighting mechanics.

The overall theme is already in the title, it is „Beyond“, which means for me to go beyond my abilities to reach new heights as an artist, as for the characters, they go beyond their limits and their world to save it from darkness.

On the way of creating the world and it's characters I'm also paying homage to a lot of stuff that I liked in my childhood or things I find cool today. So if there is something that reminds you of an old cartoon or a game, it could be intentional.



The World

The world the story is set in is made up of several different “Realms” most of which are already consumed by the darkness created by the so called unnamed. The main characters travel between these Realms to free them and in turn drive the Unnamed away from their homeland. Of course all of these characters have very specific powers to help with combat and other things.

Originally there were 4 different realms.
-The Mortal Realm
-The Realm of the Lost (kind of like the afterlife, eventhough it's more like a big waiting room)
-The Realm of Gods
-The Realm of Time

All four were connected until the imprisioned Wolf pulled his chains through them in one last act of power, which threw them into each other and destroyed them.
That had very different results. Some Realms merged partly, creating totally different life forms, while others got thrown of or farther into the so called timeline, which led to realms that did not advance at all since Time itself is not really present anymore, making it's residents nearly immortal .

The City of Fate is in the mortal realm. It's heavily inspired by the cities and towns I've visited here in germany, a few examples would be Bremen and Oldenburg or Bremerhaven. It's kind of like the hubworld where everybody returns to when there is time to relax. Damien is living right above Jack, the owner of "The Usual Spot", which is a small bar that serves as the Headquarters of the group. Within Fate live a lot of different creatures, anthromorphic ones like Jeffrey (A Sheep man) for example. Some of the supporting characters leave their realm later on, for various reasons, and settle down within the city to offer any help they can get.


The Characters

There are 5 Characters in the main group and several supporting characters who serve different roles. I'll only show 2 right now, more is to come at a later date.

Serah Lucia

Serah Lucia is the Leader of the group. She also has the most experience with going to the other Realms since she‘s been doing just that for the past 4 years. She is suprised to see anybody besides herself actually fighting the Unnamed when she first encounters Damien, whom she was sent to pick up at the train station by Jack.

Her power is to manipulate Time itself to a certain degree or to outside the flow of time, which makes it seem like she is teleporting. Serah is usually a very calm and collected Person who knows what to do, but that‘s
mostly a facade she has build around herself to hide her fear of messing things up.

Damien Fenris

Damien Fenris is the first one to join the group. He came to the city of Fate by request of Jack. He grew up as an orphan. As he was prone to anger and always looking for trouble he often got into fights. One of such changed his life, when he was nearly killed by a knife wound. Since he had no family and nowhere to go, he helped out in the orphanage he grew up in. His arrival within Fate is a fresh start for him in which he hopes to become a better person.

His powers allow him to act as an amplifi er for others, but not himself. Amplifi cation also has the side effect of Damien not being able to fight on the front lines, as he has to stand still for it to be in effect. That changes when the group meet an old imrisoned god, who offers Damien his powers, so he can move on to the afterlife. With accepting these powers he also gains his weapons, the chains which held the Wolf for eons. Former known as Chains of Dammnation they are now called Chains of Redemption, as a sign of a new beginning.

 

[Erian1Mortal]

I'll also post some bits and pieces of my story script here from time to time. And I'll start of course with the beginning.

Part 1: Beginnings


Damien slowly woke up. Looking outside the train, the weather was quite nice. He would arrive soon. „The City of Fate, huh?“, he sarcasticly said to himself. „Wonder if there is more to this name....“. The train was rather emtpy and so was the station he entered. This whole situation was weird. He couldn't think of a reason why someone would want him to help out with anything, he was just a foul mouthed punk with the wish to change himself. That didn't held him off from taking the invitation.

The Station was looked quite old but it was clean. There were a few weird looking people standing around. Damien, lost in thought, did not pay much attention to them. „Wonder if I'm early....“ looking at his mobile phone for the time he barely dodged the fist by instinct. Through the former he also grabbed the arm and spun around, throwing his attacker to the ground. It was one of the weird looking guys. „What the?“ This was neither a human or an anthromorph. It was looking more blob like, mimicing the shape of a human, rather badly though. Instead of a face there was an „X“ shaped symbol. „Kikikiki“, the sound it and it's friends made was weird and Damien couldn't make out were it came from. He backed of only to find himself surrounded by four of them.

„I knew it wouldn't be easy to start over....“, he told himself. A devilish smile had appeared on his face. Running forward he grabbed one of the creatures heads and slammed it into the ground full force. They were supprisingly lightweight. Dragging it with him for a few steps, he threw it into one of the other three. Now fully concentrated on the fight, he had no problems dodging these punches.

Combining kicks and punches he took down the third one. „Only you and me now, mister sunshine!“ he mocked the last one. The only answer he got was a blue greenish glowing X and a punch that was way faster than before. The creatures hand had started to glow, or were they burning?
He still got out of the way. What followed was no coordinated fight, it was a straight up brawl. Each of the two took hits straight on, not caring about defense anymore.
Damien was so focused on the fight that he did not notice that the other three had gotten up again and started to change as well.

From the corners of the station a few more blobs appeared, not mimicing anything in particular. They looked like badly modelled clay figures or dolls, all sporting the „X“ shaped mark instead of faces.

Damiens uppercut send the creature flying into the air, he was not finished though, he spun around and kicked it in it's stomach to slam it, to his suprise, into one of it's comrades.

„Damn, this'll take all day“, he muttered to himself.

He stood there, calming himself before the storm. The creatures had stopped moving as well. „You're fighting quite well, for someone who probably never met the Unnamed before“, a girls voice said right next to him.

She was about his heigt, had shoulder long blonde hair, and green eyes. Not to mention the sword she held in her right hand. She already started sheating it, into what looked like a pocket watch. Damien was to confused to ask questions about that at the moment.

„Jack send me to get you, he figured something was up. My name is Serah Lucia, nice to meet you“

With these words she finished sheating her blade and all of the Unnamed dissolved as if they had just been slashed into pieces.

„Phew that was exausting....“ Serah, said, holding out her hand. Damien shook it.

„I'm Damien Fenris, nice to meet you as well. So what is this all about, don't tell me you ordered me here because someone like me can help you with your, what did you call them? Unnamed?“, he asked.

„Well something like that, I'll let Jack do the explaining, let's get out of here first, The Usual Spot isn't far away from the station“.

 

[Erian1Mortal]

Just a little something I've been working on for a week or so.
I'll star from scratch since there are several mistakes I made with this model.
The next one is to have way a lot less polygons, as I have created a lot of unneeded geometry while working on this and figuring out Cinema 4D. My goal is to create models of at least this level:

I know I'm getting closer to it, I'll just keep trying^^

 

[Erian1Mortal]

I'll simply paste this from the blog, been a while since the last update, but I'm done with work for the time being.

Jake Oswald



Jake Oswald is the third to join the group. Unlike Damien
and Serah he is not originally from the mortal realm but
one of the splinter realms. He grew up working alongside
his father, creating all sorts of machines. Until the Unnamed
invaded his home. His speciality is to create all sorts of
defensive machines and materialize them at will.
With his father taken he searches the giant Labyrinth for
clues on where the Unnamed came from and antagonizes
Damien and Serah at first until they prove to him that they
mean no harm. One of his most powerful creations is a giant
robot, which he pilots in battle against exceptionally large
enemies. He is usually pretty calm and often lost in thought.
After moving to the mortal realm he finds interest in various
things like building miniatures or playing card- and videogames.

Katlyn Mara



Katlyn Mara is a childhood friend of Damien, but unlike him
she got adopted. Even though she led a really good life,
the question about her real family always remained in her
mind. She joins the group in hopes of finding clues about her
biological parents, as everything she found out so far pointed
her to the other realms beyond their own. Her lively nature
often cheers up the group in desperate times, even if she is
easily freaked out.
Her favourite hobby is music and she has her music player on
non-stop when she is alone.
Her power is to create spheres of energy, which she can manipulate
and shape into whatever form she wants. Most of the
time the shapes she creates remind one of the elements that
are seen on the display of her music player.

And now for the bonus:

The Unnamed



The primary threat to the world of Beyond, they are like parasites, infesting everything they find. No one
knows where they come from or what their goal is, even though some claim to have found clues about their
origins.
There are 2 types of Unnamed, one that tries to mimic it's surroundings and the other type that is possessing
either living or inanimate objects.

I put em all together in one height chart, some of these little buggers will likely get their own character update sometime in the future, but I'll leave it at that for now. Just for reference, Damien is around 176cm tall and Serah is around 178cm.
So yeah some of these guys are pretty big.

 

[Rebel Dynasty]

Ack, I wish I'd noticed this thread sooner. ^^;

How are things coming along, by the way? Last I remember, you only had to put together a few bios for the supporting characters and beings of each realm.

 

[Erian1Mortal]

Things are going smoothly^^
I'm currently finishing up volume 1 and writing the script out further,
I also started up 4 new projects (different game concepts, but this time around not as grand as Beyond is) and Beyond Volume 2 (Currently with the subtitle: "The Burdened", which is a hint to who might be the main protagonist of that story)
Well that and a few other things like finishing the final days of this Semester and planning out the Community Combo Video project.
How are things going for you?

 

[Rebel Dynasty]

Nice! You're on a roll, Erian. ^^ Any idea when Vol. 1 will be done, or an idea of when you'd like it to be done? Sounds like you've got some serious juggling mastery going on between the projects. You'll post when you do your vlog right? I'm really interested to hear about your process. Heck, if you wanted to, maybe you could treat it like a Q and A. ^^

Things are pretty good on my end. Nearly done the second draft of Whispers of Nowhere, and once it's done, I'll start the first draft of the sequel and juggle from there on getting WoN's third draft going. ^^;

 

[Erian1Mortal]

I plan to send the project into print around november, for portfolio purposes, if I get the chance to print more I'll let everyone know on the blog!
Yeah I'm currently working on a retrospective for the project, with breakdowns of my work process, how things started and what went wrong and what I'd do different if I started this thing now. But I guess the earliest you can expect one of those videos would be at the end of october (I'm making no promises here).
If there are some things in particular you want to know about the project or my process, let me know, I'll put it on the list of things that are to be discussed!

Good to hear you're getting closer to the finish line! It's always nice and at the same time kinda sad to see things go XD
At least it is for me!

 

[Rebel Dynasty]

Excellent. ^^ I'll think up a list of questions and PM them to you. Haha, I get the no promises thing. You've got a lot going on, after all. Take as much time as you need.

Thank you! Yeah, I'm the same way. Luckily there will still be plenty to do since it's intended to be a trilogy. I'll be working with these characters for a long while. ^^

 

[Erian1Mortal]

Finally able to update at least a little bit^^

As you can see, it's here, finally printed it!
Big updates to come in the comming months!

 

[Rebel Dynasty]

Awesome, Erian! ^^ It turned out really good in book format. It's all very clear, and the colours are well-blended.