The Demiurge

Long before Hephaestus became my pencil's constant companion, there was another iconic giant who had a way of cropping up in the margins of my homework: a brooding, stoic-faced golem with wings of shimmering steel. It was too long before I graduated him to the pages of a proper sketchbook.

Here he is amidst a menagerie of Lacrimaean characters and creatures. As you can see here, at this point he was simply named "Nod," but the reference was a little too baldfaced.

I spent a lot of time trying to decide what this his role might be in the setting. In the size-comparison sketch above, he is described as a member of a race called the Nephilim - once mighty creator-gods, but long since reduced to servility. But I ended up scrapping that idea and assigning the name "Nephilim" to a different race, one with a more obviously angelic bent. In the meantime, the Demiurge-to-be was reduced back to a single being.

Here's the first time I actually referred to him as the Demiurge, as well as the first time I began to show him in his more creative aspect. There's no size-comparison here, but one assumes he's now significantly larger than the incarnation in the last sketch.

And he became bigger yet.

This is the last project I drew for school. The photo doesn't really convey the size very well - the drawing measures almost four by two-and-a-half feet and is easily the biggest thing I've ever attempted. You can actually see the seam where I glued the sheets of charcoal paper together. Here's a somewhat enlarged view.

The drawing depicts the Demiurge in his full glory, shaping a primordial landmass into a living universe. The tiny female figure perched on the rightmost ridge is a Pashkarai, one of the elemental spirits of chaos soon to depart the world. And for those of you still wondering - yes, Shadow of the Colossus was definitely an influence on this drawing. And the flock of birds swirling around the large tree in the bottom left corner is a direct reference to Secret of Mana.

That's enough of the archives for now. Hopefully, the next update will cover something new.