Viking Longship WIP

Ladies and gentlemen,

first of all I have to apologize. I was away for a week at my girl friends fathers place taking care of him. I thought I had prepared everything on my little laptop I use there but apparently I forgot to add my Patreon login. So while I was happily showing WIP pics on social media I couldn't show it here. 

Now that I am back at my place I will show it and tell you a bit more about what is going on with the ship!

Above you see some texture previews. These show how much of the process is done already and I am very happy, esp with the rowing oars slot details! Of course there is more that needs to be added, like the dragon figurehead(s - I hope to make a couple of options). I have actually learnt that they have only been used when going on war. Otherwise it was a regular transport ship going from A to B. I will make the figureheads replaceable as an option in case you want to redress your ship between adventures.

With the rowing oar slots, I found during research that when they were sailing (and didn't need to row) they could close the opening slots so no water would come in. These closing stops look really cool and they make a great little detail on the hull railing.  Obviously I can only give you the options of either open or closed. As much as I love working functionality, if you want to make that small things moveable parts, you are crazy :P But just build two ship hullls with each option and use one for sailing and one for rowing!

One big visual detail are the shields! The sailors used to store them away  on the ships railings. There seemed to be different methods. One was as shown in the pic where you could slot the shields into a plank on the side resulting on said plank to show over the shields. The other was where the shields were somehow hooked to the railing. That way you would see the shields without a plank. I will make both options available so you can add them the way you prefer.

The other options were that - like in the pic - the shields would overlap or not. So as a build part I will make the shields overlap too as this will make a nice long single part for easy cutout. For shields next to each other there will be single shields you can place any way you like.

Here is a test build with textures! It shows an earlier stage of texturing. I need to add the dragon figurehead for example. Also I am not happy with the straight line seam of the planks on the exterior. I will try to redo the parts so they imitate the different locations of where planks you connect, to cover that up better visually. But for now I am very happy how it looks!

I am very excited with this project and I am glad I did that little break from Norse stuff to get the creative juices flowing again. 

While I still plan to do more bits for the orc huts I am also starting to think if there is more Norse bits I could do. If you have any ideas let me know!!!

So, until next time, stay safe and keep building!

Chris