Rat King

Ruoy Lygden was a simple landlord of a small 4-unit apartment until one day when he was cleaning up after an evicted tenant and rolled a waste bin over something...

...it was a rat king's tail!

The act of crushing the knot of tails caused the assembly of rats to come apart, and they went scurrying into the darkness. Later that night as Ruoy lay in bed stressing out over his mortgage payments, he was startled to find himself surrounded by a crowd of rats.

"All hail the Rat King!" they squeaked in thunderous tumult. Ruoy had been made into the new Rat King after having slain the previous one in a supposed challenge to the throne. His body now houses a legion of rats, ready to come out at the first sign of easy food. Fearrr!

In this picture he is going out to buy milk and is like "Guys, I can do this. Leave me alone," but they are like "No, my liege! We will accompany youuu _{^{I shall comb your hair}}"

Ruoy is often accompanied by his royal familiars: Wulfram and Lars Gran. They are huge weird rats that come and go at their discretion. Each familiar has a single eye that can transmit its vision to the Rat King, resulting in much headache and motion sickness for Ruoy.

Ruoy's Rat King powers are kind of like a gross Dracula's in that he can disintegrate into a thousand rats and run away and then come together again and then he opens his cape and shoots three fireballs at the player. Aside from that, he can communicate with rodents and detect the presence of food. His rats will form a mantle on his back when they think it will help. But it never does.


Man, this took like 2 weeks to finish, but I'm happy with it. In the sketches I was worried Ruoy was coming to look a bit too much like Soma Cruz (with the jeans, fur 'round the neck, long coat, and girly hair). But I also wanted to start drawing, so oh well. Oh yeah, Ruoy's jacket pulling is inspired by ~arnistotle's APB Sketch. On a second look, I think I goofed on the motion here; Ruoy is more just clutching his side than actually pulling on a coat. Damn!

The background was the most exciting part for me, though! This picture sees a return of LINES IN THE BACKGROUND, something I haven't done since two years ago! Why did I forget this? It has value.

That being said, I have mixed feelings on how the subject and the background come together in this piece. They kind of compete for attention, and it's looking busier than I would have liked. I admit I only had a vague sense of the lighting when I shaded the characters; I should probably work on the background/environment first next time to solidify the ambiance and lighting first.

Well, anyway, that was fun!

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