To the West: Boyd

Boyd is an original concept. He is a 13 year old mage set in a magical Wild West environment. His magic focusses on the ability to manipulate and grow plants and wood based forms around him.

Modelled in ZBrush; retopologised and UVed in Maya; textured in Substance 3D Painter; posed in Maya; rendered in Unreal and Maya.

Boyd doesn’t have any recollections of his parents. He knows he was raised in the local orphanage but didn’t have particularly strong ties with any of his carers there, though he did love to tell the other kids stories that he’d heard from travelling mages. He did find a friendship in old woman Carol, a past it mage who claimed to be on death’s door all the time he knew her.

One day though it does come to pass and following the death of his grandmother figure who leaves him all her magic items, he is inspired to seek fortune and fame by reaching the West. Boyd takes his staff and her teachings and leaves his hometown behind ready to make a name for himself and gain the respect from the masses.

From an early age, Boyd has felt talked down to. As a poor orphan boy nobody took much notice of him but he used to watch the Western travellers come back through town selling their wares and telling heroic stories of their adventures. From listening to them he decided that this was the way he would earn respect from everyone, if he were to go further than them all and find the West.

Boyd’s magic allows for a lot of creative thinking, he can mould wood and plants into different shapes, encouraging them to grow at his will. Being young, his mind is able to imagine solutions to problems that most grown mages would simply blast their way through.

Despite this, Boyd does lack physical strength and greater knowledge of the world. Every encounter is his first and sometimes he’ll find himself in situations he never would have predicted as his youth can make him naive to dangers.

Boyd’s inspiration for starting his journey is to find the West. His curiosity and desire to see the world put him in line with the explorer archetype. On his travels he is excited by every new experience, even to the point of being downright ecstatic to witness his first bank robbery! Such naive excitement also sets him up to start his journey as an innocent. At first he is not sure of his moral stance until he inadvertently falls in with a gang himself. Thinking their jobs are just exciting adventures until he sees the harsh impact they have on innocents. Leaving the gang he sets off, intent on becoming an adventurer of integrity who helps those around him, thus beginning his journey as a hero.