My first mega-organic as well as my first deer, but a beloved character – mixed feelings on how this turned out. While I have communicated the emotions and symbols I wanted, the anatomy is off and the texture is rough. So before you I bare my passion in all its imperfection. Finished on the Creation Bay server in January of 2014, behold Augustus the Beheaded King.

Yes, that is Notch terrain.




Lore (not for the lowbrow):


The stag king's head was severed by subjects who, according to the king's tale, were envious of his majesty. Banished from his own kingdom to wander a scorching desert for seven years, Augustus brooded of revenge while following a faint trail of his head that he could sense only by opening his astral eye. When he found his kingdom again, the lushly forested plateau towering over the wasteland was abandoned, the lingering trail of Augustus' head all that remained to guide him on. He found a tunnel in the sky that lifted him out of his world and into another. He landed on a mountainside quilted with trees, all of it reminding him of his old home. Perched on the toes of the mountain was a village.


On this village Augustus set his malice, believing its residents to be his former subjects who had stolen his head and fled his kingdom. Augustus had not been banished alone. He had kept a small group of allies with him – does and fawns who had remained loyal and wandered the desert with the king even after losing their hooves. They had come through the inter-dimensional path alongside him, prepared to obey him to whatever end. Employing the telepathic powers of his minions, Augustus carried out a strategy against the mountain village, whose residents pleaded with him, claiming to know nothing of his world, his kingdom, or his head. After a period of conflict, Augustus retrieved what he thought to be his lost head, but those loyal to him said it looked nothing like his grand old head, which had been serene in expression and bearing a twelve pronged mantle. Augustus claimed to see no discrepancy between the new and the old.


Further plans bloomed in the stag king's mind – with the power of his new head, which included the ability to launch incendiary tears, Augustus would lift his old kingdom out of the old world into the new, and conquer the mountain village for his own. Rallying new admirers even as black knobs began to sprout from his nape, Augustus, while gathering a force to stage an assault on the village, became feared for the words, “Never look away from me.”




Inspiration:


I first saw Miyazaki's film, Princess Mononoke, around age sixteen. I allowed the movie to germinate in me for several years. At age twenty, I conceived Augustus without knowing the resemblance he bore to the Great Forest Spirit. I created him as an original character, subconsciously growing memories planted long before. Only at twenty-four have I begun to understand what I have actually done.

If you have not viewed the movie and are interested in this sort of thing, please give yourself the luxury.





Built by hand.








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