Hi everyone, my character will be the God Xolotl of the Mexica pantheon reimagined. Xolotl is the dog-headed god of a lot of things: death, fire, and lightning mainly. However, he’s also the god of twins, diseases, deformities, and misfortune. He’s described as a coward who cried his eyes out until they were nothing. Disgusting, skeletal, with a hunchback, Xolotl was punished for avoiding his own ritual sacrifice. As punishment he has to guide the sun through the underworld so that it can rise each day.
My interpretation focuses on his grotesqueness, his task of carrying the sun, and deformities. Because the animal Axolotl gets his name from him, my interpretation also gives him some of those features. I want the cyberpunk elements to be concentrated in the device he has to use to transport a power cell (the sun) on his back and paneling inspired by Mexica carving and art. I’m excited!
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Doing some sketchovers to figure out where I want to head. I also did a lot of research into the image of Xolotl that the Aztecs have in mind. Aztec 2d art is flat, and because I’m not an ancient Mexica woman, I didn’t even realize I was misinterpreting some details on the Xolotl sculptures. I looked into Aztec codexes that show their fashion, and old renditions of what they wore. I love what I saw, I actually wish we still wore this type of fashion today!
This image was the most helpful. What I assumed were his ears were actually protuberances representing his fire, and he has some sort of weird human ears and ornaments that I’m excited to explore. He also has lots of wrinkles of course, and a necklace which I already planned. I want to make his wrinkles and skeletal/emaciated ribcage some sort of vent-like design, but I struggled to sketch in Zbrush so I did some draw overs to explore that.
I might remove the “fuel cell” sun that he’s carrying on his back. Maybe there’s a better way to tell a story with his duty, but I think a Mexica headress made with cyberpunk cords in the colors of his lightning or fire would be much more interesting. Just like a feather necklace with hard surface elements.
Still not sure where to go with the headdress and ornaments, but it’s important to me that he has them. Looking closer at the ornaments on his ear in the second picture, comparing the Aztec illustration to the sculpture, I think the swirliness represents a feather or fur maybe. I see a lot of drawings where the feathers are drawn as barely tapered types. I did some research, and I see that nobles and divines could wear earplugs.
Based on the circular shape on Xolotl’s ear in the illustration, I’m thinking maybe he had some sort of plug/gauge that made his droopy ears hang. He is a god of deformity after all; maybe I could do some holes and an interesting design within his ear to represent that. It’s clear that from another statue that his necklace is a feather.
I think the swirl hanging on one earpiece could be cotton, not a feather. I’m trying to think more about what they could have meant with a swirl instead of a tube-like shape. I looked at some art, and I saw that they also depicted smoke with tight swirls, so I don’t know. Maybe it could be a piece of fur coming off the ear ornament. I’ll keep exploring because I’m having a lot of fun.
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This is fantastic. It has so much personality!
A little update! I’ve done the headdress, leg and hands for the cyberpunk elements. I gave him his weird human ears of course. Added his gums and made some edits. Now I’d like to work on some ribcage details so he really looks skinny and skeletal, a necklace… and then it’s onto retopo and texturing! Things are getting close!
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Feeling a little intimidated - it’s the texturing phase!
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