Arilia the Grothen Queen.

The Grothen: Guardians of the Azurite 

It had been thousands of years, maybe more since the destruction of old earth by Asteroid Apophis. The heavenly body had been flung off course and hit Earth with barely moments for the occupants of the planet to realise. The surviving clusters of humanity were scattered across the solar system on fragments of Old Earth, each fragment exposed to varying conditions with a variety of effects on the occupants.

What later became the Grothen species, was the cluster flung furthest away from old earth’s location on their cold lifeless rock. Forced to evolve to survive, due to the lack of oxygen, freezing temperatures, as well as high exposure to a new element "Azurite", and large doses of solar radiation. Their lead scientist Dr Khan Grothen was tasked to save the dwindling population by any means necessary.

Khan and his team discovered that huge quantities of energy could be unlocked from the Azurite. He injected crushed Azurite powder mixed with an aggressive strain of swine flu, directly into his subject’s spinal column. The majority of his subjects died excruciatingly painful deaths but it was found that subjects with the recessive blue eyes gene survived the infusion and began to change. Arilia was the first to survive the transformation, and later became the Grothen Queen.

Her and Khan's other subjects began to grow pure Azurite crystalline structures from their bones piercing through their skin in places, and exposing the bright blue crystal, their skin turned purple, and they began to lose their hair, sense of taste and sight and eventually even the ability to eat and breath as the crystalline structures grew through their bodies, their organs slowed to a halt.

Their human minds were replaced by an instinctual urge to guard the Azurite Crystals whose energy now powers their bodies.

Traditional senses were replaced by an advanced form of echolocation, the ability to communicate via telecommunication and in older Grothen, the ability to control the phase of the Azurite in their bodies.  Their bodies do not age and are very resilient damage and they are seen by many as immortals or gods, however they can be shattered with enough kinetic energy. It is believed by many that the Grothen draw their power from Azurite and as such must remain near the crystal deposits  or they will be forced into their hibernation state, only reawakened by absorbing more Azurite.

Throughout the solar system they are feared for their mind control ability, and penchant for converting other species to bolster their ranks.

The Reign of Arilia, the Grothen Queen

Arilia is the oldest, most powerful and purest of the Grothen.  Her purity grants her the ability to control other Grothen using echolocation, charms and mind control. She can use her abilities to command swathes of new  Grothen to do her bidding, or use her own elemental powers to defend again threats.

So entrenched is her power in the Azurite, Arilia is able to channel her ability to charm her weak minded enemies through the crystals before driving a spear of Azurite through them.

Arilia’s  crown of pure Azurite has grown over millennia and forms part of her skeletal structure,  granting her increased strength at the cost of impaired movement.

Those that cross the Grothen Queen face painful execution or a harsh, painful transformation into her Grothling, a fate some say is worse than death.

Design Ideology:

This Design was created from scratch specifically for the Pinshape character design competition, i began by writing a back story for Print, and got rather excited about it, so after 7 pages of detailed back story detailing the creation of 7 new races all of which are humans evolved/self evolved from years of exposure to a variety of vastly different environments, I eventually settled on creating this character first: the Grothen Queen "Arilia" I also hope to create at least one 3D printable character model from each other races from this series, which i'm affectionately calling the Terra Fall series, and hope to one day turn it into a table top and video game. 

i wanted this design be interesting to look at,  easily 3D printable on almost any SLA/DLP printer, and be easy to assemble and remove supports once printed. I included all the necessary supports so that there was nothing more to be done, but print the design, and enjoy. i really hope that other makers and 3D printers will enjoy the work that went into this design and i hope some one with better painting skills then me will paint it and post some pictures.

Programs used:

Character design - Z-Brush 47R design.

Retouching renderings - Photoshop Cs6 

We Printed Arilia: 

Printer: My best Friends Little RP - with a 3000 lumen HD Ben Q projector as its UV light source. (Thank you Dave)

Quality: 35 mic layer height

Exposure time: 2.7 seconds per layer 

Print time: 3h 27m

Print height: 54.97mm

 Instructions:   

Properties:   Print size: >55mm (h),   Layer height: 35 - 50mic

Model formats: Ready to print single part (with supports) OR as 4 individual parts (without supports), OR as a single assembled model (without supports). 

Design is optimised to be printed in SLA/DLP ( we used a Little RP with Liquid 3D industrial blend resin)

Model is Hollow to reduce cost and peel force, and base is ventilated to reduce cupping, and assist with drainage. 

stay tuned for the next installment of the Terra Fall story and more characters.

We really hope you like you like Arilia!

Have fun printing.