Backburner Art #12i- Rain World: The Watcher (Watcher - Echo)

It's been a while, hasn't it?

The Watcher's first ending (yes I only did one, the next one is for later) is about helping this childish echo (whom the fans call Spinning Top) basically finish ascending. For those who aren't in the know, an Echo is basically someone who tried to ascend, but through one reason or another couldn't fully do so. Thus, they end up being caught in between this world and a sort of spiritual plane. This DLC has made me realize that they are more like ghosts than I initially thought (the game even has their code labelled as "Ghost," if the wiki is to be believed), to the point where it reminds me of ghosts having "unfinished business" in the land of the living that keeps them anchored to our plane.

Watcher has two mutually exclusive endings, so it doesn't fully interact with the Rot plot, and due to the way Rain World tells its stories, it doesn't impose itself unto you as much as other stories (you have to initiate it). However, this storyline involving Spinning Top is, essentially, the ghost of a child helping a slugcat avoid a terrible fate, and after enough times, the slugcat comes back to its time. A time where the benefactors were still alive (thankfully you don't interact with them, they might treat you like an actual rat). By making your way to their bath filled with void fluid (where they most likely attempted the ascension that made them Spinning Top), they realize that they're the one keeping themself out of the afterlife, and finishes their ascension.

Then Watcher goes back to their room and fucks around with Spinning Top's toys before napping.

The only really special thing I did here was attempt to make the Ripple effect emanating from Watcher. It involves some purple-ish waves that fade out, plus I attempted to make some sort of blur sort of around the area.

I also fumbled around with the window, where you can see some of the benefactors passing by (they don't appear out the window of this room, it's the shop's window that you see them through). I think they turned out well.

Spinning Top I did just like the Echo in Backburner Art #12b, up to and including the glowing outline of everything, and making them an Overlay blend layer. The only difference is that Spinning Top is not using a typical echo body plan, having a disco-ball of a head, two tentacles, and more tendrils on a weird teardrop ghost body with its whisp floating upwards.

The rest of the toys should be easy to understand how I made them, but the truncated icosahedron (fancy words for the ball made of wireframe on the right) took a bit more work than the others. I didn't want to waste my time actually making the ball's shape stuff make consistent sense, so I just resorted to making a pattern, then filling a circle with the pattern (off-setting the pattern for the part of it making the back). I did my best at shading the part closest to us, but for the one in the back I filled with shadows, then lowered the opacity on it.