Tag Archives: Character Art

artwork

Character Art – Young Maximus

Leave a comment

Hey there folks!  We’re back today with another look at one of our characters through the eyes of Hozure.  This time around, we’re looking at a young Maximus Xanders.

When last we saw Maximus done in a specific style, it was Hozure who had done him.  Back then, we were looking at an older Maximus on his clockwork horse.  This time around, we’ve done a nod to that, but in a reserved way.

We were given the opportunity to do this piece with his horse, Charcoal, but we needed to move on from that, in order to let Maximus move on as well.  Plus, we’d already seen Charcoal on the cover of The Tinker’s Tale.  Instead, we chose one of the poses that would have a clockwork mouse in it instead.

Maximus was always the kookiest of the Knights of Virtue, and I think this piece definitely picks up on that.  At the same time though, it shows kind of where his mind’s at, and that he has a vast imagination.  All that in such a small piece—that’s pretty impressive!

Here, you can see that the details have been filled in, and the piece is nearly done.  You can definitely tell how this guy ended up growing up to be the same fellow who made a clockwork horse, awesome weapons for his friends, and precise catapults upon the Lucerion Bridge.

And here you have it.  Our finished piece.  The background and shadow ends up really helping the lighting and details fall even more into place.

I really like Hozure’s interpretation of Maximus, and I’m actually really interested in seeing old/young interpretations of the other knights, especially considering we haven’t seen anyone else beyond a young Richard!

artwork

Character Art – Zoe Hart

Leave a comment

Howdy folks!  I always feel like it takes forever before we have the opportunity to put up a new piece by Red Pear, but I’m always so happy when those opportunities arrive.  With the exception of Leo and Hozure, there’s no artist we’ve worked with who has been more prolific, and she gives us a really good look at the characters we’ve created.

Today, we’re looking at a character we’ve seen before.  A couple different artists have tried their hand at Zoe Hart, but this is the first time, believe it or not, that Red Pear has tried her hand at the second generation hero.

Zoe was a quick one for us.  Pear gave us two sketches to work with, and this one was the one that we passed on.

The original pose looked a little too much like Lyla, so we opted for this second piece.  Both highlighted her weapon of choice, the sai.

The detail layer shows off a bunch of cool little details, like her neck piece, and the braid in her hair.  It also highlights her youth.  She’s definitely on the younger side of the characters—maybe younger than Adelia is by the time all our heroes converge—but she’s still a force to be reckoned with!

And here’s our final version of the character with a splash of color.

Here’s a fun fact: If you’ve ever played that game whisper down the lane, this is kind of what it’s like when art is involved.  In the books, Zoe isn’t quite as…bountiful.  But our first artist to tackle her, John Becaro, has a very specific style.  His women all have large assets, and every artist to take on the character since then has kept those womanly curves in place!

That’s it for this take.  It won’t be long before our next Red Pear feature though.  Stay tuned!

artwork

Character Art – Keota of the Avarians

Leave a comment

Hey there folks. It’s a lot of fun to show off all our characters, but in a world as diverse as Tellest, I feel like we’ve leaned on our human characters a bit more than I’d like to admit!  We’ve got a few elves that we’ve seen, and the dwarves have shown up in a few larger pictures (though not by themselves).  And of course we’ve seen a bit of Dirk and Kaiyonani.  But it’s time to give some other characters a chance to shine!

Today’s character is Keota, the avarian who is aided by Bolt Thunderfury against a giant and an army of naga.

As with all of our collaborations with Hozure, we began with a few poses that we were able to choose from.  For such an interesting character, we wanted something that showed off a lot of him.

We opted to go with something that showed Keota’s broad, bronze wings.  He’s no stranger to armor and weaponry either.

Once we added some more luster to the character, Keota nearly popped of the screen.  He made for a great ally to Bolt, and it was awesome to see him realized like this.

Tacking on a background makes this incredible avarian look even more impressive.

What do you think?  Would you like to see more of Keota’s roost captured in art like this?  There’s plenty more on the horizon!

artwork

Character Art – Lyla

Leave a comment

Hey there folks!  It’s been two-and-a-half months since we’ve had the opportunity to show you some of the gorgeous artwork that RedPear does for us.  We’re going to make up for that today with some character art of one of our fan favorites.

Lyla Brenna is an interesting warrior.  Her home was overrun by another country, and she was drafted into their army.  In time, she demonstrated her value to them as both a competent fighter, and as a capable spy.  When she meets Kaos Kreegan, though, she’s unprepared for her heart to win over her sensibilities.

This is one of the sketches we passed on.  I feel like we could have pushed for this one though, and it would have made for an awesome book cover down the line.

We also passed on this one.  It looks great, but the winner that RedPear served up for us was spectacular.

This one just seemed so much more evocative for some reason. Whether it was because of the sword, the armor or her seductive gaze, we knew we had our winner.

Lyla is one of those characters who you just can’t help but enjoy reading about.  She’s capable in a world filled with powered individuals, and she’s not hindered by love, but bolstered by it.  It’s an interesting thing that you don’t see too much in fiction.

And here you go, our final look at RedPear’s Lyla.  I love the pattern of her armor, and again, she captures so much emotion in that gaze. We look forward to bringing you another RedPear art piece at the end of next month.  Stay tuned!

artwork

Character Art – Yvensar

Leave a comment

Hey there folks!  In keeping up with our secondary character series from the Tellest Legends books, we’re got one of the oldest characters in the series to show off today.  You no doubt remember Icarus from The Fall, but his brother Yvensar was a big part of things as well, especially considering how they left things off in a kind of tumultuous way.

Hozure began bringing this character to life in his distinctive art style so that we had a better understanding of his look going into the second Icarus book, The Maelstrom.

Here you can see the four poses we were given to work with.  I always feel so regretful that we don’t have multiple final versions done.  Maybe someday if I win the lottery!

Next up, you can see the character starting to take more shape. Yvensar is a proud elven druid, but without his magic, what does that mean for him?

Yvensar has to practice with his weapon of choice, the staff, in order to be effective in the dark new world that was left behind.  But there may be greater dangers than supporters of the late Rezarius, and the dwarves who hold elves to blame for the destruction of their beautiful planet.

And here you have it.  Our final look at the brother of Icarus. Yvensar lost just about everything at the end of The Fall, so it’s going to be interesting to write about what comes next for him.  Good luck to this proud elf as he deals with the cataclysm that follows the loss of magic from the world of Tellest!

artwork

Character Art – Kaiyonani

Leave a comment

Hello folks!  We’re still recovering from Comic Con Philly, so this post is going be a short one, but still a goodie!

Our latest new property is Dragonspeaker, and with things still fresh in everyone’s mind, we thought there was no better time than the present to show off our awesome kaja, Kaiyonani.

We’ve shown off some of Rigrena’s work before, but now it’s time to see what she can do with an anthropomorphic character.

As is pretty typical, we started off with some basic line art.  This let us know what we could expect of the final piece.

And what a final piece it was…

Rigrena loves to give awesome backgrounds to her pieces, so she threw Kaiyonani in the canyon that appears in Dragonspeaker.  Her take on the character is also incredible.  She has a good sense of motion.  And we get the awesome staff that has been featured again and again!

We still have more collaborations with Rigrena on the horizon.  Stay tuned for our next one!

artwork

Character Art – Gaston Camlann

Leave a comment

The renowned sage, Gaston Camlann, has been one of the longest running characters in my series.  He’s mentioned in The Bindings of Fate, and I used his name in a few “about Tellest” articles because I needed an in-universe scholar to talk about various things, like the world, the Strain, and so forth.

When we first brought him into the limelight, in Mageborn, he became one of our favorite characters.  He speaks to the world almost as if he’s outside of it.  In a lot of ways, I feel as though he’s an extension of me.  Gaston has all the right qualities you’d want in a person, but he’s still somewhat flawed.  Think of him as your grandfather all those times you made him mad.  He doesn’t want to get angry, but sometimes you see it!

In any case, we had a few instances of Gaston already on display thanks to our “generic” short story panel that you see from time to time.  But when we asked Hozure to give us a version of Gaston that belonged entirely to him, he didn’t disappoint us.

We had a lot of interesting poses presented to us, each with their own sense of whimsy.  But one of them stood out more than the others, because it also had more of a sense of Gaston than the others.

Here, you can see Gaston with one of his favorite things: his books. As much a scholar as a sage, Gaston’s love of knowledge and wisdom is a base thing for him.  It’s what makes him tick.  It felt like it would have been a lost opportunity not to feature him moving those old words around like that!

As things moved around, and lightning was implemented, our spectacular sage jumped off the screen even more.  Everything about him seems scraped right out of the back of my mind.

And here you have our final look at Gaston Camlann.  As we said before, Hozure did a magnificent job of capturing this incredible arcanist, giving him a delightful feel and sense.  This isn’t the last you’ll see of Gaston.  Keep your eyes peeled in the weeks and months to come as we reveal more characters in this great fantasy world!

artwork

Character Art – Bolt Thunderfury

Leave a comment

Hey there folks!  My do we have a treat for you today.  It’s been just under a year since we began working with Hozure (formerly Skence), and we’re so lucky to have had such a wonderful relationship with him all this time.  He’s become one of our most prolific artists, and it all started with a piece he did on Bolt Thunderfury twelve months ago:

Of course, since then, his art prowess has increased tenfold.  We asked him to go back and try his hands at making our characters pop even more than the last time the characters saw the light of day.

Now, it should be noted, Bolt was a special piece for us.  When we told Hozure we wanted to tackle these characters again, he was all about it.  He even did Bolt for free for us—he was the last one, and we technically didn’t have it on order.  So when we received it, it was a complete surprise!

Comparing the two makes it incredible to see how far Hozure’s come.  It’s like night and day, and that’s an incredible feat considering how good his art already was.

And here you have our Thunderfury adoptee in all his glory with a nice background behind him.  Hope you liked seeing what a year’s worth of increasing talent can do!

artwork

Character Art – Faradorn

Leave a comment

When the first set of Tales of Tellest books came out, we lucked out by finding Hozure, who has done amazing work for us since our initial collaboration.

With the sequel stories now on their way (with Lord of Thunder leading the pack), we wanted to take a look at some of the other characters in each of the series—we already had a look at the younger version of Richard Lener.  Today, though, we’ll take a look at a hero from Arise, who we introduced with his own short story not too long ago.

Faradorn is an elf from an otherwise extinct tribe.  His people could harness the power of light and fire and turn that power into energy projectiles.  Since Faradorn is the only one left, he isn’t sharing that power with anyone, and it’s amplified in him.

Cocky and arrogant, Faradorn doesn’t come off as someone you’d exactly want in your corner—at first.  What he does have, though, is a fierce loyalty once you’ve been properly vetted.  He’s a welcome addition to the crew of Maravek, Venathryn and Vandelas, and that’s important against so powerful a foe as the one in Arise.

While Faradorn’s debut in The City of Light and Darkness was a nice introduction to both this powerful elf and the city of Versali-Virai, it’s nice  to be able to expand on both of them in the upcoming novel. I really hope you enjoy it when you get a chance to read it!

artwork

Art – Cast of Arise

Leave a comment

Hey there folks!

We have just a quick one for you this week, as I’m settling back into things after a loss in the family.

I love working things out with new artists, and Rigrena has been one of the ones I happily put into the win column in the last year.  She did some emergency work for us for the Kickstarter in September, and we’ve decided to use her again.

We utilized Rigrena’s skills for promotional work on our last book that’s releasing this year, Arise.  The sequel to Awake, we wanted to see her interpretation on Venathryn and Maravek, and we expanded it to our other two heroes, Vandelas and Faradorn.

The finished version is very impressive.  I’m a big fan of the beautiful background she put together for us, too.

So what do you think?  Do you like Rigrena’s artwork for Tellest? Should we get her to do more stuff fairly soon??  Sound off in the comments and let us know your feelings!