When you’ve written a book that you’re proud of, the idea of adding characters to the cast that you’ve enjoyed can seem somewhat daunting.  But when you manage to bring a character to life in a sophomore title that you also have a good time with, that can almost be just as exciting.  Pendrich was a character that ended up forming from my subconscious, first as a game character, and then as someone I gave a tap to for a promotion.  He’s meant to be this frightful thing to the people he doesn’t know, and a source of great strength for those who know him.  But sometimes, you have to take their helmet off and reveal them to the world.

Part of getting the artwork made for my cast of characters means giving an artist some sort of reference to draw from.  While I hadn’t ever had a thought of who best could embody Pendrich’s great presence before, in talking to Wern, we both ended up finding that Jeffrey Dean Morgan was a great starting point.  Now, I’ll use someone as the point of reference without trying to say that they should definitively be played by that person, so we tried to step back from JDM a little bit as we moved along.  But if he came out and told me he was playing Pendrich of Arex, I wouldn’t be disappointed.

The first WIP beyond the sketch shows a more aged version of Pendrich.  He’s older, but he shouldn’t be that old, so we dialed it back just a bit.  Even here though, you can get a sense of his amazing presence.

At this point, we really get a sense of who Pendrich is.  He’s a powerful character, despite his age, and he exudes that here.  Wern managed to perfectly balance someone who could present as a monster with someone who was more stoic and refined.

And here is our last look at the character.  Pendrich being unmasked for the first time is a great thing for the Tellest series, and as you can see on the character’s sash, he still clearly represents Blacklehn, and the capital city of Carthis.  That could be because there are places where that sort of representation are more important than the man himself.  We’ll dive into that a little more as time goes by, however.

I hope that you enjoyed this look at one of Blacklehn’s champions.  As we make our way into this new timeline, it is our goal to present the heroes on any side of the world’s many borders.  Just because someone might be a villain to someone, doesn’t mean they’re not a hero to someone else!

The post Character Art – Pendrich of Arex appeared first on Tellest.

Today’s sigil is a bit different than the ones you would normally see from us.  They’re typically a bit more extravagant with a touch of modernism, but Jecraskia is probably the most classically medieval we’ve ever brought our design.  That’s because that city is run by rhinotaurs, and a classic pattern, pily, worked out very well for them.  The pily pattern in this case represents an army of rhinotaur horns, and we just thought that was a clever, novel idea.  It’s simple, but it almost has a bit of elegance to it.

Though Jecraskia isn’t a very old city, its inhabitants are not exactly known for being fleet of foot—and they’re rather heavy-handed as well.  This means that, despite the relative young age of the city, plenty of its symbolism has eroded beneath each of the steps of its people.  It’s not easy to replicate the sigil either, simple as it is.  The rhinotaurs don’t often have a sense of fine, small details.  It might even be that in some cases they’ve recruited outside of their own race to draw up their sigils in special places.

While it’s often dangerous for a rhinotaur to find themselves around deeper water, Jercraskia has its fair share of pilgrims and crusaders who have originated from its walls.  Sometimes they would hang the sigil from the mast, but other times they would simply find their way atop a banner carrier’s pole.  There are also a multitude of ways that they celebrate their gods, and that includes melding the design of Jecraskia with the various ones that represent their deities.

We talked earlier about the ways that a painted version of the Jecraskia sigil might end up, and this is one way that a potentially talented rhinotaur might be able to bring the pily pattern to life.  All those battered floors and walls might end up having a painter on duty constantly working to refresh what looks old and weathered.  As the borders of Jecraskia grows, they might need more time to pull it all together!

As always, we leave you with one final picture: the phone background.  I hope you enjoy it!

In a few more weeks, we’ll be back with another sigil from the world of Tellest.  There are plenty more loaded up, and we’ll be looking to show them all off, so be sure to check back often!

The post Sigil Art – Jecraskia appeared first on Tellest.

In our first WIP iteration, a great deal more polish has been added to the outer portion of the scrying bowl.  It’s got a more ornate design, and more reflective surfaces and shading to speak of.  The ripples in the water are a little more tumultuous and you can quite tell just what’s inside anymore, but that’s by design.  We didn’t want people to be able to see too much detail because scrying is suppose to be a manner of divining, and the results shouldn’t be too clear.

With a bit more polish and radiant coloring within the water itself, things become even more obfuscated.  Does it look a little foresty?  Or is that a room filled with riches?  That’s up to the person perceiving the waters in the scrying bowl.  Regardless, Steven continued marching this art piece along, making it look even spiffier than ever!

Our final look at the bowl, atop a nicely contrasting background, gives us our best look yet at the new treasure.  This is a wonderful addition to any diviners collection, and we’re so happy that we were able to get Steven on board to get us yet another excellent relic from the world of Tellest!

That wraps us up for today, but we’ve still got plenty more goodies coming in the weeks to come, from character art to treasures and more, so be sure to come back every week!

The post Concept Art – Xanadar’s Bowl of Scrying appeared first on Tellest.

The first thing you might think could be what we thought.  He kind of looks like he’s all about Easter.  He had a very Christianity Orthodox look, and while we don’t have a problem with that, we were worried that it sent the wrong message, so we tweaked things going forward.

You’re not going to step completely away from the way that priests traditionally look, but this version that you’ll see below looks like they could be at least a bit non-denominational, which helps to let people unfamiliar with the art piece feel a little more inclined to enjoy it.  Right now, it looks almost like it could be a statue, were it not for the green crystal, but even then, who knows, it could be!

Our first splash of color makes things look that much cooler.  There is a lot that the color change added to the commission, and it absolutely breathes life here.  That’s important, because that is what Animus represents.  Now, we did mention Easter earlier, and the sort of pastel color reminded us of that a little too much, so we adjusted things for that in our final iteration.

And here you have it!  There weren’t too many things that we had to do to wrap this up, but you’ll notice the robes look like more of a deeper lilac, and we made it so that the green glow doesn’t spill over quite as powerfully as it did before.  The character looks great though, and we’re very excited to introduce him to the TowerSphere project.

This is not the last TowerSphere item that Sergei made for us, and over the next months, you’ll see more beginning to grace the Tellest website.  We hope to see you here then when that happens!

The post Character Art – Priest of Animus appeared first on Tellest.

Today, we’re looking at the inside of Atalatha, specifically at the great coliseum therein.  This coliseum, owned and operated by Allan Mayheyre, has always been a very popular place for people to visit, but in recent times, with the advent of TowerSphere, it has become even more important to the culture of the city, and indeed, much of the world at this point.  Since the coliseum was the place that the game was first unveiled, we knew that we wanted to put on a focus on that, and we recruited Wern, who was already working on the characters who would fight within its walls, to bring it to life.  You can see from the original sketch that we went with a round building, though it could quite possibly be elongated.  For our purposes, the round version works fine.  We also had a tremendous statue beside the entrance, though in its initial presentation, it sort of looked a bit like a spartan warrior.

Our next iteration of the image adjusts some things, giving a much grander scope of the city and the walls along its border.  It brings us all the way to the mountains in the distance, though we determined that they needed to be a little bit farther away.  We also had the statue changed to better reflect the owner of the coliseum.  A young Allan Mayheyre is presented there, and gives us our first ever glimpse of what he might have looked like when he was known for some of his greatest exploits in heroism.

We changed a few things in the next iteration, but the most noticeable one was stretching how far the mountains moved into the distance.  Our knight has a change in footwear as well.

We added some distant buildings in Atalatha, trying to do our best to make sure that people know that the city is humongous.  While there are certainly buildings closer to the coliseum, they should stretch on for quite some distance.  Wern captured this expertly.

Now, that about wraps us up for today, but we have more concept pieces for TowerSphere arenas that we are going to be looking at in the future.  Keep your eyes peeled for those, and plenty of our other art Wednesday releases!

The post Concept Art – Atalatha Arena appeared first on Tellest.

Kerogane is a lagano city in southwestern Lustra, which we’ve actually spent some time in, thanks to Aaron Canton’s story The Tale of the Lagano Priestess.  The majority of the citizens of Kerogane pray to Hakar, the salamander god which is emblazoned on the black field of their sigil, which you can see below.  Though Kerogane was introduced in story form in that tale, it had been used internally in Tellest for years before, in the collectable game prototype that would have preceded TowerSphere.  We’ll be working on adjusting accordingly.

As far as the lagano go, Kerogane is one of the race’s longest-standing cities.  Because of its history, and its presence in the somewhat tropical biome it is a part of, many of the earliest forms of the sigil have fallen into disrepair.  It also doesn’t help that this city has a lot of infighting between priests and priestesses who claim to hear the word of their god.  Bloodshed has been spilled plenty of times before, sometimes to the detriment of the buildings in the city.

Though Kerogane is a bit farther away from the coast, there are some rivers and lakes nearby. Though full ships are not out the question in getting to the coast, it would be likely that they would have smaller crafts with their tapestries upon it.  This would be especially true if they wanted to ward people away from the waters, as they are just as sacred as their fire-breathing god. As a very religious city, it would also stand to reason that the emblem of Hakar would fly upon temples and shrines in Kerogane.

Though the sigil might travel far and wide, and has existed for a long while, the citizens of Kerogane have much pride, especially in their salamander god.  They would place their sigil to the Hakar everywhere.  Black and gold banners would hang from plenty of buildings, and the surfaces—often gold or yellow thanks to the material they use in their construction–would often have the black squares painted about them to immortalize Hakar.

As always, we leave you with one final picture: the phone background.  I hope you enjoy it!

We have still got plenty of sigil goodies to come, and they might take us through the end of 2025, and beyond!  Thanks to Francois for constantly delivering awesome content to us.  We’re so excited to keep showing off his great work!

The post Sigil Art – Kerogane appeared first on Tellest.

We started out with a sketch of Dirk, but decided we had to change a few details, just because he looked a bit draconic.

You’ll notice that in the below version of the image, we’ve changed the ears and the feet to look a little more canine.

With a splash of color, everything comes together that much better.  Dirk looks ever the stalwart warrior in Silky’s rendition of him, and we’re delighted to have this new iteration of the werewolf for our catalog.  It’s great to be able to continue bringing Dirk to new fans, especially considering how his story went for him in the legacy series!

This certainly isn’t the last time that we’ve collaborated with Silky, and there will be more to come very soon.  Remember to come back every Wednesday for more art from the world of Tellest!

The post Character Art – Dirk appeared first on Tellest.

One of the things that Netamix always does for us is create a version of our characters that seem dynamic and expressive.  even in the black and white version you see here, we’ve got a lot of movement and effects that are bringing Zoe to life.  She almost looks like a ribbon dancer, and it really makes her pop.

And with a splash of color, you can really see just how detailed Netamix went with this iteration of our street-level hero.  Zoe has so much dimension here that it really looks as though she should be headlining her own story.  Maybe we’ll get there in the future, but we’ll have to see if we can balance it against all of our other tales.

This likely won’t be the last we see of a Netamix and Tellest collaboration.  We love to work with them, and they always deliver outstanding work!

The post Anime Character Art – Zoe Hart appeared first on Tellest.

It has been a slow march forward with our multiple series in the Tellest universe.  But as we near the completion of many of them, we look to the future, when we plan on doing some event stories that connect the many parts of the grand tapestry.  That means learning more about the world outside of what we know, and expanding on it greatly.  We’re doing these in a few different ways, and one of them, believe it or not, is with TowerSphere.  With TowerSphere, we need to learn a decent amount about the cities of the world, and the kind of people that make up their team, as its become a great way to get a peek behind the curtain.

Today’s contender is from Carthis, the capital city of Blacklehn.  While we typically have seen them as villains in the past, we know that not everyone is represented by the interests of their kingdoms or countries, and in that case, we have Mookina here.  While she’s aligned with Carthis, it is mostly because of the friendship that she’s made with one of its princes, Renault Fowler.  With Renault due for release thanks to a treaty struck between Blacklehn and the city of Atalatha in Raleigh, she’ll have her chance to rekindle that friendship, and to show him how capable she’s become as a potential player in Tellest’s greatest game.

After we chose our sketch—one that showed a different pose than most of our characters had used before—it was time for Wern to add a bit of polish to the character.  Mookina is an alchemist, and we wanted her to seem more scholarly than combative.  But that was also to demonstrate that TowerSphere is dynamic enough to be won by teams of all makeups.

A splash of color goes a long, long way, and we were able to see Mookina come to life here in this final version of the artwork.  We threw her on top of a wizard’s tower background, because we thought that helps sell the studious look that we expect of the character.

It will be a lot of fun once we finally get to write the first scenes featuring Mookina.  I’m looking forward to reintroducing her to Renault, as it’ll be the first time I’ve seen their relationship, and it’ll be great to see the reunion between those childhood friends!

The post Character Art – Mookina appeared first on Tellest.

We’ve spent a little bit of time in some of the ritzier cities in the world, but the one that we are looking at today is particularly affluent.  Appropriately called Kingsly, this city is home to a lot of wealthy and affluent people along the northern coast of Aeratul.  We haven’t spend a considerable amount of time in Aeratul yet, but we did see a city called Winthrop (which we’ll be seeing more of in their own sigil post next year, as we’re working on that with Francois at the time of this writing) that’s nearby.  It will be nice to expand on that part of the world there.

In any case, Kingsly’s sigil is a golden crown on a striped field of white and royal purple.

There is a very good chance that you wouldn’t really see a chipped version of the Kingsly sigil unless there was some recent disaster or attack by someone who thought the magnificent city would make an easy target for banditry or the like.  These wealthy chaps aren’t the type to let things fall into disrepair, not from a functional standpoint, but because it doesn’t leave them looking right.  It’s a peasant’s move to allow things to remain damaged, after all.

With all the infrastructure that Kingsly has, there are plenty of places for the city’s banner to hang from.  Though they are affluent, they’re not oblivious all the time, so there are quite a few people who reside in the city who work at earning their coin due to the nature of their work, from construction, to even blacksmithing.  Of course, there are also plenty of ship captains who bear the Kingsly sigil on their vessels, as the city is a host of collectors of special antiquities.  They are very protective of the things they’ve acquired, so they equip their collaborators with only the best.

We mentioned before that Kingsly isn’t about to let their sigil chip and fade.  On the other hand, city pride would compel people to leave their mark in a lot of places.  You don’t get wealthy by not putting your name on things, after all.  To that end, in northern Aeratul, you’d likely see a great many versions of the painted sigil.

As always, we leave you with one final picture: the phone background.  I hope you enjoy it!

We’ve still got plenty of city sigils to look at.  It’s enough to have us covered throughout 2024 and then some, so make sure you’re popping back every few weeks (or quicker) to see it when we have these to show off!

The post Sigil Art – Kingsly appeared first on Tellest.