Greetings travelers! Welcome to our penultimate 2023 art post! We’ve got something fun to show off today, as it helps us to loop in the last member of our D&D crew. Today we’re going to be looking at Theodin, played by our friend John.
Theodin was introduced a little late in the game, after Kev came back as Alexander (though he had missed the one session after that). He ended up being introduced in our sewer session, though I had some clever ways of trying to alleviate that. One way, in particular, was to have the players be able to leave the sewer at some opportune places. We had a spot that I wanted to act as a bit of an info dump, and get my players away from playing it the way they normally would, so I found an image online of a wizard’s study, and made it so that the players could look at the image and tell me places they would want to search. I had ten places in the image that I “hid” notes from a caretaker of the sewers, and it would give them hints as to what was going on in the sewers, weapons that could help in their plight, and even other characters they could meet, given the right preparation. But in the midst of all that, I had a knock on the door, and Theodin was there waiting for the players. He was sent there by the same person who brought the group together earlier, so I had a way to get the lore in place. But also, he had some skin in the game, because the Enkindled Brotherhood, our bad guy syndicate, had torn up a large part of the grove that he had protected for much of his life.
Theodin was more quiet and reserved, but in this first image, he almost looks pitiable. He stood in sharp contrast to everyone else, so we tried to empower him, and asked Valence to change the style a bit to bring him in line with our other characters.
You can see in the very next picture, our little dwarven druid has a look more of conviction than of waning confidence. Theodin deserves to be a member of Cora’s Champions, and this art helps to evoke that notion. We elected to keep Theodin under a hood, and a robe of leaves, and it makes him look peculiar and interesting, and this sketch barely does justice to where Valence was able to take his talents.
Our first color image of the dwarven druid helps to get an idea of his style. Though he’s small, he’s scrappy. He doesn’t have the huge beard that many dwarves in fantasy are known for, but he’s not a traditional dwarf by any means. He’s lived amongst the forest—a caretaker of sorts—so he’s always going to carry a piece of that with him. He looks almost rogue-like, and in some ways, he probably would act like that, since he’s not trying to be the center of attention.
Valence’s final look at the character shows a bit of a bushier cloak, even if the beard hasn’t grown anymore. His cloak also billows out at the end as well, giving it more presence. Theodin’s gaze is a little wilder. You don’t live on your own without having a few quirks here and there. Ultimately, Valence saved some of his best work for last, and we are so very happy to have this version of Theodin’s character up for display.
At the time of this writing, we have plans to continue working with Valence, but thus far, we haven’t finished our first follow-up. We have really great ideas for what we want to do, but you can’t rush greatness, and I want Valence to move forward at his own pace. Hopefully by the time you see this, we’ll already be in the midst of working on the new content!
Michael DeAngelo
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