As cool as slimes and serpents and mummies are, there was something adorable and unique about this baby sapphire golem.  From its portly appearance to its spiky quartz deposits, it just looks so very different from all the other characters.  The lineart barely does the character justice, because Cristiano used such vibrant colors and shading to really make the little guy pop.

It’s fitting that the last character we worked on required some extra TLC.  If you’ll recall, we had to make some changes to the slime once upon a time, and we also decided there was at least one adjustment we needed here.  Specifically, we wanted to clean up the glowing color on the golem.  Since everything was one uniform color, and the golem’s eyes, chest and the crack on its belly glow, it almost looked like a face.

There may have been a little bit lost in translation when we described our concerns to Cristiano, because we ended up losing the purple and were left with a lot of blue…

But after that, we did a combo of the two, making it look a little less like a uniform face.  The purple eyes make a little more sense, leaving it look more sentient.

So, after months of QQ art, we’ve finally come to the end of this little set.  Cristiano did a lovely job with our four monster ambassadors, but that doesn’t even scratch the tip of the iceberg as far as what we have to show off for Merge Dungeon.  In fact, we still have so much to show off that next week we’re starting a new series that shows off the actual art from the Merge Dungeon game.  Keep your eyes peeled!

And hey, who knows… maybe some day we’ll see more Merge Dungeon babies…

The post Character Art – Baby Golem appeared first on Tellest.

The baby mummy was another really easy process to work through.  Cristiano knew exactly what he was working toward, and it turned out spectacular from the very first sketch onward.  Even in the game the mummies are kind of cutesy, but Cristiano instilled so much character into this little guy that it’s hard not to think about using him in other projects.

Once a fresh coat of paint was in place, we could see just how much character was there.  From the textured look to the wrappings, to the beautiful headdress of this baby pharaoh, everything just pops.  The lineart puts things in place, but the color lets it shine.

Cristiano made a few other changes even after we finished working on the mummy.  There’s a lot more fidelity to the character, and he can stand up with the rest of the characters we’ve shown off so far with ease.  The mummy definitely has a lot of personality, and we’re glad we got to collaborate on it.  We’ve got one more character in the quartet to show off, so we’ll see you in a few weeks for that!

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Compared to the slime, this was a much easier process.  We knew right away that we loved where Cristiano was going.  The feathered serpent doesn’t look nearly as vicious as it does in the game in adult form.  Here, it looks so much more expressive and adorable.  I think out of all the babies in this set, this one is my favorite.  And The line art barely does the full piece justice.

Beyond the added color, you get a lot more as well.  Lighting and texture goes a long way, and you can actually see every little bit of feathered fur (or however you would call that).  Cristiano put his all into this piece, and he even came back a little while later with some more changes…

Having Cristiano make changes to the above version of the feathered serpent is like trying to show 4K on an old CRT one-color monitor.  It’s too good for human eyes to spot.  He did tweak a few things that just ended up making something that already looked spectacular pop even more.  But here you have it.  This is our final shot of the Baby Feathered Serpent.  Hope you enjoyed taking a peek at it!

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What better way to show his affinity to cold as a kiddo than to give him an ice pop?  That was a brilliant idea that Cristiano brought to life in his great style.

The line art barely does it justice, too.  With the shading and everything in place, Olig really pops. He’s a great final member of this group, for sure.

And in full color?  Magnificent.  Cristiano took the concepts we were building with Hozure, made it his own, and did an absolutely fantastic job with it.

We gave him a neat little background like the others in his group for consistency.  But we also have one more cool little piece…

Here’s all our adorably QQ babies in one place.  It made for a fantastic design on a T-Shirt, which I happily wore at Wizard World Comic Con this year!

While we don’t currently have anything else to show in the “babies” line-up, we’re always hard at work thinking of new ways to show off the cuter side of Tellest.  We hope to see you soon with more of these kind of things!

The post Character Art – Baby Olig Tharci appeared first on Tellest.

We’ll start off with the sketch of Kelvin.  Now a lot of people who have seen the Reinforcements box art will notice that it’s an older Kelvin who we featured, and he didn’t have the green domino mask.  So why give him one here?  Well, when Kelvin was younger, he wore the green mask as “The Emerald Adder” – and sure, there’s no reason why he should have had it with him if he was babified, but hey… I’m having fun with this so it works!

Then let’s look at the next step, a black and white version.  You should totally check out Cristiano’s artstation site at the bottom there too.

Here you can see all the green you’d expect, mixed with a fair amount of brown that really works for the character.  Some day I’ll get a version of this where he has his green cloak, but the cloak itself won’t have shrunk, haha.

And here we have the full version with a nice background that’s reminiscent of his adventurer card from the Reinforcements pack.  Cristiano did a lovely job with this one.  Just don’t forget—we have one last piece of the set to show off!  Stay tuned in a few weeks and we’ll be back!

The post Character Art – Baby Kelvin Drakos appeared first on Tellest.

We’re leveraging the talent of Cristiano Reina once again, and he comes right out of the gate with another awesome look at one of our characters.  Suja is a troll assassin, but she looks positively adorable rather than deadly in this piece.

The color Cristiano uses just 100% pops, making Suja look like she’s having a great time.  Her outfit is perfect, and she has just the right amount of sass.

So it’s just a quick post today, but of course it’s an awesome one.  Suja leads the pack with her confidence and snarkiness.  I’m very excited to show off our other two characters!  Check back in about a month and we’ll have a new one to show off!

The post Character Art – Baby Suja Mak appeared first on Tellest.

So, regrettably, Hozure doesn’t really have the availability to work with Tellest anymore.  He got an incredible job offer, and that meant that we had to move on from his exact style.  That said, I think we found worthy successors in both Dennis Van Kessel, and in Cristiano Reina.  The latter was the one who we picked up for these cute little chibi versions of our newest QQ Babies.

He did a remarkable job bringing our characters to life.  That said, there were still a few things we had to tweak here and there…

While Bho’zak is an orc, he isn’t the traditional green-skinned one you might see from older fantasy works.  He has brown skin, so we needed that reflected properly.

Here’s our little orc geomancer in all his glory.  He’s just the first of our four box art characters to be turned from an adult into a baby, and we could not be more enthusiastic about the new style.  Cristiano did a great job, and we’re excited to show off the other adventurers.  Check back in a few weeks to see them!

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