Right off the bat, you can see that we made a change since the Dennis Van Kessel version of the piece.  While there are certainly some things that I like from that iteration, one of the things that felt a bit strange to me was the sort of “eastern-ification” of the character.  When people think of monks in fantasy, they may have a certain concept of what that looks like, but even in the Tellest universe, with their split timelines, it didn’t make sense to me to have a race change occur if nothing has led to that.

That’s not to say that we don’t have a problem with what I’ll call a very “ivory” cast, but we’re working on making those changes in a more organic manner.

In any case, what you’ll see here is sort of like the subtle step back to something that felt more true to who Christopher is.  We didn’t have too many pieces of art for Christopher to jump off of, so Silky did a great job conceptualizing him here and giving him his own presence that takes a journey of self-reflection and the struggle for inner peace, and brought it to life.

Here in this final version of the artwork, you can see the dynamics at play.  In a lot of ways, it was almost like conceptualizing two characters.  Christopher in this timeline is a little like Jekyll and Hyde, and you can see that in the reflection of the attire.  There’s a lot of interesting asymmetry at play, and Silky nailed that for us.

All right, it’ll be a little bit between now and the next Silky Noire peace, but we have continued to work with them, so that will be here before too long.  In the meantime, you’ll see tons of other character art pieces from our other artists, so make sure to pop back every Wednesday for more art from the world of Tellest!

The post Character Art – Christopher appeared first on Tellest.

Today, we’re showing you the third member of “the nine” who has undergone some pretty big changes.  You’ll remember that in the original Child of the Stars trilogy, Christopher Linus was an undead hunter.  In a way, he was kind of a paladin as well, and we didn’t want that overlap, so we took him in a different direction.

In a lot of ways, a monk is similar to a paladin.  Faith and spirituality steers both of their hands.  For Christopher, in this new timeline, a little nudge in a different direction sent him down a path of solitude.

He also doesn’t have the same power that he once did.  While the same could be said for the others we’ve shown, it’s hard to keep this a big secret, as you’ll soon see.  No longer able to manipulate objects with telekinesis, Christopher has a darker, sometimes stronger gift (or curse, depending on how you look at it).

Part of the reason Christopher enjoyed his solitude was that it kept people from being around him.  His studies also helped to keep the blood from burning in his veins.  But when he is unable to control his rage, that power can run a bit out of control.

Of course, he can’t be alone forever.  Christopher was lucky in that he found companions he could rely on to keep him calm and hold their own in a fight, so he could use more reserved tactics to take down his enemies.

As you’ll see in this completed piece, though, sometimes the rage wins out.  Christopher thereby goes from a ranged warrior to someone who gets a little more “in your face”, leaving distance attacks to the mages and the ranger of the group.

We’re so excited about these latest looks at the characters, but we’re still nowhere near done.  Check back soon for a look at yet another character from the world of Tellest, reimagined for a strange new world!

The post Character Art – Christopher Linus appeared first on Tellest.

Christopher Linus is an interesting character.  In the books, he’s the kind of character who sits right alongside Kaos and Steel Tip as heroes who’ve lost it all and come up from nothing.  As it turns out though, Christopher’s life wasn’t all that great to begin with.

In an as yet unreleased encyclopedia entry for Christopher, we discover that his parents were essentially cultists, though not perhaps as bad as some in fantasy are portrayed.  Our hammer-wielding hero had his share of ups and downs long before Juramentado made a mess of his hometown.

Christopher still bears the scars of his past, but only some of them are visible.  Thanks so much to Hozure for doing such an incredible job.  Our figure artist is wrapped through 2016, but you can expect to see more from him early in the new year.

The post Character Art – Christopher Linus appeared first on Tellest.

The funny thing is that he was originally going to be our go-to hero for the Tellest games.  I really want to make a slot-machine game with a story, and he’d be the perfect character to help me tell it.

In the meantime, we see some truly great work once again from RedPear, who puts her own personal spin on the hero.  As is normally the case for us, we began with possible poses.

While I always love the various sketches we get for our characters, I knew right away that this one wasn’t for Christopher.  If you know his history, you know how tragic it is.  And while he gets some jabs in on Steel Tip, it’d be very rare to see him crack a smile.

Now this, on the other hand… this is the face of someone who has had to deal with some pretty tremendous tragedy in his life.  You also get to see the scars he bears on his arms, a constant reminder of the failures he’s made, and the man that was left behind.

As always, after we knew what we wanted, we bumped up the level of awesome…

…And then we added a splash of color that gave Christopher even more personality.  RedPear did an awesome job as always, and brought one more character from Tellest to life.

We recently began working with RedPear again this month, so we’ll have plenty more of her talent to showcase in the weeks and months to come!

The post Art: Christopher appeared first on Tellest.