First we had to decide how we wanted our concept lizardfolk to present.  I liked the idea of showing off the vicious shield he bears.  This fellow would definitely entail a more primal, tribal look at the lagano.  They aren’t necessarily all like this, although it does come close to some our existing lagano that we’ve seen.

After that, Paul did a follow-up set of sketches.  This was the one we passed on.  If you look at the other concepts we have, they have a more stylized look than this one.  He’d be great for a monster manual or something though!

This was the variant we went with.  It felt more dynamic and action-oriented, which is what we have so far across the board.

After that, Paul went into super detail mode, and cleaned up the art tremendously.  I love what he came up with here!

We did toy with a green variant of the lagano, but we were given two choices, and we went with the road less traveled…

Our blue lagano felt like he spoke more to the spirit of Tellest.  We have a lot of variety in our world, and seeing a lizardfolk who wasn’t the predominant green color felt like growth in some ways.

Finally, here we have the final version of our lagano warrior, complete with all of his coloring and details.

We still have one more piece to show you from our collaborations with Paul, so keep your eyes peeled for the weeks and months to come!

The post Concept Art – Lagano appeared first on Tellest.

Starting with the male, you can already see certain things that weren’t written into my book.  I definitely am okay with this though… Tellest is a huge world, after all, and variety makes the world that much more interesting.  These naga are definitely more aquatic than the ones introduced in Lord of Thunder.  The gills, the face, and the fins on the head all kind of give them an ocean-y kind of feel.

Now that we have a color scheme overlaid as well, it lends credence to the idea of them being aquatic even more. The mountain/snow naga from Lord of Thunder were kind of half and half: Their top half was definitely more human in appearance, while their bottom was more snakelike. This naga here looks almost all the way through snake or eel-like. Definitely two different paths of evolution.

A little bit more color and shading really brings our male naga to life.  I feel like those wrist guards probably pack a mean punch, and the fins on his elbows make for a good weapon if loses hold of his spear.  Plus, can you imagine getting whipped by that tail?

Moving onto the female, you can see she too has the fins that kind of makes her appear more aquatic.  Her weapon isn’t present here, but she is holding onto a small serpent here.

The line art does a better job of showing you the character. She’s got some real presence—she would definitely catch your attention, I’m sure you’d agree.  Luigi changed the orientation of the tail a little bit, and gave her a nice priestess staff, as well as adding some jewelry to her repertoire.

Just as with the male, the color and shading adds a whole new level of character to the piece.  I like to think of the darker purple as armor, and you might not notice it at first, but she also has hair running down behind her shoulders.  Pretty interesting!

Here you’ll see both of our naga together.  This was the last race concept that we commissioned Luigiix for in quite a while, but we’re going to begin on another collaboration very soon.  Keep your eyes peeled!

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