Today we’re going to be look at the last piece that Dennis worked on, that of our werewolf, Dirk.  Before Dennis moved on, he worked with us on a few poses for the fan favorite character.  You’ll see here that we began with a look that was a little more rugged and savage than that which we were planning for.  Dirk is quiet, calm and collected, and we wanted to capture that.

Dennis’s next set of poses were more akin to what we anticipated when we began working on this piece.  We took a few elements of these poses and put them together, creating something that made Dirk’s art eventually look like one of the best pieces we were able to acquire.

It was around this point that Dennis handed the work off to Wern.  With Dennis’s guidance, Wern was able to pick up what we were looking for, and develop a line art for Dirk that was incredibly catching, and we knew at this point that we remained in good hands.  Dirk has the look of a medieval warrior, almost appearing like a Viking in some ways.

The next steps were subtle, but they added to the overall feel of the piece.  We changed the boss on the shield to a more fanciful one that’s reflective of who Dirk is, and we also added a cape that gave him a more adventurous feel.

With the first bits of color, you could see just how fantastic this piece was going to be.  Dennis was known for taking a lot of steps in order to make sure that the art he was working on was rendered properly, and Wern did just the same, doing his homework and taking his time to ensure we got something fantastic.

In this phase, you could see a bit more details fall into place.  Some darker lines made their way onto the fur around Dirk’s face, as well as the material of his outfit.  You’ll also see that we stepped back from the tattered cape to a more put-together piece.  Though Dirk is essentially a ranger in some ways, and it wouldn’t be totally out of character for him to have weatherworn clothes, we wanted to show that he was well-respected and well-equipped.

A bit more detail brings us close to the end of the piece.  We still needed to do a bit more work on the legs and the tail, but nearly everything else was accounted for here.  You could see that shading and reflections had been put in place, and these things helped to make him pop a bit more, giving him substance.

And then here we go.  We’ve finally arrived at the final version of our illustrious werewolf.  This was honestly probably the best character work we ever received, and it is thanks to the work of two incredible artists who put tremendous care and thought into their work.

As I mentioned earlier, the introduction to Wern has been quite fruitful.  We’ve been working together for some time now, and he’s consistently bringing great quality, as well as new ideas to the table, and he’s helping to add richness to the world of Tellest.  Dirk was just the start of Wern’s journey with us, and I can’t wait to show off the fantastic things we’ve accomplished together.

The post Character Art – Degrad “Dirk” Camdy appeared first on Tellest.

Let’s start off by looking at the poses of the character, Kelvin Drakos.  This is a slightly older version of the character that we’ve had in the past.  Hozure / Skence gave us some younger looking versions, and you can see here that Kelvin knows his stuff, and he’s ready to stand up against anything that gets in his way.

We decided to go with this Prince Charming-esque version of the character.  One of the things that Kelvin is know for is his charisma, and I really liked the idea that he would be able to jump right into battle, but had enough cool to keep his bow drawn away from his opponents or targets until just the right time.  Perhaps he’s using his enhanced vision here.

Dennis added a little more detail in this next step.

Here, we can see that Dennis added a huge amount of color to the piece.  Though it’s an abundance of golds, browns, and greens, it just makes things come alive that much more.  You can still see that there are certain bits that are unfinished, which just goes to show you how much farther Dennis can take his talents.

And he certainly delivers.  We decided to forgo a bowstring in this piece and make it magical in its use.  No bowstring means no worrying about it snapping, too.  You can see a bunch more definition in his outfit, and the magical energy exuding from his arrow is pretty cool too.  All in all, a great final piece from Dennis.

Now, I mentioned earlier that although Dennis is leaving us, and this is his last piece, I still had some good news.  Turns out, it’s actually two pieces of good news.

The first is that while this is Dennis’s last solo Tellest piece, he’s done a special collaboration—with his replacement.

Yep, Dennis was awesome enough to find another character artist that he enjoyed working with in the past, and we’ve had the baton change hands.  I’m looking very forward to introducing you to Wern Szuen Lee soon enough.  You likely won’t see their work on the Tellest website anytime soon, just because there are so many other things scheduled, but patrons and patreon visitors may see them sooner.  Keep an eye out!

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As you can see, we started off with a few pose trials for Adelia.  I love getting a few options for poses, because it helps me to imagine the character in more ways than one.  On the other hand, sometimes the choice is difficult, and I don’t answer as quick as I’d like to while I’m mulling over the options.

Case in point, Dennis ended up moving to the next step in his creation, lighting and shading.  In this case, he just decided to do it for all the versions of the pose.  We ultimately ended up going with the third option, on the right, as it seemed the most dynamic.

Here, you can see that Dennis put a little more emphasis into the character in line work.  We wanted a general shape and structure for the character, and this was Dennis’s way of achieving that.  You can see that we aged Adelia up somewhat here.  A lot of the character work that Dennis put into these pieces is a little bit further on down the timeline, and while Adelia’s solo books take place when she’s around 16-17, this shows her as more along the lines of her mid 20’s.

After putting together the line art, Dennis figured out what colors he wanted where, and you can also see the background he placed our aspiring sorceress on.  This step is always so important, but it always feels understated.  But wait till you see the final piece.

Here we have Adelia with all her bells and whistles.  Her staff is complete, and you can see she’s still playing a little whimsically with her magic.  Especially notable is that some of the magic seems to be coming right out from beneath her.  Adelia may be kindhearted and good by nature, but she’s also one of the more powerful characters that we play with in Tellest, even though we’ve barely scratched the surface of what she’s capable of.  In any case, Dennis did a spectacular job, and we’re excited to show off his final solo work in just a few weeks.  Stay tuned!

The post Character Art – Adelia Kreegan appeared first on Tellest.

Things are a little different for Anson this time around.  When we next see him, he’ll be back in bard mode.  But things are…a little different.  Obviously we’re going to play some things close to the chest so that when you first read about these characters again, the surprises really hit you.

If Anson looks a little melancholy, there’s a reason for that.  Life hasn’t been great for him, though he of course has his friends to lean on.

This is the first good look at his new style.  We went a little bit further though, and changed certain pieces of him to better reflect his new history, along with giving him a slightly different wardrobe.

You can see that Anson’s got a little bit of scarring on his face, which indicates some of the trauma he’s gone through in this new timeline.  We thought that was a little too prominent, so we dialed it back just a bit for the final piece.

In our final piece, the scars Anson has are a bit lower, and a bit less apparent.  The trauma happened a while back and hit a little closer to his throat.  Since then he’s come a long way then, achieving the kind of serenity that prompts birds to perch on your shoulder as though you’re quiet and statuesque.  Anson’s like a Disney princess with a slightly unnerving quirk.

But we’ll be waiting a little while to talk about just what that is.  In the meantime, stay tuned… we still have more character work to show you!

The post Character Art – Anson Fysis 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.

The novellas and novels that I’ve been working on since Mageborn have been taking place in this bold new timeline, and they change a lot of things.  Characters like Adelia, Maximus, Venathryn and Bolt have retained a lot of the parts of themselves that made them easy to identify.  But as we saw with Luca Kreegan a couple weeks ago, not everyone is the same version of the characters we knew from the Child of the Stars trilogy.

Today, we’re unveiling another of the characters from the original three books re-imagined for this new timeline.  David Garus was a roughneck gladiator, but his station in life is a bit different since Rhys altered the structure of time as we know it.

We start things off with some sketches, as we often do.  Even here, you can see that our warrior, who used to wield dual axes, has a different bit of a style now.

David is still a powerhouse.  But rather than wield two axes with ease, he is almost celebrated for his power, wielding an enormous sword and shield combo, and plenty of armor to boot.

There’s a lot of silver and gold in this piece, with some blue accents to touch things up and make it pop.  So how exactly did this change come about?  Well, we’re not saying just yet.  We’ll let the story speak for itself, mostly, but we will say that David is no longer the secret gladiator he once was.  He enjoys his time in the sunshine, that’s for sure.

Ack!  He’s lost his head!  I actually really like this step of the creation process, as Dennis really takes time to make sure the lighting is handled properly.  You can see in this phase how it would look if we made a figure of the characters…

David’s grand finale really pops.  First of all, I’m so ecstatic that we were able to work the Atalatha sigil into a lot of this costume.  Going forward, we’re really trying to make the people who are banded together feel like they’re part of a cohesive group, and seeing David as a representative of Atalatha is really special.  Beyond that though, the piece is just absolutely spectacular.  Dennis Kessel crushes it again, and keeps us eager for the next piece that he’ll deliver to us.  Once again, you won’t have to wait long.  The next piece is just a couple of weeks away!  See you then!

The post Character Art – David Garus appeared first on Tellest.

Right off the bat, we were given some possible poses to choose from.  We thought the flexing idea was the one to go with, especially considering Kunal’s new lease on life.

Then, we move on, as we usually do, to a sketch of the character.  With Kunal, we knew that we were exploring the idea of him growing to be able to control his power.  As such, he has a little bit of fun with it.  Here, Kunal flexes and poses, turning to gold in this form.

Dennis moved forward into the next step, showing us an awesome, cleaned up version of Kunal that demonstrates all the details we would see in the final piece.  You still can’t quite see where the gold is going to go, making the anticipation palpable.

Whoops.  Our poor Lakmari resident up and lost his head.  Dennis goes through a lot of iterations to make our characters as good as they can be, and in this case, he really went some extra steps with Kunal!

Still a bit bottom-heavy thanks to his missing cranium, Dennis moved us onto some color schemes.  I like Kunal because he takes us a bit out of our familiar landscapes.  Lakmari and Lustra as a whole lets us explore new environments, new attire, and more.

Here you can see the final look of our gold-transforming hero.  Here, we can see the gold in place, finally showing off Kunal’s awesome power.

We also have a neat depiction of how the piece progressed. Click on the image below to see the stages of Kunal Johar being brought to life.

We’ll be back in a few weeks with another piece from Dennis that is truly near and dear to me.  Until then, enjoy whatever fantasies come your way!

The post Character Art – Kunal Johar appeared first on Tellest.

If you’re all caught up on your Tellest reading, however, you know some pretty big storylines:

• The Child of the Stars trilogy focused on Kaos Kreegan and the vengeance he aimed to find after his family was attacked by the terrible necromancer Juramentado.
• After that, we introduced the Tales of Tellest series, and began following the exploits of several of the other characters from the Tellest mythology, including Venathryn, Bolt Thunderfury, and Maximus Xanders.  Perhaps the most important character storyline to focus on, however, was that of Adelia Kreegan.  Gaston Camlann has decided to teach her in the ways of magic, and he studies her strange gifts of ancestral recall as well.
• At the same time, the short stories in the Tales of Tellest volumes tell narratives that focus on lesser known heroes—some of which are on their way to being elevated by their own longer stories.
• Of all the characters in the Tales volumes, the most integral is Rhys Oberon.  Rhys has fractured time more than once, first in his debut story Into the Void, and then again in the 2019 tie-in novel Quantum Quest.  One of the stories in Tales of Tellest, Volume 2, however, was the one that ultimately sent Tellest down a different path.
• In the finale of Adelia Kreegan’s trilogy story, several big revelations are had, but perhaps the most important one is the appearance of her brother at Forsynthia, despite the fact that in The Bindings of Fate, we learn that he did not know of Adelia’s survival.  Yet he is alive, and he goes by a different name altogether.

Everything that you see in those bullet points had a part to play in how we got to here now.  Adelia’s ancestral recall works not only as a window to her family’s past, but also to one of her own—that of another timeline.  Because of what Rhys Oberon has been doing, the original timeline has been splintered off, and takes a new direction.  Some of the changes have been small enough not to notice, but perhaps you’ve noticed other ones already…

Now, however, we’re reaching the point where we’re really going to dig in and explore these new changes.  And perhaps one of the biggest ones is the introduction of Adelia’s brother once more.  Luca Kreegan knows of Adelia’s powers and of her past, but he isn’t the Kaos Kreegan we used to know.  Things have changed somewhat, and we leveraged the awesome talent of one of our newest artists to help bring this new version of one of Tellest’s most essential characters to life.  This has been the most verbose opening for a piece of art that we’ve ever seen, so perhaps its time for me to shut up and let the art do the talking!

We begin with some pose sketches.  We didn’t have a lot of art of Kaos, but a lot of what we did have showed him as pretty aggressive and ready to rumble.  We wanted to show this new version of our old main character as someone with a little more reserve and poise.

We chose one that had a very introspective look.  This variation of Luca did a good job of showing off some of his goodies: he still has a grappling hook, a strange spherical object in his pouch, and a flaming sword, so it appears that some things do not change.  But with some colors, perhaps more of the picture will become apparent.

Perhaps the biggest change that we entertained was a palette change.  Kaos wore a lot of red, brown and grey, whereas Luca wears brown and blue.  This choice was made specifically because it evokes a more peaceful feel to it.  Clearly Luca knows his way around a weapon still, but perhaps he isn’t as eager to use violence to further whatever end…

The character is almost completed here, but Dennis put things together a little further, as you’ll soon see.

We absolutely love Luca’s new look.  We’ve known for a long time that the story was going to go this way, and part of knowing that means that you worry about how things are going to be interpreted, and how a shift is going to feel.  Dennis proved immensely capable of the task, and put together a fantastic version of our character that we could not be happier with.  I’m so excited to show off more of Luca in the future, as well as to see the other ways that the landscape has changed now that we’ve officially declared the timeline shift.

You won’t have to wait long either.  In just three weeks, we’ll show you another character who we’ll be exploring in a brand new way.  Keep your eyes peeled, and we’ll be back before you know it!

The post Character Art – Luca Kreegan appeared first on Tellest.

To that end, we’re happy to introduce Dennis Kessel to the mix.  He does a wonderful job bringing our characters to life, and he get his first opportunity to shine with the enigmatic Andrakidus.  Let’s dive right in!

The pose was pretty much established from the get-go on this one, but Dennis did allow some choices to be made regarding the attire.  We mixed and matched a little bit because there were parts of each that we enjoyed.

After choosing the attire, it was time for Dennis to work on a line art sketch.  Even from here, you could tell we were going to have something amazing.

After that, Dennis started to sculpt out the character, helping him to really pop.

Andrakidus looks awesome here, with magic flowing from him, his staff and his book.  You can clearly tell he likes draconic magic.  By the time we saw this, I thought he looked like he could have been straight from a fantasy game like Diablo.  It’s very impressive.

But that wasn’t the final render…

Here’s your final look at Andrakidus the dracosage.  Dennis crushed it during his audition with this first character, and we’re so excited to see him keep things going.  We’ve got a lot of his work to show you over the next few months, so keep your eyes peeled!

One other thing.  We had a few other artists give Andrakidus the ol’ college try.  While we ultimately chose Dennis to be our new character artist, we want to make sure to highlight these other great artists:

*Art from Vlad Voronchiukov, Srion and Zachary Tullsen, respectively.

The post Character Art – Andrakidus appeared first on Tellest.

So we started with a basic concept.  The Forest of Silence is filled with fairies, but this one that Dennis came up with was a little…not what we intended.  Things definitely changed from the initial concept, but you can see that some parts remained the same.

One of the main characters in the story is a young woman, Annabelle, who has the most interaction with the fairies.  We wanted her to get the biggest presence in the cover.

After a decent amount of refining, we ended up with this cool work in progress where Annabelle reaches out to one of the fairies to make meaningful contact.  But you can see there are darker images within the trees in the background.

That brings us to the complete piece.  That little splash of color really helps to tell the story, and shows the grisly sight of the victims of the forest.  Do you want to find out why things have gone like that?  Come back tomorrow to see the tale in its totality!

Big thanks to Dennis Kessel for doing such an awesome job with the image!

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