When we first brought him into the limelight, in Mageborn, he became one of our favorite characters.  He speaks to the world almost as if he’s outside of it.  In a lot of ways, I feel as though he’s an extension of me.  Gaston has all the right qualities you’d want in a person, but he’s still somewhat flawed.  Think of him as your grandfather all those times you made him mad.  He doesn’t want to get angry, but sometimes you see it!

In any case, we had a few instances of Gaston already on display thanks to our “generic” short story panel that you see from time to time.  But when we asked Hozure to give us a version of Gaston that belonged entirely to him, he didn’t disappoint us.

We had a lot of interesting poses presented to us, each with their own sense of whimsy.  But one of them stood out more than the others, because it also had more of a sense of Gaston than the others.

Here, you can see Gaston with one of his favorite things: his books. As much a scholar as a sage, Gaston’s love of knowledge and wisdom is a base thing for him.  It’s what makes him tick.  It felt like it would have been a lost opportunity not to feature him moving those old words around like that!

As things moved around, and lightning was implemented, our spectacular sage jumped off the screen even more.  Everything about him seems scraped right out of the back of my mind.

And here you have our final look at Gaston Camlann.  As we said before, Hozure did a magnificent job of capturing this incredible arcanist, giving him a delightful feel and sense.  This isn’t the last you’ll see of Gaston.  Keep your eyes peeled in the weeks and months to come as we reveal more characters in this great fantasy world!

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And what better way to celebrate where we’re going than to look at where we’ve been?  Today, we’re happy to show off the original Tellest hero; the guy that started it all: Kaos Kreegan.

I clearly have a soft spot in my heart for Kaos.  In our interview, I admitted that he’s kind of a straw man—he’s a morally white character who has values and a personality that I would personally aspire to.  Which is why I have to break him.

In this first draft picture, you can see that Hozure did us a solid and gave us the awesome flaming sword, Wildfire.  Maybe this is at the hind end of the trilogy where he made his debut.

We follow up with a beautiful color version of the piece.  Kaos means business here, and he’s ready to tackle whatever odds are before him.  One of the things that Hozure is excelling at is different textures.  You can see that by looking at the various components of Kaos’ outfit.

Finally, we get the piece with a background and a little under-piece that gives everything a little more presence.

We’re looking forward to showing off more of the heroes of the original trilogy throughout the year, but we’ve got a new hero that we’re showing off next week!  Stay tuned!

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Today, we’re happy to show you another couple of characters from our Tales of Tellest series, with Venathryn and her cousin Narallyndra.

The first thing we started off with, of course, were some choices. The goblins in this piece are highly stylized, and we wanted to make sure that we got everything just right, so we ended up going for the one in the upper left, which actually instills some danger in the scene.

And danger it was.  Here you can see that Narallyndra has been harmed while Venathryn ducks out of the vicious swipe of that massive goblin’s sword.

With color in place, you can see that more than just the elf was hurt. The goblin’s allies paid an awful price as well.  You can also see better how fearful Venathryn is for her cousin.

The final piece has a sheen on it that’s incredible.  Hozure made this art come to life, and gave it so much character.  We were all very impressed with this work.

We’re even more excited to let you in on the secret.  There’s still one more VS scene that we commissioned with Hozure, so stay tuned for that one as well!

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Each of these pieces of art is a “VS” scene.  We decided to start with Bolt, the hero of Son of the Storm and the upcoming Lord of Thunder. His first big challenge was against the beautiful yet vicious harpy arcanist Keilana.  What we decided to capture here was the feel of that encounter, but with a kind of quantum twist.  What we’re about to show you didn’t happen in the canon of the books, but it very well could have.

Horace started us off with a test, so that we could see what the battle could have ended up looking like.

From there, we had almost a storyboard situation, where he gave us a couple different options for the way the scene could have progressed.

What we ultimately decided was to use basically the test version that he came up with, and expand upon that from there.

In the full version, with feathers flying around and dwarves in the background, the scene truly does look as chaotic as the encounter in the mountains were.  Bolt and Keilana meet here a little more on even ground, but it’s gorgeous nonetheless.

Stay tuned for more from this series in the next couple of months!

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We start off with a nice greyscale version of the character.

Hozure gave her the nice little skirt that she first encountered Kaos in.  She had playful sandals and an unassuming look that could cause real trouble for anyone who didn’t know just how powerful she was becoming.  She also has a half staff, which you don’t see too often.  In the book, she was written with a wand, but I think this actually takes the cake—I prefer Hozure’s interpretation.

After that, a dash of color clearly gives the character a warmth that she might not otherwise have.  She’s clearly one with nature—maybe a druid at first glance.

And here we are with our final cut.  Narallyndra definitely carries herself as a bit of a badass.  Again, it’s easy to dismiss her as just a pretty face, but she’s got powers that would really change your day for the worse if she wanted.  That’s the benefit of learning from a sorcerer like Wispus.

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