We start off with a sketch of the character.  John usually has these dynamic, in motion shots that really makes his characters pop.  Iliana is leaping and firing in front of the northern mountains of Cracius, similar to where we found her in Lord of Thunder.

Next up, we’ll look at a black and white version of the final piece, because the jump from this to color will absolutely blow your mind, but just by itself, this one absolutely jumps out at you.  John is excelling in leaps and bounds!

Finally we see our awesome delver in all her glory.  John really crushed it, and we’re so lucky to have been able to leverage his talents over the last year or so.  The good news is that we have him on tap for at least two more characters, so be on the lookout for another one soon!

The post Character Art – Iliana appeared first on Tellest.

First, Jun started us off with a sketch of the character.  Right off the bat, she made a very elegant and compelling character.  You can’t immediately see whether or not this character would be a dark elf or a light elf, but with the shading added, that changes pretty quickly.

Iliana has a very confident and almost disarming gaze.  Part of this look almost makes her look vampiric, but in any case, she looks awesome.

The full color version of this art is gorgeous, and really pops.  It’s very expressive and gets me even more excited to see where Iliana (and her love Corvo) go in the future.

Thanks to Jun for another beautiful piece of art.  We’ve still got more from her in the future, so keep your eyes peeled!

The post Character Art – Iliana appeared first on Tellest.

You see, we worked with Barnswallow, one of our more recent additions to our collaborations, to have her tackle a character who is a little bit new to the series.

Iliana is a delver, what we call the dark elves of the Tellest universe. Catchy name, right?  Almost makes up for the simple portmanteau. This particular delver also has some history with a somewhat more established character, who was introduced in Son of the Storm.

We started off with a couple of sketches.  These are very similar, but we had to determine whether or not we were going with an extra bit of skin or not.  I opted for more.  Iliana is the kind of person who would use that to her advantage.

As I said, it was a really quick one.  Barnswallow went right for the jugular, and we were so impressed.  Iliana looks gorgeous and deadly, all at the same time.

Well, it’s time to get our noses back to the Kickstarter grindstone. We look forward to bringing you more from the world of Tellest, and from Barnswallow!

The post Character art – Iliana appeared first on Tellest.

We’re working on a new book.  Yes, yes, I know.  It’s quite a surprise. Actually, it’s “at least” five new books, but we won’t get into that just yet.  Suffice it to say, we’re ready to draw back the curtain on one of these books, and this one will serve as the relative flagship release for our other books in this set.

These five books are going to be sequels to the Tales of Tellest that we Kickstarted two years ago.  As such, we knew we needed a face that was going to be… electrifying… to introduce us to the new stories.

That man is—no, not Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson—Bolt Thunderfury:

The protagonist of Son of the Storm, Bolt has already had an awesome story in his life, but he’s got more.  This follow-up, Lord of Thunder, is the tale of how he and a group of ragtag heroes managed to save a group of people from annihilation.  We’ll be getting the full details of the book to you soon, but for now, we’re really excited to show off the beautiful cover that Leo made for it.

Here you can see the rough sketch we began with.  Leo knew what we wanted right away, and there was very little that we needed changed from one form to another.  Seeing as this was the initial sketch, you can only tell very basic things, but it’s starting to come together as to what might be causing the mysterious people issues.

Alright, so things are a little more clear here.  That big guy front and center?  An ice giant.  The guy in the top left corner is an avarian, a birdman in the world of Tellest.  We’ve got a dwarf in the foreground, who may be a little familiar to readers of the first book.  In the background, two more folks.  And on the right side, our hero, Bolt Thunderfury.

Leo made a slight change that we ultimately opted out of here.  He thought that Bolt and our dwarf looked a little too similar in their poses, but we didn’t mind.  We wanted to see that dwarf’s face, by gum!  And then you can also see our other two characters with more clarity.  One of them is called a delver—they’re the dark elves of the Tellest universe.  The other is a haudron, a half-giant.  But whose side are they on?

And there you have it.  That’s our final version.  You can click on it to see it embiggened.  We’re so proud of it being the first big reveal for our next big push.

We also wanted to give a shout out to Matthew DeAngelo, the man who ultimately inspired a lot of what Bolt Thunderfury is.  His birthday was yesterday, and we’re proud of him too!

The post Art Reveal – Lord of Thunder Cover appeared first on Tellest.