Anyway, to celebrate the artistic endeavors of last year, we’re introducing the Tellest Art Gallery today.  It has a set of thumbnails of all the art that we’ve displayed on the site so far, and we’ll update it as often as we can when new content comes in.  Enjoy this great new feature on Tellest.com!

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Today, we’re bringing you his completed versions of Zachariah, Atalatha’s captain of the guards.  He’s a bit younger than Kaos, but man does his ambition drive him to great things.  Joman did a fantastic job capturing the essence of this fan favorite character.

I mean come on!  The more artwork I see, the more I want the cast of Tellest in a warriors game.  Is that too much to ask?

And of course, there’s the little bit of flourish:

We’re pretty sure that’s it for Joman through the end of the year, but we’re anxious to work with him again soon!  If he keeps on delivering the awesome like this, we’re in very good hands!

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But to me, these made up characters are just more friends in my deluded mind.  A lot of people struggle to make friends.  I actually make mine.  So to speak, I mean.

And while creating these artificial people and learning their fears, their desires and their histories is pretty fun, having some other artists to lean on for help crafting an image for them is pure bliss.

Today, we look at Zachariah Caista, brought to life by Joman in his signature style.  Zachariah is young and brash, and he’s this shining pinnacle of law enforcement in Atalatha.  As such, he has a pretty spectacular set of armor, and a shield to go with it.  We started with that in mind, and came up with our poses.

While we really liked each of these poses, we felt that (2) was the one for us. It was more expressive and gave a nice look of the shield while letting Zachariah’s body show as well.

After that, we knew that we were going to get a nice Dynasty Warriors-esque character, especially with the overly large shield.

Those poses barely scratched the surface of what Joman had in mind for the character though.  I swear, he keeps getting more and more impressive with every character he creates. Zachariah was no different.

And then of course, we finished off the preliminary portion of the art process with the lineart:

Somehow, that black and white always looks so darn good!

We’ll be back next week with the lovely conclusion to the process, and a version of Zachariah that pops even more than this part!

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And rightly so.  She’s a character that has a lot of layers.  Not too likable in the first chapters of the first book, she grows into a force to be reckoned with by the third book.  In the next few books in the series, you’ll see her become one of the strongest players in all of Tellest.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  For now, check out the awesome work that Joman did:

As is typical, he also provided us with the awesome background version of the design as well:

Stay tuned for more artwork in the weeks to come.  In the beginning of November, we’ll be back with some more Joman material!

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As usual, we started with some poses.

These were all very dancy, but it’s in line with what we’ve come to expect from Joman and his work. We chose pose 2, because we felt it best demonstrated both of her magics at the same time.

Sometimes, there’s some confusion between the artist and the commissioner, so Joman thought we chose pose 3. I liked it so much that we stuck with it.

She’s a lot more expressive in this version. This also further enforces how great Joman is with outfits.

Next week you’ll see just how impressive it looks with Alicia’s magic included.  We only chose to use fire for this interpretation, but I think that makes it pop that much more.

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You see, Matt saw the work that I was getting done with my own characters, and knowing that he had his own inspired somewhere in the mix, he threw in to see Bolt envisioned even sooner.  And he had big plans for getting his own family represented in Joman’s unique style.

First, let’s take a look at Otto:

He definitely doesn’t like being called “pooch.”

That doesn’t look exactly like Matt’s dog Otto in real life, but the markings are correct, and it demonstrates the part of him that we think is a bit of a German Shepherd.

Of course, Joman also did the background magic that he always does:

I always love the extra detail that you can gleam from those bigger zooms.

But that’s not all for this week.  As I said, we wanted to see what we could do about getting the characters together.  So we’re showing you a super special collection of the characters in an awesome action scene.  Behold:

Just as before, we worked on it in pieces.  We knew that we wanted to get the characters positioned properly, and this sketch phase really helped us to determine which poses made sense for Bolt, Otto and Tatiana.

After that, Leo put them together against a foe that would clearly represent what they were fighting against.  We went for the lineart presentation here, and you can definitely see it coming together.

Finally, we were able to see the final picture, in all of its glory.  Bolt is touting his awesome electrical power, and you can the telekinetic  energy that Tatiana is conveying to Otto.

This little thumbnail doesn’t really capture the true majesty of this artwork. Click on the image to really see what it looks like.

I think Joman did a fantastic job here, to the point where I think he had to go into hibernation for a few months afterward.  But what do you think?

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Otto is a Shepherd / Wolf mix, and he specifically works with Tatiana, who has the power to telepathically give him commands.

This was the last commission that Joman did for us in a while (though he’s since begun working on something new for us), and he really put his heart and soul into it.  Check out the process:

We usually go with something a little more dynamic, but I thought, with the bigger picture, #3 worked out very well for us.

After we found the pose we liked for him, we prepared Otto a little more for the harsh world of Tellest by giving him some armor.

We realized we went a little too far with the armor, so we dialed it back for the lineart.

The final piece that Joman provided for us is pretty awesome.  If I’m given permission, I’ll even show the original picture we got the markings from.  Tune in next week to see the final piece, as well as the phenomenal shot of all three heroes (Bolt, Tatiana and Otto) fighting together!

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Therefore Bolt was brought to the front line for new art.

Our first “finished” piece.

I should also mention to you that as much as Kaos Kreegan was loosely based off of me, Bolt was based off of my younger brother – my initial audience.  Had I not had a younger brother, Tellest might have grown in a completely different way.  When he found out that I had developed a character on him, it really made his day, and he went the extra mile, commissioning this character’s artwork, as well as two others that you will see in the future.

You’ll notice here that Joman changed the lightning to a more jagged, electrifying style.

Here’s to Bolt, who we certainly haven’t seen the last of yet.

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This week, we look at the final piece:

Look at those toothless gums!

Just kidding.  If you zoom in on that picture, you’ll notice he doesn’t have teeth, and he’s got a few more wrinkles.  My best friend Kev associates himself in a lot of ways with this character, and I thought it’d be a lot of fun to mess with him.  Joman agreed to make a secondary version just to tease Kev.

Here’s the real deal:

Here we have the ranger in his natural glory.

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Joman Mercado was the third artist that we began working with.  Even though our Kickstarter stretch goal to get him on board fell through, I felt it was too important to collaborate with him than give up on a good thing.  We dug deep to make sure we would be able to accommodate him, and he has yet to let us down.

His first project was tackling the main protagonist, Kaos Kreegan.  Below, you’ll see the steps we took in determining what the character should look like in Joman’s unique style.

Next week, we’ll be happy to bring you the final piece and show you how awesome it turned out!

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