In any case, let’s take a look at how the tavern header came to be, before it takes its part time retirement.

We wanted to get the tavern background because we knew we were going to be putting a bit of focus on D’Aprile Fools.  In a lot of ways, that’s a new introduction to the world.  We wanted to make sure that it had a bit of a chance to shine, and we talked to Paul about doing a new header with that in mind.  We started with something a little different than what we ended up with.  This was kind of a look at the whole tavern, and we ended up shifting to just a look behind the bar.

Just as a rough draft, you can see that we were aiming to look at the area that the tavernkeeper would be, although we went a bit differently than what you see in this initial look.  There was a bunch of extra accoutrement that we added to the piece.

First and foremost, we thought adding a couple of “could-be-potions” and a wanted poster added a lot of character to the piece.  You can also see a lot more detail when it comes to the stuff behind the logo, and the magic dagger stabbed into the counter.

Could-be-potions become definite potions here, and Paul added more and more polish here and there as we moved everything around.  One of the added objects you’ll see here is a shield that ended up behind the logo.  Ultimately, we didn’t like the placement of that, and we asked for a bit of cleanup.

The shield looked much nicer centered behind the logo, and the addition of a few books near the barrels made everything really pop.  This has long been one of my favorite headers that we’ve ever had, and even though it’ll be coming out of circulation for a little while, I can’t imagine it being gone forever.

We’ve got a new header either on the way, or already up there, and it’s also one that we’re very proud of, which Paul brought to life for us.  Here’s to hoping we can collaborate with the talented artist again in order to bring more places to life in the world of Tellest!

The post Tellest Header – Tavern appeared first on Tellest.

If you’ve read the story, and you want to learn more about the warp elves, and see how we designed them, come along and see Paul’s fantastic work!

Everything started with a sketch (and a robust one at that).  The concept of warp elves was kind of a mix of vampires and a bunch of ancient folklore.  We wanted these creatures to be manic and frightening, but we wanted them to have their own world to withdraw to—one that would be horrifying to us, but which became home to them over countless centuries.

The warp elves use portals to move from their pocket dimension to ours, and those portals remain open long enough for them to capture a victim and bring them back to their homes.  As you can see from Paul’s art though, the portal isn’t a complacent thing either.  The portal itself is almost vampiric all on its own, sappign the life force out of the area where it comes into shape on Tellest.

Paul cleaned our awful looking warp elf up here a little bit.  When we were putting him together, we knew that the world that they’ve called home for millennia wasn’t an easy one to adjust to.  The warp elves are far more primal than the civilizations you might find on Tellest.  There isn’t any sunlight in their pocket dimension, and the landscape is harsh and unforgiving.  The land isn’t suitable for farming, so they’ve spent their time scavenging for the animals they can find.

Here you can see a little more details about the world the warp elves come from.  They have floating islands (reminiscent of The Fall’s Shandranar), but they can’t reach them.  They also have a substance that’s like corrupted lava—a molten, green liquid that almost looks like foul slime.

Here you have the full piece, with all the extra detail that Paul put into it.  He did a wonderful job, as always, and we’re so happy with what he delivered.

We hope you like what you saw of this year’s Halloween project.  It was definitely fun to explore a darker project.  And who knows, maybe this isn’t the last you’ve seen of the frightening warp elves!

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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.

Paul started us off with some poses that we could choose from.  This was important in the long run, because we wanted to balance them against the other concept pieces we’ve had done.

We found the pose we liked best for our little guy, and Paul set to work.  One of the reasons we have the gremlins is because in Tellest, goblins got bumped up to a taller race.  This gave them a good opportunity to butt heads with orcs as another pseudo-tribal race.  Gremlins, on the other hand, pick up the slack of a diminutive race for the “evil” side of things.  Most of the time though, they’re nothing if not fun and quirky.

Paul slapped on some color and made our little gremlin look quite impish.  I liked the idea of making him a rogue, because gremlins are supposed to be pretty mischievous.  He looked a little too dark here, though, so we tweaked things a little bit.

The different color scheme worked out a little better for us.  We didn’t want our gremlin to look like a ninja, so this made him look more like a highwayman.

The final version of the gremlin concept art was just so spectacular.  I really like the way this turned out, and I can’t wait for more opportunities to do concept pieces with Paul in the future.  What race do you want to see Paul tackle?

The post Concept Art – Gremlin appeared first on Tellest.

The trolls of Tellest are perhaps one of the most varied race in the world.  They’re predominantly considered the largest humanoid race outside of the haudrons, those being half giants.  But trolls can also come in other “styles” that aren’t so beastly.  That said, we’re dealing with one of the troll battle ragers from Skar’dell in this concept piece.  You’re going to see a big fella who wants nothing more than to stomp his foes into a mushy puddle.

As we always do, we started with a couple of poses.  We decided we wanted to keep up with the dynamic-looking shots, so we excluded that one on the left there.  Ultimately, the middle one ended up looking the most like an action pose.

Paul went on to sketch the troll out in some pretty gnarly gear.  He ended up looking a little bit like an orc, so we wanted to make a slight adjustment to the face.

Here, you can see the tweaked nose and teeth that makes him almost look like a ghoul or an undead of some sort.  This made this fella look more his own person than someone that already existed.

I liked what we did here, with the color and the armor and everything.  But there was one more thing that we wanted to try out to give him some more character.  The trolls are often described as related to dragons (they usually pronounce that themselves, much to the dismay and anger of dragons who canonically deny this).  What better way to show that than with some scales?

I felt like the scales were the final piece of the puzzle, and that Paul solidified his work with yet another amazing concept piece.

We still have more waiting, but I think it’s about time we reach out to Paul to get started on another one.  Maybe soon!

The post Concept Art – Trolls appeared first on Tellest.

Since the first trilogy in the Tellest grand series is out, I knew that I wanted to put together a bundle for readers – something that they could get for a bargain that let them get their hands on all the stories at one time.

To get to that point, we needed to wait for the covers for the individual novels to be completed.  Leo worked tirelessly on The Bindings of Fate, As Darkness Falls and The Enemy Within, and we landed with three spectacular pieces of art.

After that, I went to Paul, who is just so adept at putting together components into a nice package, and wrapping it with a nice bow. We decided to make a nice 3D Box image that we would see the spines of the books within.

Our first mockup is very rudimentary.  It had the basic package design in place, complete with the Tellest logo and tagline up at the top.  That’s great for a website, but the motto doesn’t really hold to this particular boxed set.  We also had the books out of order, and the spines are a little boring by themselves.

Another small adjustment that we tried was adding a sword to the front cover.  It fills the space, and it’s simple enough that it doesn’t hurt the spine artwork.

This update was more complete, and more indicative of the final package.  You can see that the books were reordered chronologically, and the spines were adjusted so that the more interesting aspects of the full covers were seen – obviously this wouldn’t be possible with a physical book set, but since this is digital, we were free to make it look as awesome as possible.

The front cover was redesigned a little bit, too, with Child of the Stars Trilogy taking up the biggest piece of real estate.  The motto was dropped and the logo was moved up too.

And here’s the final piece.  We centered the title a little better and Paul worked his magic on some finishing touches.  In the end, I think we had a great product that we could deliver to new fans of the world of Tellest!

The post Art: Child of the Stars Trilogy Box Set appeared first on Tellest.

Last time we talked about the kaja, we talked about how we had a pose that we had to narrow the model down to.  Instead, we took pieces of two of them.

We really wanted to dial back from the very dynamic shots that had from some of our other characters, but we didn’t want her standing there waiting to enter combat after her male cohorts did all the ground work.  This pose gave her a little bit more of a flirting-with-danger, come hither look.

After that, Paul worked his magic, and we came up with a very good sketch of our final piece.  This kitty has claws, and she looked so expressive even at this stage of her creation.

I have a lot of respect for Paul, and what he does.  When he creates these characters, he develops a backstory for them in his head.  He’s already come up with ideas for the goblin and the orc that he did, but with this character, I think I beat him to the punch.  This kaja is a dragonspeaker, a leader of her community that can actually commune with the great tyrants, and keeps a harmony between them.

Next up, Paul put together a nice color scheme for our savage dragonspeaker.

At this point, you can see just how well she’s coming along.  Her attire has more personality.  The minutiae of her physical features is expressive – Paul did a great freaking job with this.

I would have even considered this piece finished at this point, but he went and touched up our kaja even more.

The dragonspeaker had more patterns to her fur and skin at this point.  Individual flecks and circles dotted her caramel colored body, and the gem in her staff is throwing off wisps of magic.

Rhianna and I even came up with a name for this champion, and that’s how we ended up with our very first story-less hero.

Kaiyonani was an awesome way for us to wrap up our art projects from 2014.  I’m so looking forward to working with Paul again throughout this year!

This incredible new champion has been inducted to the Tellest Art Gallery.  Check her out, along with the other finished pieces from Paul’s collection of commissions!

The post Art: Kaja Dragonspeaker, Kaiyonani appeared first on Tellest.

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!

The post Introducing the Tellest Art Gallery appeared first on Tellest.

In keeping with his concept art for the races, Paul Davies has finished work on one of the coolest ones yet.  This time, he tackled the kaja, Tellest’s catlike race.  We tinkered around with a lot of different options before we settled on a final bit of art that I know you’ll love.

This one is nice, too, because it shows you how much different the kaja are than the gnolls.  Of course, each race is varied enough in their own ways that these are just particular extremes.  Today’s pieces also highlight the first female that Paul has done for us.

Let’s look at some of these concepts.

The first thing we needed to decide on was what we wanted our kaja to look like.  Were they a nice human to cat hybrid?  Did they look like the Thundercats?

In these first two experiments, we had a pair that really could have worked.  They looked cool as hell.  But I knew that in Tellest, there was more of a feline look to the kaja than what we saw here.  So we had to take it to the next step.

This variation, too, managed to capture a little bit more of what we were looking for, but it really started to come together in our next piece.  I felt like this particular concept really moved us forward in the right direction.

Once we knew what we were looking for, Paul did an awesome job of providing us with some pretty cool clothing options, in addition to a base body type.  This is exactly what you’d expect one of the kaja from Tellest to look like.

After that, we needed to determine what our character’s pose was going to look like.  Paul gave us a few to choose from:

I absolutely loved that these looked like they could have been the beginning of a five person kaja fighting team.  In fact, I would not be opposed to that in the future!  Of course, we did have to narrow it down, and we chose one of those up there.  As cool as they all were, I just know you’re going to love what we finally landed on.  She’s the coolest one we’ve done to date.

The post Art: Kaja Concept Pieces appeared first on Tellest.

Since we’ve stuck pretty close to the prime races in the Tales of Tellest series of novellas (with the exception of the goblins involvement in Awake), we knew that we were going to be moving away from the races that made the most sense logistically.  The gnolls aren’t necessarily that involved in the Tellest lore just yet (but that’ll change soon enough).  Still, since our focus has been on those prime races, that gave us freedom to move around quite a bit.

We’re showing you, today, the version of the gnoll that we really loved, and that means we were going with something dynamic, as we’re ought to do:

This was still considered the sketch phase, but it gave us a good indication of what the final version of our snarling, mean gnoll was going to look like.  After that initial anatomy was laid out, we had to consider what he was going to wear.

This version of the character took us one step closer to the concept that we really liked.  He has a little more clothing, some better markings, and hair that looked more complete.  But it still paled in comparison to the armored look we had next.

We liked this version for a couple of different reasons.  For one, it gives him a little more character.  Sure, he’s savage, but he’s not an idiot.  He know’s that a little bit of armor can go a long way.  Those shoulder pads also help to rein him in a bit and make him look a little less imposing overall, but just barely.

And then of course we had the beautiful colored version of our snarling savage.  Paul did a great job with this, to the point where we want to make this character into someone permanent.

And though we don’t have a dedicated backdrop to dump this gnoll on, we did manage to cobble together a variation with one of Dena Helmi’s backgrounds.

That’s it for the gnolls, but word on the street is we have a formidable foe for them coming within a few weeks.  Stay tuned for the new race soon!

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