Venathryn has long been a fan favorite.  Strong-willed and not afraid to speak her mind, this ranger from the Whisperwood is known best for her book, Awake, which sees her struggling with the terrible affliction called the Dreamplague.  In a way, she and the other hero of that story, Maravek, switch spots across the two books we’ve got so far in their saga.  While Venathryn certainly needed saving in Awake, the one who ultimately saves her is herself, and she shows her strength in turning up for Maravek when he is in need as well.  Wern captures that strength and delivered it from the get-go with the opening sketch.

By the time the first real details show up on Venathryn’s concept piece, we can see that Wern was very much finding his flow with the Tellest characters.  He was delivering spectacularly consistent work, and Venathryn was no exception.  We see a little more of Venathryn here than we usually do, and he even lightly incorporated the Whisperwind sigil into the art, in the form of the tattoo on the elf maiden’s arm.

A splash of color gives the details even more oomph.  We see Venathryn here in some natural colors, but instead diving into the tried-and-true emerald green that we usually see, Venathryn has a lot of golds in this iteration of her character.  You can see that she’s well-equipped, from her battle bow to her sword, indicating she can bring the fight to enemies both near and far.

Wern took things a step further in the final piece, not only adding a lot of spectacular details to the attire—seriously, look at all that beautiful line work—but also giving us a background we could use to make Venathryn pop as well.  It feels inspired by the cover of Awake too, just perhaps a bit drearier.  Who knows, maybe Venathryn is locked in a dream once again here.

Wern had brought two of our Tales of Tellest characters to life by this point, but you can bet that we ensured we could get him involved in the others as well.  I have no doubt that you’ll love each of them, and all the characters we collaborated on since then.

But we’ll take those things one at a time.  Just a few weeks until the next one.  See you soon!

The post Character Art – Venathryn appeared first on Tellest.

We got Hozure involved to do a pretty cool take on our favorite ranger from the Spirit Woods though.  Check it out:

You’ll see a lot of green in there.  We knew we wanted to focus on the strain that Eclipse has.  He can control fauna in some pretty cool ways, making brambles burst from the ground, causing trees to sway, and even coercing vines to do his bidding.

Here you can see that we opted to go with a more reserved look.  He wields a saber here (just a plain one—not his soul saber, Twilight). It’s almost as if he’s daring you to mess with him.

The follow-up adds a little more color and shading, and the texture comes into place a little bit more.  It’s hard to cover yourself in thorny vines without damaging your cloak!

And here you have the final look at this awesome character.  There’s a lot more shine here, and the shadow makes him pop a bit more.

We’ve got tons more coming from Hozure in the weeks and months to come, so keep your eyes peeled!

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The last big character piece that our favorite “figurine” artist did for us was Kaos Kreegan back in August.  We’re in November now, though, and seeing as Michael is working on a story about Ippius now, it only seems fair that we look at one of its greatest heroes: Kevin Dactyls, otherwise known as the ranger, Steel Tip.

Once again, we’ve got a slightly beardy ranger firing out with his bow.  You can see here, though, that he’s using the Spectrum, the weapon he acquired in As Darkness Falls.  How?  That ain’t no normal arrow!

Here you can see the iconic green that the ranger is known for, and you can more definitively see the awesome magic arrow that is ready to be fired out.  I love all the details here, from the warped look to the bow, to the magic quiver, Woodchuck, slung over his shoulder.

Finally, we’ve added a colored background behind the ranger that makes him pop a little bit more.  There’s a beautiful smoky look to everything, and he just comes off looking badass.

There’s no better ally for Kaos than Steel Tip, and we’ve got some very interesting changes coming for his character in the near future (can someone say Retcon?), so keep your eyes peeled.

The post Character Art – Steel Tip appeared first on Tellest.

We’re starting her off with one of my favorite characters from the series, let alone that book.  Eclipse Clarion had a brief appearance in The Bindings of Fate, but it was only in passing, and it was only a nod to his eventual full reveal in the sequel.  Eclipse is a ranger from the Spirit Woods, and someone who has a little different of an experience than another ranger like Steel Tip.  He’s never been to a city, he’s very “one-with-nature” and he’s got a cool power to boot.

RedPear started us off like she always does, with a nice little sketch of the character.  In this case, you could see the kind of outdoorsy look that Eclipse would have.

The follow-up showed a little bit more of what we could expect from the final piece.  Eclipse has the look of a highlander, just about, and he’s more than willing to draw a blade against someone who threatens his forest or his friends.

And here we have the final piece.  He’s definitely got the look that I would have expected from RedPear.  She did a wonderful job with it, and I couldn’t be happier.  Eclipse has had his share of adventures with Kaos and his crew already, but his time away from the Spirit Woods is definitely not over.  Stay tuned for more from the world of Tellest, which will certainly feature this awesome ranger!

The post Character Art – Eclipse Clarion appeared first on Tellest.

As many of you know, last month was November, which for a lot of people means not shaving your mustaches and beards.  For some writers, it means one hectic 30 days of trying to reach a goal that might seem impossible: 50,000 words.  For some people, NaNoWriMo is a breeze.  For me, I knew it was going to take some special attention.  I did away with my notebook for this particular adventure, and just wrote everything on the computer.  My goal was 1667 words per day—I met them most days, surpassed them on a couple of days and missed out entirely one or two days because of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and other things.

I knew that I couldn’t do it by myself.  Though the story had been brewing in my head for years (more on that later), it had been part of a different medium.  I needed a little push to think of it as a real story in the Tellest universe.

That’s where RedPear came in.  While I wasn’t ready to commit 100% to it being a novel, I wanted a cover for this story.  She agreed to give me an interim cover, which, when it’s completed, will inform the final cover that we’ll likely get from Leo if he’s up for it.  But first, we started with some sketches.

These were both ones that we ultimately passed on.  Even though I love all the things that RedPear does, we could only choose one, and we ended up with this one:

After that, it was only a matter of fleshing it out.

It’s amazing how much of a difference RedPear can make with just the lineart/sketch phase of her work.  She did a really cool job letting me know where we were going with the final piece.

After that, RedPear did some nice coloring, giving our ranger those verdant greens he’s known for.  She also did some foreground and background work to make the piece pop even more.

All of that work culminated with the final variation, where Steel Tip aims at the foreground, ready to protect the forest of Cefen’adiel.

So what’s Heart of the Forest about?  It’s the novelization of a game that I’ve been working on for a while.  You may have seen the sprites from our earlier attempts at putting it all together.  If nothing else, this is going to make the story in that game all the more impressive.

While I was successful in “winning” NaNoWriMo, this story still has a long way to go—20 chapters are so, actually.  But it’s my aim to make sure that a new chapter is written every week for it, and able to be seen on our Patreon for the uberfans of Tellest!

The post Art – Heart of the Forest Cover by RedPear appeared first on Tellest.

As always, we start with a sketch of our character.

She’s definitely different in spirit than Adelia, even when she grows up.  Adelia still remains reserved, for the most part, even though she’s become this confident young woman.  Venathryn, on the other hand, is incredibly sure of herself and makes it well known.

Here we have a somewhat cleaned up version of the first piece – this is what John does when he’s done with hand drawn pencil.  It’s actually a pretty interesting process!

After he’s done with the line-art, he moves onto some flat colors. This helps him to really nail down the final piece.

And here, we have that final piece.  The shading and the background make Venathryn really pop, and you can see the confidence – almost arrogance – in her gaze.  John did an excellent job, and we can’t wait for more from him!

The post Art: Venathryn by John Becaro appeared first on Tellest.

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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