We ended up passing on this sketch.  She’s demure and doesn’t appear to have any powers when her story played out, but I didn’t want her to seem too passive.

This variant of the character and the pose seemed to get our point across a little more.  It also highlighted her eyes a little bit more, which is a pretty interesting part of her character.  They say that the death winds outside of Fostervilla were responsible for her odd look (the silver hair and violet eyes).  This brought those features a little closer, I thought.

We moved forward a little bit, and we opted not to use this yellow/gold version of the outfit.  It could have worked, but we liked the red version she pitched too much.

I don’t know why, but this one just seemed to flow better for me.

Pear also gave us two versions of the completed piece (four if you count the portrait/bust shots she did as well).  This was the one we don’t call our final piece.  It’s a little rounder and more anime-looking, though you would probably find it hard to tell.

And here you have it.  Our final version of Iris Denaar looks great.  Pear did a phenomenal job (as always), and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to work with her.

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First we’ll show off a couple of the sketches we passed on.  This first one might have been just a touch too subconscious, but I thought she ended up looking a bit like a gnoll, so this was kind of on the chopping block right from the get go.

This second one was a little better—I liked the inclusion of the crook of Kai’s staff, but it looked a little too weasely.

This variation looked the best, in my opinion, and I suspect it was the pose Red wanted to do from the start!  Do you think we made the right choice?

Here’s our first follow-up.  Red put some more details in place, including the more catlike features, the shape of the staff, as well as some adornments.

After that, we had our first big jump in quality.  Red made sure that just about every part of Paul’s original design for Kaiyonani made its way over to her take.  The texture of her fur, the spots, the wrappings on the staff, the topknot.  It’s all there, and it looks great. But look what happens when you add a splash of color…

This definitely became one of my favorite pieces overall from Red. She did an awesome job at making this version of Kai her own, and it’s sure to be a lot of other people’s favorites as well.  Let’s hear it for Red Pear!

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Today, we’re looking at a character we’ve seen before.  A couple different artists have tried their hand at Zoe Hart, but this is the first time, believe it or not, that Red Pear has tried her hand at the second generation hero.

Zoe was a quick one for us.  Pear gave us two sketches to work with, and this one was the one that we passed on.

The original pose looked a little too much like Lyla, so we opted for this second piece.  Both highlighted her weapon of choice, the sai.

The detail layer shows off a bunch of cool little details, like her neck piece, and the braid in her hair.  It also highlights her youth.  She’s definitely on the younger side of the characters—maybe younger than Adelia is by the time all our heroes converge—but she’s still a force to be reckoned with!

And here’s our final version of the character with a splash of color.

Here’s a fun fact: If you’ve ever played that game whisper down the lane, this is kind of what it’s like when art is involved.  In the books, Zoe isn’t quite as…bountiful.  But our first artist to tackle her, John Becaro, has a very specific style.  His women all have large assets, and every artist to take on the character since then has kept those womanly curves in place!

That’s it for this take.  It won’t be long before our next Red Pear feature though.  Stay tuned!

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Today, she’s at it again, this time with a new character who I’m certain you’ll love.  And she provides us with what may be the best art we’ve had commissioned to date.

You’ve all seen Kaiyonani before, but never like this.

Dragonspeaker is the name of Kaiyonani’s first big adventure.  It’s the first story that’s told without any preexisting characters being seen or mentioned.  We knew that there was a lot of work on the table for Red Pear, but she floored us every step of the way.

First off, we had to pick from a set of sketches.

These were all the ones that we ultimately passed on.  They’re incredible, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see Red tackle the next sketch:

We’ve yet to see a dragonrider in any Tellest art, and this was the perfect opportunity.  Red was certainly up to the challenge, too, and she gave us a series of work in progress sketches as we neared the final piece.

We were coming along fairly well, and then Red went into some greater detail and shading.

Every time she added detail, it ended up being that much cooler.

Once color was part of the equation, it started to steal our breath away.

Seriously… how can you not like that cover.  It’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen in the longest time, and I could not be prouder of Red for kicking so much butt with it.

This could easily pass for the cover of Dragonspeaker.  I hope it ends up getting a lot more people excited for the book, and that we end up surprising a lot of people with the upcoming story!

The post Interim Cover Art – Dragonspeaker appeared first on Tellest.

We’re back working with RedPear, and she has delivered one of the coolest character portraits we’ve had so far.

In As Darkness Falls, one of the newly introduced characters is Retrus O’Ryan, the brother of an aggressive, almost maniacal fellow who wants nothing more than to appear to be a hero to those around him.  Retrus is a little more reserved… even though he’s seen some hard times.  Now, he only sees half as well.

The first thing we had to do was settle on the sketch we wanted to move forward with.  These first two were the ones we passed on, though I really liked that second one.

This was the one we ultimately went with.  Again, Retrus begins as a more introspective, calm and collected character.  He’s supposed to be a foil almost in some regards to Schirner.  Whereas the barbarian is quick to anger, and couldn’t care less about his brother, Retrus is devoted to his brother, but smart and cool enough to know when something isn’t what it seems.

Retrus goes on to become an integral part of the third book in the trilogy, because he ends up getting his hands on the mystical gauntlet, Azaros.

What happens from there is anyone’s guess though… unless you read the massive book that is The Enemy Within!

Here we have our final look at Retrus O’Ryan for this feature.  You can see most clearly here the scar that Retrus bears.  He wears no patch because he likes using his wound to intimidate his enemies.

That’ll about do it for this week’s art feature.  We’re going to have a whole bunch of art coming at you in the next month.  We’ll still have art features here on Wednesday, but there’s going to be a lot of content up on the Kickstarter every day starting on Monday.  This will be the most overloaded content month for Tellest ever!

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This time around, we’ve got her interpretation of Venathryn, a character who has been getting very popular in recent days. Something about a strong female character who has just the right amount of pluck, pout, and power that does it for people.

Pear started us off, as always, with a set of poses that we could have the character take.  These two would have worked just as well, but we chose a third instead:

We felt that this one evoked a certain sense of power and confidence that the other ones just didn’t catch.  This give Venathryn a sort of pride that we really associate with her.

After that, the details were put into place.  You can see that the ear was given room to change.  She is an elf, after all.  Her armor grew more abundant in this stage of her creation as well, and you can see the markings on her face a little more clearly.

Even more detail really puts this piece together.  Pear was letting me know that she almost felt bad when she was finished with this latest set of characters.  Why, you ask?  Well, she’s always been a great artist, but you can see that her talent has grown, even since 2014.  I wouldn’t change a thing though.  I like seeing her growth across our characters!

And there you have it.  Venathryn in glorious full color.  It almost looks like propaganda.  Vote for Vena, 975!

I’m very happy with how this one turned out.  Venathryn’s popularity should be reflected by the amount of pieces we have to show off, and I think this one really takes the cake as far as our different interpretations of her go.

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