We started out with a sketch of Dirk, but decided we had to change a few details, just because he looked a bit draconic.

You’ll notice that in the below version of the image, we’ve changed the ears and the feet to look a little more canine.

With a splash of color, everything comes together that much better.  Dirk looks ever the stalwart warrior in Silky’s rendition of him, and we’re delighted to have this new iteration of the werewolf for our catalog.  It’s great to be able to continue bringing Dirk to new fans, especially considering how his story went for him in the legacy series!

This certainly isn’t the last time that we’ve collaborated with Silky, and there will be more to come very soon.  Remember to come back every Wednesday for more art from the world of Tellest!

The post Character Art – Dirk appeared first on Tellest.

We start off with David Garus, who received a brand new look in recent years, and now gets a second look with his new design in mind.  While Dennis van Kessel gave us our first new experience with David Garus from the new timeline, it’s Silky Noire who is giving us our second glance at him.  They start us off with a different sort of pose than we had in the one that we use as our TowerSphere image.  In this case, David stands with his shield behind him.  This gave Silky the opportunity to be able to hide the giant Atalatha sigil, and instead just focus on the little one on David’s belt.

You can start to see those little details a little better here in the second image, which also adds some flat colors to the piece.  There are a decent amount of colors and shades to get right for this piece, and Silky nails it down at every level.  There is so much material to David, making him both a challenge to capture, and one that is awesome to say you’ve accomplished.  Silky did not shy away from the challenge, and achieved a great looking character for Tellest on account of that.

Our final look at David Garus puts more emphasis on shadow and light, making everything appear so much more dynamic.  Silky also added to David’s face, ensuring that he has the battle scars to show previous bouts of combat, and well as a slightly more whiskered face that shows he has some wisdom gained from those encounters as well.  Everything else is nicely accentuated as well, giving us a wonderful new version of the character to add to our gallery.

That might have wrapped us up for today, but we’ve got plenty more from Silky in the future, so make sure to head back this way often!

The post Character Art – David Garus appeared first on Tellest.

Alicia Mane has long been one of our most interesting characters.  For one, she’s always presented with a flame in her hand, meaning our artists get to play with some very cool effects.  I think in a lot of ways, they’re drawn to her like moths, accordingly.  Today, we’re showing off a collaboration that we did with Sikly Noire in order to bring Alicia to life in a new style.  We start with a sketch that shows the character in a familiar outfit with twin flames in her hands.

We drop the fire in our color sketch of the character, but rest assured, they’ll certainly be back.  You can see that Silky did a very cool job bringing Alicia’s tried and true outfit into this new style as well.  They made her look great, and balanced the established look and some new tweaks in some very refreshing ways.

In our final look with the background, we get to see the return of the flames, and Silky has made sure that the light from the fire illuminates Alicia in all the right ways.  This has become one of our favorite renditions of the character internally, and we’re so happy to share her with you as well!

Alicia is a wonderful addition to the characters that Silky has already worked on, but we have more to come. Beyond the Nine, we’re working on expanding into other groups now as well.  If all goes well, we’ll be collaborating with Silky for a long time indeed!

The post Character Art – Alicia Mane appeared first on Tellest.

Right off the bat, you can see that we made a change since the Dennis Van Kessel version of the piece.  While there are certainly some things that I like from that iteration, one of the things that felt a bit strange to me was the sort of “eastern-ification” of the character.  When people think of monks in fantasy, they may have a certain concept of what that looks like, but even in the Tellest universe, with their split timelines, it didn’t make sense to me to have a race change occur if nothing has led to that.

That’s not to say that we don’t have a problem with what I’ll call a very “ivory” cast, but we’re working on making those changes in a more organic manner.

In any case, what you’ll see here is sort of like the subtle step back to something that felt more true to who Christopher is.  We didn’t have too many pieces of art for Christopher to jump off of, so Silky did a great job conceptualizing him here and giving him his own presence that takes a journey of self-reflection and the struggle for inner peace, and brought it to life.

Here in this final version of the artwork, you can see the dynamics at play.  In a lot of ways, it was almost like conceptualizing two characters.  Christopher in this timeline is a little like Jekyll and Hyde, and you can see that in the reflection of the attire.  There’s a lot of interesting asymmetry at play, and Silky nailed that for us.

All right, it’ll be a little bit between now and the next Silky Noire peace, but we have continued to work with them, so that will be here before too long.  In the meantime, you’ll see tons of other character art pieces from our other artists, so make sure to pop back every Wednesday for more art from the world of Tellest!

The post Character Art – Christopher appeared first on Tellest.

One of the first things you’ll notice here is that Kelvin looks aged up a little bit.  We have historically had younger versions of Kelvin because we see him at either the beginning of his major storyline in Silver Serpent, or we see a bit of a rebirth for him in Heart of the Forest.  He’ll be a little older and wiser in the big group project.

Silky started him off with some lovely earthy tones, so we see him with a lot of green and brown.  He looks very much the part of a skilled ranger here.  While the character seems pretty straightforward here, it still speaks strongly to Silky’s skill in bringing him to life in what feels like an effortless way.  They did great!

Our final look at this version of the character adds some lighting and shading, and ages him up just a tiny bit more with some extra facial hair.  The multi-toned color on everything really makes it pop, and Kelvin just looks great because of it.

Silky outdid themselves again on this piece, and I am very pleased with how it turned out.  We still had a few characters to wrap up after this, but we also agreed to work together beyond the initial nine, so we’ll continue to have great content from Silky for the foreseeable future.  Stay tuned for the next one!

The post Character Art – Kelvin Drakos appeared first on Tellest.

We started off with some basics, including making sure we had some of Luca’s tried-and-true belongings, such as the flaming sword, the Sky Talon, and the smoke marble (in the pouch at Luca’s side).There were a few little adjustments here and there, with things like color patterns and styles, but I ended up really liking it.  It’s like a costume change for Luca, should he ever need it.

Once you throw a splash of color into the mix, it starts to really pop out a little bit more.  You can see individual wrinkles in his outfit, some rivets and stitching.  It all comes together remarkably well, and that’s even without the shading.

Once Silky established what the character should look like, she brought him to life in some cool duds, and in a new style that we’re very happy with.  If we hadn’t established that we wanted the full set of “the nine” by this point, we certainly would have jumped to let Silky know.

Over the next few months, we’ll continue to wrap up that set of characters.  Stay tuned!

The post Character Art – Luca Kreegan appeared first on Tellest.

So the first thing you’ll notice with Silky’s interpretation is that we’ve got some old and some new.  Adelia’s had her flowery look in a lot of cases, as well as her ice, but she’s got a slightly more “functional” look in this case.  Her attire has a more professional, almost noble look to it.  Her staff is a bit different as well, with a straighter look to it with an icy flourish upon its head.

With color added, you can still see that it’s a playful look, despite Adelia perhaps being better prepared for whatever the world would throw at her.  In this case, perhaps Gaston has been telling her that she needs to be just as prepared physically as she is mentally and with her power over the aether.

And here’s our final look at the character through Silky’s lens.  With some extra shading apparent, you can see just how cool our icy sorceress really is.  I’m glad that we’re looping in newer ways to bring life to a fan favorite, and we’re looking forward to taking that journey with some other characters in Silky’s style as well.  Keep an eye out!

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