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!

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The first thing that you’ll notice is that John’s work is neatly stylized.  He gives our characters some very cool dynamic poses that make them look likely to jump out of the screen.  We haven’t had too many of those, so it’s great to introduce them to Tellest.

Of course a sketch only tells so much of a tale.  This black and white version of the final piece displays so much more, and really puts a shine to our elven maiden.

Once we add arrive at the colored version though, that’s when things really pop.  You can see the texture more clearly, including the holes in Venathryn’s cloak, and you can see the little effects that really bring this piece to life.  But wait… There’s one more little thing…

With some extra effects, Venathryn is complete.  I’m so happy that we were able to get John to join the team and provide his awesome talent to this world.  We’ve got more coming, but it’s going to be a while before we have anything to show.  It’ll be worth the wait though, I promise!

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This story follows the Dreamwalker, Maravek, and a cast of characters that contains a mix of characters we’ve met before, and new ones we’re meeting for the first time.  While Awake had Maravek diving into Venathryn’s dream to save her from the nightmares that were plaguing her, Arise follows Maravek into his own dilemma.  When he returns to a city he knows and loves, how can he manage to protect it against a force that overwhelms him so?

With the elves of Aven’adiel safe behind him, Maravek, the Dreamwalker, looks forward. Together with his new companion, Vandelas, he journeys to the immense city of Versali-Virai, where word of a new nightmare has reached his ears. Citizens are suffering from horrible dreams, if they wake at all. 

Maravek’s quest is made more difficult by the investigation of a vigilante named Faradorn, who has his own idea of who is responsible for the ill occurrences in the city. 

Old friends and new faces alike reach out to the Dreamwalker for aid, but what does Maravek do when he’s faced with his own nightmare along the way?

I am so excited to get this latest Tellest book out.  It’s been a long time coming, but I’m sure people are going to be excited to read about Maravek and Venathryn again.  I’m also eager to see if there are some new fan favorites that people meet along the way.  It’s always a great time to get a book when it first releases, but I’ve got even more incentive for you: Arise, regularly $2.99, is only 99 cents through Christmas.  Get on this deal fast before it’s gone!  Check out Arise on Amazon today!

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Today, we’re revisiting one of our newer collaborators.  Enenaniki has completely reinvented the way that we see our characters, since we get to see them in an anime style that, honestly I’ve been waiting for what seems like forever to see!  Today, we’re seeing the lead of Awake, and the supporting character in the upcoming sequel, Arise.  Let’s see how Enenaniki did with Venathryn.

First up, a black and white version of the character.  You can see that he preserved her finesse with a bow for sure.  Let’s look at her with a coat of fresh paint though, shall we?

Even as an adorable anime character, you can tell Venathryn means business.  I love all the subtle nuances of her outfit, and the bow is pretty badass as well.  Thanks once again to Enenaniki for their hard work!

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Barnswallow started us off with a sketch, and I’ve brightened it up a bit so you could see it.

And here you have the full-sized, full color version of the piece.  Side note: I love when you have a plain/gradient background like this, but the ground is a little more robust.  It reminds me of a well-put-together D&D mini.

Alright, that’s a real quick one for today, but we’ll see you again next week.  We’ve got another long lost artist we used to work with.  And you can be sure we’ll see work from Barnswallow again real soon!

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As we always do, we started with a selection of poses to choose from.  Hozure is always good about letting us do some cool stuff with the characters.

We ended up going for a somewhat static pose rather than a big action shot.  Here, Venathryn is nocking an arrow to her bow. There’s already a lot of detail, even in this WIP sketch.

Some more details makes her outfit pop that much more.  Venathryn is a little battleworn here, as you can see by the tatters in her cape, but she still looks badass.  Hozure did an awesome job!

Our final look at the character has her on a dark background to help us show some contrast.  She looks absolutely amazing, and we can’t be more appreciative of Hozure’s talents.

So… we may have fibbed a little bit regarding the redux series.  We still have one left, and you’ll be able to see it right here on tellest.com when we post it in just three weeks.  Stay tuned!

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So let’s get right down to business then, shall we?  We’ve already shown you work from Lord of Thunder and Transformed, so it stands to reason that we should show you the next sequel in our Tellest Legends collection.

Arise is the follow-up to the very well-received Awake.  Where we looked at psychology in a fantasy world with the first book in this series, with dreams, guilt, post traumatic stress and so on, in Arise, we knew we needed to raise the bar somewhat.  With Venathryn cured of the dreamplague, we needed a new challenge for Maravek in the follow up.  He and Vandelas head to Versali-Virai, a land far away, to help the people there with an even greater threat that comes when they should be slumbering.

Here’s how we started piecing together the cover:

The first thing you’ll likely notice is just how busy the cover is.  There is a lot going on in this story.  It’ll be fighting with The Fall for the biggest cast, I’m sure.  Whereas Awake focused on just two characters (and only one on the cover), we have a quartet of powered individuals that grace the cover of Arise.

We opted to go with this variant of the original sketch, because it gives a more gloomy, monstrous feel.  Our characters are in for a pretty decent fight on account of the mob of villagers, the spell being enacted on the minotaur statue and the shadow creature in the back there.

Here, the landscape is put together a lot more.  Leo did a beautiful job bringing Versali-Virai to life in one of its darkest hours.  You can see the bazaar in the background there, and the gorgeous architecture even further in the distance.

The minotaur also gets a fresher coat of paint, and it makes him look plenty imposing.  It’s still coming together at this point though.

Two of our leads are fully realized at this point—well, except for Maravek’s feet.  There’s a good reason for that though!  Joining him on the front cover is Venathryn, our hero from the first book.  She went over so well for so many people, we had to figure out a way to get her involved, and we pulled some pretty cool strings to get everything working the right way.

Both the crowd and the looming shadow are given some badass new looks here.  There’s a lot of that red magic floating around, so you can see that this locale is a bit more dangerous than a few goblins in a forest.

We’re almost to the end here.  Our other two leads, Vandelas and Faradorn, grace the back of our cover.  Vandelas was introduced in Awake as another elf in Venathryn’s sect, while Faradorn was introduced in the short story The City of Light and Darkness.

We had one huge change to make here.  With his grey hair, Vandelas looked a little too much like Geralt of Rivia (a favorite of Leo’s, mind you).  We gave him a blond main that made him look a little more like a classic elf instead.

Here you have it, our final piece.  There were only a few more changes here—some lighting and texture shifts, but it’s important! Also, I forgot to mention it earlier, but you can see why Maravek’s feet weren’t finished.  He’s obscured by the shadow of that frightening creature in the back there.

That’s about it for now, but we’ve got another gorgeous cover coming your way in about three weeks.  You can’t say that Leo wasn’t prolific!

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Today, we’re happy to show you another couple of characters from our Tales of Tellest series, with Venathryn and her cousin Narallyndra.

The first thing we started off with, of course, were some choices. The goblins in this piece are highly stylized, and we wanted to make sure that we got everything just right, so we ended up going for the one in the upper left, which actually instills some danger in the scene.

And danger it was.  Here you can see that Narallyndra has been harmed while Venathryn ducks out of the vicious swipe of that massive goblin’s sword.

With color in place, you can see that more than just the elf was hurt. The goblin’s allies paid an awful price as well.  You can also see better how fearful Venathryn is for her cousin.

The final piece has a sheen on it that’s incredible.  Hozure made this art come to life, and gave it so much character.  We were all very impressed with this work.

We’re even more excited to let you in on the secret.  There’s still one more VS scene that we commissioned with Hozure, so stay tuned for that one as well!

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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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