One of the things that I wanted to do was make sure my groomsmen felt very appreciated.  They took me on an awesome bachelor party (white water rafting, could not be happier), and they all did a great job helping out the day of the wedding.

One of the things that I got them was a personalized flight paddle and beer glasses so that they had something practical (and a little nod to the rafting trip).  But I also wanted to show these guys how I see them.  They’re all heroes in their own way, and they’ve inspired me in ways that the don’t even know.  With that in mind, we ended up going to work trying to get a cool portrait done with the Tellest characters that they helped me to create over the years.

My initial aim was to try and get RedPear, who has always done an awesome job with the characters, to do this ensemble piece. Unfortunately, because of school related work, we were unable to collaborate.  She sent me to her friend Yanisaran though, who I’m happy to say took me up on the offer.

The first thing to make sure we had down was the way Eclipse looked.  He was a character who was only briefly seen in The Bindings of Fate, but began to play a big part in the second book an onward. Yanisaran took the references shot that I gave her and put together a decent sketch of the character:

After that, it was time to put together the sketches of the full piece.

As it grew, we were able to determine more of what it was going to end up looking like.  One of the problems with some of these initial sketches is that you don’t necessarily know what’s open to interpretation sometimes, and what is aiming at going toward the final piece.

The outfits and everything ended up looking really, really cool, but you’ll notice that the characters didn’t quite end up looking like their counterparts in the other art that we had commissioned.  Yanisaran did an awesome job, but the characters looked a bit too young for the roles they were trying to fulfill.  Knowing that she didn’t have the time for any sweeping changes, I made an 11th hour, Hail Mary pass to Leo.

After a substantial amount of begging, I was able to convince Leo to take on one last wedding related task before the wedding… he managed to get all this done within a two week period.  He really saved the day.  While the original picture didn’t really need any triage—it’s a great piece of work—it just didn’t look too much like the people I was giving it to as a gift.  Leo had already worked with every one of the characters before, so I knew he had the capability to really put a decent finishing touch on the piece.

We realized early on that updating the faces meant that the bodies didn’t look quite right, so Leo went the extra mile and really pushed himself to get everything looking spectacular.  He really knocked this one out of the park.

Bolt, Eclipse, Kaos, David, Steel Tip, Christopher (L to R).

I’m also very happy to say that these ended up being a big hit.  I threw them in some decent picture frames and delivered them to the guys, and they opened them up the day before the wedding.

I want to thank all the artists for helping to make that such an awesome memory.  This was really an ensemble effort that goes beyond just what you see here.  It’s possible only because of all the work that people have been doing over the past two years with these characters, and I could not be more appreciative of all those labors.

I know one of the guys already has it hanging up in their house.

Let me send you off with one more picture.  This is all of the guys in real life (plus the happy bride, of course!):

Dave (David), Matt (Bolt), Rhianna, Mike (Kaos), Kevin (Steel Tip) and Kiran (Eclipse), from left to right. Oh, and that’s Chris (Christopher) in the back.

The post Art – Groomsmen Art appeared first on Tellest.

We wanted to share one of our favorite bits of wedding related coolness today: our party favor.

It was important to us that our gifts to our guests be something that was practical and personal, and something that we really didn’t see so much before.  Rhianna came up with the cool idea of commissioning a bookmark from Leo, and he did not disappoint.

It all started off with a sketch or two from Rhianna:

After that, we shipped off the idea to Leo, who went through several steps to bring our creation to life.

At this point, things really started to come together.  You can see more clearly that our pets were part of the picture too.  This is more than just a picture, it’s a family portrait.  It’s a promise that we’ll always be there for each other.

And here we have the final piece.  Leo did some work on that fearsome beast called marriage, and spruced up some of the other components as well.

The other side of the bookmark has a little story that Rhianna put together:

And so our heroes embark on a lifelong adventure, emboldened by the love of family and friends, to face that fearsome beast known as “marriage.”

Through the great valleys of joy or the perilous storms of sorrow, they will stand strong together no matter where the path ahead leads.

We hope our guests liked them, and we hope you liked this little peek!

Oh, and it’s also the anniversary of my first date with Rhianna today. Happy Anniversary Rhi!

The post Art – Wedding Bookmarks by DLeoBlack appeared first on Tellest.

I thought this would be a cute time to show some of the cool stuff that we used to get to the wedding.  First up, we have our wedding invitations, which Leo was awesome enough to help us fine tune.

Rhianna started us off with a quaint little sketch.  We went with the quill and parchment look because writing sort of brought us together.

After that, things were shipped off to Leo, who did an awesome job of cleaning things up.  Yep, we were married on October 17th (but it feels like we were together for decades by then).

We did ask Leo to tweak one little thing: the background!  While we were all about the sunset background he initially had, we wanted to show our love of books and the written word, so we had things altered a bit.  These served as our invitations, and once we tacked on all the information, it looked really, really cool!

Just a short one today, but we’ll be back next week with another cool wedding related piece we commissioned!

The post Art – Wedding invitations by DLeoBlack appeared first on Tellest.

This next month-and-a-half is definitely going to be a busy one for us. Let’s get the most awesome news out of the way first.  Rhianna and I are getting marriedon Saturday!  In a lot of ways, Tellest brought us together, so I thought that this was a fair place to announce the happy occasion.  We’ve got some wedding-related goodies that we’ll be posting on the site in the next few weeks as well, but other than that, we’ll probably be a little quiet until we’re back from sunny Florida.

Luckily, I’m leaving you with a decent amount of news as well!

First off, I’d like to formally announce my first ever entry into NaNoWriMo.  For those who don’t know what it is, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month.  It’s a challenge for authors to write at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.  Those of you who have been following Tellest for a while are probably well aware that it is a real challenge for me.  The Fall took me almost half a year to write, and it didn’t even have 50,000 words in it by the time it was complete.  I’m committed to the attempt though, and I’m going to give it my all.  In November, I’ll give you more information about the story I’m writing, and give you previews and excerpts so that you can join in on the fun as well!

We’ve also got some very cool collaboration news to talk about.  Earlier this year I began working with some fine folks at Worldspinner.  Their Kickstarter absolutely crushed it last September, and they’ve been making great strides to bring a wonderful product to the world.  It’s a worldbuilding tool that both gamers and authors can use to help with that process.  It’s an amazing tool with a lot of potential to make your tabletop games, your world lore and your stories in general exponentially more robust.  I’m just freelancing at the moment, proofreading and offering up some smaller plots that may randomly show up, but I feel incredibly blessed to be a part of their huge story!

Last but not least, I’d like to direct your attention to Bear Mountain Books.  They’ve graciously decided to take the cover for Mageborn and poll their readers about it.  So far, it seems that the cover image itself is appreciated, but the font and even the logo may be a little confusing.  I love what Bear Mountain Books and Maria Schneider are doing for authors (and for readers) and I encourage you to give the site a gander.  And you might as well like theirFacebook page as well—you’ll be the first to know about deals, reviews and book cover polls like the one running for Mageborn.

The post NaNoWriMo, Worldspinner, Bear Mountain Books and a Wedding! appeared first on Tellest.