Today, we’re looking at the inside of Atalatha, specifically at the great coliseum therein.  This coliseum, owned and operated by Allan Mayheyre, has always been a very popular place for people to visit, but in recent times, with the advent of TowerSphere, it has become even more important to the culture of the city, and indeed, much of the world at this point.  Since the coliseum was the place that the game was first unveiled, we knew that we wanted to put on a focus on that, and we recruited Wern, who was already working on the characters who would fight within its walls, to bring it to life.  You can see from the original sketch that we went with a round building, though it could quite possibly be elongated.  For our purposes, the round version works fine.  We also had a tremendous statue beside the entrance, though in its initial presentation, it sort of looked a bit like a spartan warrior.

Our next iteration of the image adjusts some things, giving a much grander scope of the city and the walls along its border.  It brings us all the way to the mountains in the distance, though we determined that they needed to be a little bit farther away.  We also had the statue changed to better reflect the owner of the coliseum.  A young Allan Mayheyre is presented there, and gives us our first ever glimpse of what he might have looked like when he was known for some of his greatest exploits in heroism.

We changed a few things in the next iteration, but the most noticeable one was stretching how far the mountains moved into the distance.  Our knight has a change in footwear as well.

We added some distant buildings in Atalatha, trying to do our best to make sure that people know that the city is humongous.  While there are certainly buildings closer to the coliseum, they should stretch on for quite some distance.  Wern captured this expertly.

Now, that about wraps us up for today, but we have more concept pieces for TowerSphere arenas that we are going to be looking at in the future.  Keep your eyes peeled for those, and plenty of our other art Wednesday releases!

The post Concept Art – Atalatha Arena appeared first on Tellest.

It has been a slow march forward with our multiple series in the Tellest universe.  But as we near the completion of many of them, we look to the future, when we plan on doing some event stories that connect the many parts of the grand tapestry.  That means learning more about the world outside of what we know, and expanding on it greatly.  We’re doing these in a few different ways, and one of them, believe it or not, is with TowerSphere.  With TowerSphere, we need to learn a decent amount about the cities of the world, and the kind of people that make up their team, as its become a great way to get a peek behind the curtain.

Today’s contender is from Carthis, the capital city of Blacklehn.  While we typically have seen them as villains in the past, we know that not everyone is represented by the interests of their kingdoms or countries, and in that case, we have Mookina here.  While she’s aligned with Carthis, it is mostly because of the friendship that she’s made with one of its princes, Renault Fowler.  With Renault due for release thanks to a treaty struck between Blacklehn and the city of Atalatha in Raleigh, she’ll have her chance to rekindle that friendship, and to show him how capable she’s become as a potential player in Tellest’s greatest game.

After we chose our sketch—one that showed a different pose than most of our characters had used before—it was time for Wern to add a bit of polish to the character.  Mookina is an alchemist, and we wanted her to seem more scholarly than combative.  But that was also to demonstrate that TowerSphere is dynamic enough to be won by teams of all makeups.

A splash of color goes a long, long way, and we were able to see Mookina come to life here in this final version of the artwork.  We threw her on top of a wizard’s tower background, because we thought that helps sell the studious look that we expect of the character.

It will be a lot of fun once we finally get to write the first scenes featuring Mookina.  I’m looking forward to reintroducing her to Renault, as it’ll be the first time I’ve seen their relationship, and it’ll be great to see the reunion between those childhood friends!

The post Character Art – Mookina appeared first on Tellest.

As Atalatha was the inception of this idea, it stands to reason that Atalatha would be the first place to really embrace it and have a team.  We’ll be looking at the arena that their matches take place in, as well as seeing our first look at their top five players in the Atalatha Firebirds.

Below, you’ll see the initial sketch that Wern provided for us.  It was important to nail down three things: the towers, the arena, and what exists outside.  You’ll notice that there are towering statues on the outside edge of the arena, and that is because we wanted to have the heroes of Atalatha and Raleigh embodied and memorialized

We briefly lost the towers when we were designing the look of the arena a little further.  You can also see we dialed back the number of statues outside.  Where’d the towers go?  Well, typically speaking, the towers are themselves magical, being constructed on the day of the event.  Because the towers can be placed in a zone on a team’s side, it needs to have a bit more flexibility in the way that it is “built”, so to speak.

For the sake of visual appeal, we’ve kept the towers in an established order.  You can see that they’re pretty standard in their appearance (although one thing we did need to work on was a proper entryway into the towers—you can’t play without an entrance).  Wern also touched up the environment both inside and outside the arena.

Here we’ve got our doorways in the towers.

And here, we have another quintessential part of the towers: the flags.  The flags are magically enchanted to react to the other very important part of the game, the sphere.  When the sphere passes through the tower, the flag atop it will change to the color of the sphere, represented by which player holds it.  Atalatha’s team flag is often blue, because of their team logo, and the color of their city’s sigil.

Here in our final piece, you can see the top five players of the Atalatha Firebirds.  From left to right, we have Harun Jadar, Luca Kreegan, David Garus, Degrad “Dirk” Camdy, and Venathryn of the Whisperwind Elves.  They’re a very competent team, and Atalatha is lucky for not only having been the place where TowerSphere was born, but by having a great set of contenders who are eager to keep the championship in their city.

That’s all for today, but at the time of this writing, we have three other teams and their arenas which we’ll be showing off in the months to come, so keep your eyes peeled!

The post TowerSphere Art – The Atalatha Firebirds, Arena and Team appeared first on Tellest.

Renault Fowler was originally a character that Kaos (Luca’s legacy series counterpart) and friends met in Westwick.  The ambitious young man from Carthis had been skulking around to try and find a strong base of operations to launch an attack on Atalatha.  Well, some things never change.  Renault was still apprehended, still met Luca, and so forth.  All that said, some things do change.  Renault was held captive in Atalatha in the new timeline, but was treated with kindness and respect, and has developed a sort of friendship with his captors.  This has also led to some level of reasoning with Blacklehn, who have learned that the powerful pawn for both sides represents the potential for an alliance to be made for the two kingdoms.

While Renault was held captive, he also learned something about himself: he was given gifts by the Strain.

Wern gave us a few different poses we could use, and we ultimately chose to use the center one below.

While we briefly lose sight of it in our first colored version of the character, Renault has the ability to summon “aurora whips”, effectively creating graspable light that can be used to strike others, or, as is Renault’s preference, to traverse his surroundings in some interesting ways.  Even after learning of his ability, he made no effort to escape captivity, but he did demonstrate his ability to those in Atalatha who were enamored by it.

Below, you can see the whip in action.  While we only see one whip here, Renault has had some fleeting success with creating additional ones as well.  It’s not an easy feat, and he still has a long way to go before he can truly make the best use of his gift, but he’s certainly enjoying learning more about himself and what he is capable of.  By the way, though he is a prisoner of Atalatha, we’ve shown him with a gold or brassy-looking bull on his cape, a nod to his Blacklehnian heritage.

Below, you’ll see the final version of the art, complete with all the bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from work Wern completes for us.  The whip has a more spellbinding look, and just about everything on Renault has received a fresh coat of polish.

We were all very pleased with how Renault was reimagined for the new Tellest timeline.  The incremental changes that we’ve made in some ways have led us to being able to explore the world in some grand new ways.

I’d like to extend a huge thank you to Wern for his work on this character and all the others he has worked on since!

The post Character Art – Renault Fowler appeared first on Tellest.

One of the ideas that I had when beginning to work with Wern was to eventually work toward that.  We started to work on that idea in earnest, and did some early testing, which you’ll see below.  He had created four art pieces for our Tales of Tellest characters, but we still hadn’t had him work on Adelia yet by that point (since Dennis van Kessel, his predecessor, had already worked on a version of her for us).

Once we ended up getting the Adelia artwork done, she became our new flagship character in the piece.  We also very specifically worked on some background components of the piece, ensuring that story elements from each of their tales felt present.  Adelia has a raised version of Forsynthia in the back, Bolt has the windswept mountains, and Icarus has floating islands behind him, for instance.

Wern already did such a great job there, that you almost can’t see the adjustments he made in the final version, but he put enough polish on this masterpiece that even when it’s blown up, it looks spectacular.

Case in point.  I had this hanging up in my office for close to a couple years while I was there.  Regrettably, I’m in a much smaller cubicle where I’m at now, but by the time you’re reading this, I might be working from home instead some of the time.  If that’s the case, these beautiful pieces might be hanging up in my home office!

I hope you liked seeing this little project, and I hope that over time we’re able to do something like this again.  It was an awesome goal to have achieved, and I’m grateful to Wern for helping me bring it to fruition!

The post Special Art – 5 Panel Tales of Tellest appeared first on Tellest.

At the head of that team are two partners, Bixby Alladocious and Frederic D’Aprile.  It felt criminal not to include both characters together, as they really are like the two dads of the group.  Frederic is an older man by appearance, but Bixby has a tremendous amount of experience and wisdom, and the two get along swimmingly, even with as strange as Bixby can be at times.  Wern captures their friendly relationship as early on as the sketches.

By the time we start to get into the coloring a bit, you can see things coming together very nicely.  Frederic has only been seen on the front cover of the book named after him, but Bixby’s been having opportunities to shine here and there for a few years now.  You can see right off the bad that his red, black and yellow ensemble is coming together nicely.

In this final picture of the two proud papas, the pair are just as welcoming of each other’s company as in the beginning.  More polish has been put into the design, and everything just ended up looking spectacular by the end of it.  When Frederic eventually rescues his wife, it’s going to be an odd situation meeting his new best friend, I’m sure.  A huge thank you to Wern for bringing this to life in such a wonderful way!

We’ve got plenty more from the world of Tellest, and from Wern in the future.  Be sure to come back this way and see what’s new, every week!

The post Character Art – Bixby Alladocious and Frederic D’Aprile appeared first on Tellest.

We don’t have too many full-body pictures of Lyla, and it was in style with what Wern was doing with a bunch of our other characters.  Because Lyla is so popular, we thought it would be a good opportunity for us to go down that same route with her.  He started us off with a black and white sketch that showed her in a sort of pensive pose.  Lyla is nothing if not strategic, so a look like this is pretty indicative of the kind of cool, collected feel that she would have.

Once we add a little bit of color to the character, you can start to see the resemblance to some of the older versions of the character art we’ve put together for her.  As always, we present her as a blade-wielding warrior (though she is also adept with a bow).  There are some little affectations that we had Wern add to the character, most notably the little trinket that hangs off the bottom of the scabbard.  While this is meant to be ornate, it can also be effective as a weapon.  Even if Lyla were to be disarmed, she still has another alternative at hand.

As we zoom in a little bit, and get a deeper dive into the details, we can see that we’re making our way to bringing parts of Lyla forward.  The sword is in front of the hands in one case, and we also brought up that the arm holding the handle looked as though it was at an odd angle.  In both cases, Wern made sure to make those corrections, as you’ll see a bit farther below.

Here we’re getting even further into the detail.  Wern likes to make his way down the character when he’s working on them.  So we can see a bit more detail along the hands here.  The pose seems a bit more natural, and you can see a bit more shading in places.  But in our final piece, you’ll get to see how he brings it all together.

Here we have Lyla showing up on a dangerous rocky cliff in a cloudy region.  Still cool as a cucumber.  We can see even more polish on all the pieces that Wern looked at, and we can see the jeweled part of the scabbard in its completed version.  It shows the sigil of Valtega, which is a nice reference that Wern was able to include.

That wraps us up in our look at Lyla, but we’ve got many more collaborations with Wern in store for you.  Be sure to check back here every Wednesday in order to see what new things we’ve got that we’re working on!

The post Character Art – Lyla Brenna appeared first on Tellest.

Our first picture that we’re working with is a black and white version of the character.  Even from this version of the artwork, you can see that she keeps much of her attire looking the same as past iterations, with one big distinction.  As we’ve been working on including references to the sigils in our art, Wern thought to include the Atalathian phoenix sigil in this piece.  Everything else is pretty much on brand for Zoe, including her sais.

Once we add a dash of color, you can see the gold and blue coloring that’s very in line with Zoe being a street-level hero for the city.  She bears the same colors as the city itself, meaning that she identifies with it.  Now, one thing that you’ll see here in the WIP is that Zoe is looking a bit older than she typically appears to be, so we asked Wern to help us dial that back a bit.

Here we go!  Now that Zoe has been aged down appropriately, we’re also able to appreciate the rest of the polish that Wern put together for the final version of this artwork.  He brought Zoe to life in a very cool way, and we’re very happy to have her immortalized in a new fashion!

We have got plenty more to come from Wern, so keep your eyes peeled!

The post Character Art – Zoe Hart appeared first on Tellest.

He started us off with a sketch, and we ended up moving a little further along with it, and it just didn’t feel quite 100%, so in a rare take, we rewound, and went a different route.

These new sketches felt more in line with the Adelia we knew, and helped us to gather up the final avenue that we were trying to go with this piece.

I loved the sort of symmetry of this version, so we went forward with it, and I knew right off the bat that, as Adelia is our flagship character, she was going to make for a great centerpiece in any art we had with the group.

As Wern often does, he started from the top down here, and we could see that some of the greater details were going to begin taking shape.  One thing that we noticed was that Adelia’s hair sort of looked a bit big, so we ended up asking him to dial that back just a little bit.

Some more polish ended up on the character here, and we could better begin to see the effects taking shape.  It’s always incredible to see something take shape from humble beginnings to outstanding end results, and every time I get a new image from one of my artists, I’m always so excited.

At this point, you could really see that we were getting close to the end.  The magical effects pop out at you that much more, and the characters outfit fell into place that much more.  We have one more bonus that Wern threw in for us as well…

Adelia hardly goes anywhere without her trusty little sidekick!  Wern sort of snuck this one in on us, as I was just blown away by how awesome Adelia looked, but he absolutely brought Merlin into the picture at the 11th hour, and it really made the whole thing just pop.  We had tasked Wern with making a version of Adelia that felt more in line with the other awesome artwork that he had made of our Tales of Tellest characters, and he ended up making something that felt as though he was saving his best for last, and we were so happy with where we ended up.

We’ve continued that relationship with Wern across the board.  He’s since made quite a few new treats for us that you’re going to see throughout the rest of this year and into next year, and as of this writing, we’re still collaborating today, so fingers crossed we still get to make this sort of magic happen for a long while!

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

I’m of course talking about Icarus, our winged elf who has survived on Tellest since the times before The Fall.  We’ve got a few pieces of art of Icarus so far, but with this latest piece, we bring him more in line with the contemporary timeline that he is in now.  You’ll see he still has a youthful face, even amongst his race, so this might not be 1:1 with where he is now, but we’ve only seen him sparingly in the current timeline.  In any case, Wern tackled him with a great first attempt, and nailed down the physical characteristics of most of him almost right away.  The only thing we knew that we needed to change was the wings, as they looked a little too devilish (especially in combination with his pointed ears and slightly reddish skin here), and in any interpretation we had before, the ethereal wings were always blue.

We went a bit farther in the opposite direction in the next take, with the wings having an otherworldly glow that looked a bit too unlike the ghostly wings he would have otherwise had.  While the blue radiance nailed what we were looking for, there needed to be some definition to them, as they look like real wings, just semitransparent.  You can also see that Wern began working his way down, putting more polish on the character, from his armor, to his sword.

We were nearly to the finish line with this last piece, as the feathers did in fact become more defined here.  Making your way down the rest of Icarus’s body, you can see the level of detail on his legs and his cloak, as well.  We did make some other slight last minute adjustments though.

The wings felt a little too blue and glowy, so we pulled that back just a bit, and then we also lightened the hue of Icarus’s face as well.  The red didn’t quite seem right, all things considered, so giving him a paler look made him feel more in line with a fair-skinned elf.

That ended up wrapping us up for Icarus.  Wern gave us what feels like one of the best Icarus models to date, and really gets to the heart of what he brings to the table.  You can see bits of valor and determination here, and more closely than ever, we get a sense of what these ghostly wings appear as.

We collaborated with Wern for many, many more characters after this, but it was the next one that closed out a special series for us.  Join us in a few weeks to see the final character he tackled.

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