Dragon Heresy – Art WIP

I’ve got two dozen pieces of art being worked on Dragon Heresy. I am starting to get either final products or color WIP. I thought I’d tease some examples.

The first is a small illustration that will likely appear next to a table on setting difficulty for tasks. My art direction asked for a dented helmet. Oh, it called for a lot more than that, but it’s a tiny picture, and it was the helmet that was key.

The artwork is by Gennifer Bone – I like the color palette used here, and the blend of the metal helmet and the mail face and neck guard. The final illustration will only be 1.5 x 2″ or so, so it’s a lot larger in this image than it will be in the book.

She’s working three more images for me. My 7yo daughter saw the two big ones (full-column illustrations that end the Core Concepts chapter) and went nuts. So mission accomplished there!

The second sneak peek is a Work in Progress by Juan Ochoa. He’s working the basic Races chapter, and we’ve been interacting very heavily to ensure that the culture and look I’ve written for each race gets imaged on the page.

The excerpt is a screen shot from what is starting to look like four of my “iconic” characters in the book. It shows a barbarian, ranger, druid, and monk. The barbarian has his hands on a longship he’s commissioned. The druid is not so sure this is all a good idea. The picture shows a zoom-in of the detail on the characters.

The scene is in winter, and while the three characters on the left are dressed fairly warmly, the only concession our monk makes to the cold is pretty much socks underneath her wrestling sandals. There’s a lot of character to each individual, and we’ll be seeing these four again.