I’ve already done two color studies of this character, but while Sylvannas in her Undead Queen persona turned out really well, the younger Ranger General Sylvannas was, um, bad. (For one thing, I misread my reference picture and made her hair blue. In my defense I was playing a blue-haired elf at the time, so it didn’t seem weird at all.) So when I needed a subject for my adventures in painting faster and with less useless detail, I thought I might give her another chance.

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Welcome to the final Other Guy! (Other Guys? Others? Hell with it.)

I was really, really looking forward to this one, and not just because it’s the last. A color palette I like, a species I like (with spots!) and I get to play with glow-y effects? Oh hell yeah.

The water doesn’t so much look like water, but there’s a limit to what you can do when it’s supposed to look flat, muddy, and purple. The little green mushrooms could use more definition (aka darker shadows… again. I swear, I’ll learn one of these days.) and the balloon-tree thingies in the far background have neither treelike or ballonlike qualities. I am however happy with the misty effect. Given that the balloon-trees came out a bit weak, I sort of wish I’d made the mist more impenetrable.

But this is one of those times where the figure came out much better than the background. I gave him deep enough shadows, the skin color variation all makes sense, and his little whiskers are pretty freaking adorable. I had to re-do his toes and hands about three times. They aren’t great, but they don’t stand out as bad anymore, which I’ll take.

And I’m happy to report that on the very last illustration in this series I grokked a new technique. I can reliably make things glow. Now all I have to do is resist the urge to come up with excuses to use my new skill for no reason.

…

Radioactive special! All commissions with a glowing element 10% off!

Now then, were where we?

Ah yes. Quillboar.

I tried something a little different here to try to save myself time on the background, and pretty much robo-failed. It took longer than it would have to just draw it from scratch, and it wound up looking like I ran a simple filter over a screenshot. Dammit.

Strangely enough, the thing I was most worried about turned out just fine. I’m talking about the quills of course. With simple color change along the length of the quill I was able to take care of the ‘depth’ problem without spending lots of time drawing the shade and shadows of each individual spike.

And once again my subtlety rises up to bite me. The difference between the well-lit portions and the dark bits on the figures is about half what it should be. The shadows just aren’t deep enough. I could justify it by saying they’re in a poorly lit space, but in the interest of learning I really shouldn’t. Justifying after the fact is not the same as doing it on purpose in the first place.

Sorry for the radio silence everyone, but I have a totally legit excuse: I moved!

And not just a little move, oh no. This was one of them ‘buy an air mattress because the truck with your stuff on it may not get there for a week’ kind of moves. So I am now officially in the Boston area. I’ve been told means I need to start caring about sports teams. Or at least learn to say ‘Bruins’ in a heavy tone and slowly shake my head at appropriate intervals.

But that shit’s not why you come here! I hear you clamoring for your pretties, even through the intertubes.

Holy Backgrounds Batman!

I may have gotten a little carried away here. I was worried about the background being the weakest part of the drawing, so I did it first. By the time I was doing finishing touches on the Furbolg I was to the ‘stinky thing go away’ stage, and neglected the details a bit.

The cobblestones turned out way better than expected, with minimum pain. I used the stained glass filter on my roughly colored path to chop it into ‘stones’, and then squished it to add perspective and a bulge in the middle, as cobblestone seems to do that over time. Then I colored highlights and shadows on individual stones, using the filtered copy layer as a guide. Then I deleted the filter layer, leaving only my highlights and shadows layer and the rough background underneath. BAM.

I’m also pleased with the mushroom clusters, they provide a lot of the feeling of undergrowth without a lot of time investment. (I’ll admit to a little copy/paste/flip horizontal/scale) Plus the glowing spots did pretty much exactly what I wanted them to.

I like the fuzzyness on the Furbolg, but some of my color choices are a bit wonky. His skin tone is too yellow, and the teeth-jewelry looks plastic rather than weathered. I also like how I made the band of his loincloth disappear under his fur, even if I forgot to extend the effect around his belly which leaves that part looking strangely flat.

It’s one of those ‘this part’s good, but it’s not good enough to overcome that part, which is BAD’ kind of pictures. It’s a learning experience. *twitch*

Despite them being, well, nasty little creatures, I enjoy Kobolds. They have simple priorities, and all the little things about their character design are consistent with the singleminded pursuit of those priorities. The backpack for holding various shiny objects they might find, (which is overfull, don’t want to spend time going back to the surface until you just can’t carry any more) badly patched clothes, the barely functional pickaxe, and the candle on the head, necessary for underground work when you can’t possibly occupy a hand (vital for grabbing loot) with carrying a torch.

As usual, I started with the figure. But I ran into a problem when I tried to make a background. I tried several different mineshaft settings, but nothing seemed to really be working. I wanted it to be dim, both because pre-industrial mines are dim, and also to keep the figure at the forefront. But then I tried to put normal shadows on the figure, and everything started to look very confused.

As usual, the solution is simplicity. Murder your darlings. (Of couse, as you may have noticed, in explaining this principle I managed to show you the full, unshadowed figure anyway.)

I’m also trying to figure out how glowing works. I’ve got a good handle on coloring with a directional lightsource, but the flame itself looks…solid. It would be fine if it were a lantern, but it’s a shame that one of the natural focal points of the drawing came out a little awkward.

Harpies. Why did it have to be harpies.

World of Warcraft harpies are considered humanoids, (meaning you can’t skin them for profit. A comforting definition, no?) but otherwise they seem to be only marginally above animals: they lay eggs in nests, don’t keep houses as such, and don’t talk. And yet they wear metal bikinis. The resolution of this is left as an exercise for the reader.

I really, really like how this came out. Conceptually I was worried about the feathers, as detail work has a tendency to trip me up. But I managed not to focus too much on edges while giving a good amount of color variation. The placement of the feathers on the wing is only loosely related to reality, but I’m okay with that.

And this is a big step up in the background department. I wasn’t sure how to integrate a character study with a full background, (and if I’m honest, I wasn’t totally sure I could do a full background) so I simplified matters by using a limited and out of focus background with a border.

And yes, I’m doing the orange/blue thing. So sue me, but goddamn it, that contrast works.

I actually really like the World of Warcraft interpretation of Gnolls.

There are half-human half-animal fusions throughout WoW, and I like how much screentime is given to the less popular fusions. Yes, there are still wolf men, centaurs and cat people, but there are also bird people, pig people, hinds, and in this case hyena people.

Appropriately, gnolls appear to be opportunists when it comes to making a living: You’ll find them in raiding parties of all sorts, working as mercenaries, and occasionally living in small tribes and just stealing things from the more industrious species of the area.

As gnolls are clearly based off of the spotted or laughing hyena I decided to run with the somewhat manic expression. I still haven’t quite figured out how snarly lips work but I do rather like how the teeth came out. They’re not realistic, but they do get the point across.

Probably the ‘best’ part of this one is the coloring on the shoulders and ‘hump’. I used about four layers (one for the actual hair, one for the base skin tone, and two for the spots) and freely eyedroppered between them to get a nice smooth transition and spots that fade out naturally.

And yeah, he’s green, which isn’t exactly a traditional hyena color. Sue me.

The colors are kinda gnarly in this one… like the Cenarians were egged with radioactive easter eggs. Cenarians do come in other colorschemes, but I liked the naturally colored fur in this palette so I was willing to put up with the pink and green.

Harder to deal with than the colors is that these forms are partially human. (Humans being really good at seeing the slightest mistake in the depiction of other humans.) Given these issues I’m really quite pleased that this came out as well as it did.

Favorite part: The female’s legs. The hooves look dainty and pointy while still being weight-bearing, and the leg bracer-thingies have nice definition without looking pasted on.

Worst part: Ladies’ torso. Ick. I’m really quite good at lady torsos in silhouette, but I clearly haven’t figured out how light falls on them. It has to hit the ribcage and the curve of the tummy under the bellybutton, but knowing that and making it look right are apparently different things.

It’s all right. You can say it.

Nerubians are icky.

They have several different equally icky body plans. So many in fact that getting them all in one illustration was a little awkward logistically, so I’m only showing two of the more common types that the average adventurer may run into.

Again, there are things I like about this one, and things that make me sigh. (I’m getting better. Sighing is a big step up from disquieting giggling.) In trying to relax about my color transitions, some things are fuzzier than they should be, which gives the whole picture a sort of dreamlike quality. Which would be cool, if I that was in any way what I meant to do.

And my color choice is too close in contrast. Again. The leg red, body brown, and purple wrappings have basically the same brightness, which makes them difficult to differentiate at a distance.

But I like the spiderlings.  They’re alternately cute and horrifying, with good contrast and color. They’re adorable. Just, um, keep ‘em away from me.

I was looking forward to this one. Arakkoa have lovely, multicolored feathers. And I wasn’t at all sure how to draw that. So perhaps ‘looking forward to’ is a bit strong. ‘Resigned to my fate’ might be more accurate.

But things actually went pretty well. As you can see, I’m made real progress freeing myself from the need for lines. This is one of my major goals for this series, actually. If you look at most of the good digital painting, they define the forms without outlines. Y’know, like regular painting. But my natural mental bent is more towards pen and ink, so prying myself away from comforting lines is something of a struggle.

I’m using a higher here contrast than I’ve managed previously, which will I think be what eventually allows me to get rid of those sketch lines entirely. Also at least 1/3 of the feather transitions are totally awesome. The remaining 2/3rds are just adequate, but that’s all right. I haven’t totally learned how to do a color transition with that many shades in it, but this was very good practice.

From the WoWiki:

The arakkoa are an ancient race of bird-like humanoids native to Outland. They have brightly feathered bodies in a veritable rainbow of colors, hooked beaks, clawed hands, taloned feet, and an erectile crest of feathers on their heads. They wear ragged cloaks about their bodies. Arakkoa appear to also have “sage” (with ornate shoulder and head ornaments) and “warrior” (with a metal helm and mail epaulets) classes.

They have great magical power over the arcane, and are also as “smart as any gnome you ever met”, according to Gremni Longbeard in the Hellfire Peninsula. Most are aggressive to both Alliance and Horde, although there are friendly members of the arakkoa to be found.