Friday, March 4, 2011

Dragon 397 and a little process....

Recently I did another cover for D&D's Dragon Magazine, Issue 397. The scene depicts the True Priests battling their corrupted brothers in the defiled holy temple. Jon Schindehette was AD on this and as always it was a pleasure working with him.

For this post I thought I would include a little process or step-by-step on how I approached this illustration, and pretty much how I approach all illustrations. I start with a super rough thumbnail keeping it loose. There were a few others, but I just included the one I went with. I usually do a little value or lighting comp over these thumbnails as well, but on this project I was working a bit fast to hit the deadline and I skipped some of my usual steps. After the tight pencil I normally do a full value comp and a fairly rough color comp. I basically lay the colors I am after over the image in Photoshop so I can see where I want to take the finish. Then, magically I paint the finish! Ta Dah! I would like to post an actual timelaps painting process video, but that will have to wait until I can figure out how to do it.


Cheers! Dragon 397

14 comments:

Chris Rahn said...

Wow man, smokin piece. The main guy's pose is really striking.

Eric Braddock said...

Dude. This is god damn glorious.

Yasemin Baran said...

Gorgeous work!! Love the lighting and the dynamism in the composition.

Unknown said...

Great work, I would love to see more of your process in the future.

Carlos Ranna said...

You can use CamStudio, or Camtasia or BB Flashback to record your screen. Good luck!

BTW, great job on this one!

Paul Tuller said...

This is so epic! Thanks for the breakdown

Kan Muftic said...

It would be absolutely great to see the video!

Anonymous said...

Tyler:

My name is Julian Allen and I just got hip to your work and I think your work is great!!! You said in your post that you would like to do a time lapse video. I for one would be very interested in seeing your approach and even paying for it if you had a video. Carlos Ranna addressed your dilemma with the same suggestion i had which is Camtasia Studio. It's an awesome video recording software. (I have it as well) Here's the link for you to check it out...http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/

Melissa Koch said...

Great work, Tyler (as always) :)

Was this a digital piece or traditional? Looks traditional.

Richard Solomon Artists Representative said...

Beautiful work! Very powerful.

Dominic Philibert said...

Nice!

Unknown said...

Really awesome stuff Tyler!

Do you just paint in photoshop, or is it a mix of photoshop and painter?

Jeff LaSala said...

Tyler,

This is a pretty awesome piece. When I first saw it, I took the two battling factions to be clerics of opposing faiths. Then I realized the subtleties...that they both wear aspects of the same holy symbol in their vestments. Perfect. Heresy at work!

Incidentally, I'm one of the authors of the article that this piece was paired with in Dragon issue #397, "Faith and Heresy." I'm honored. :)

Craig Spearing was kind enough to point me to your blog. Glad he did!

Anonymous said...

And I'm the other author. :-) What Jeff said. Beautifully done. Thanks.