Song of Ice and Fire Artwork: A Thief And An Ironman

Some other artwork I made for the Game Of Thrones RPG

The first one is a classic of Fantasy Art: a thief doing thief things on a lock.
For some reason I choose a more “painty” approach with this. Unfortunately the composition is not as it had been planned at the beginning: the layout had to be turned from landscape to portrait after it was already finished and I’m not entirely happy with it now.

The other depicts a class of characters peculiar to the Game Of Thrones books.
Ironmen are fierce people from barren islands ravaged by storms. They are fearless warriors, sailors and pirates, playing at throwing axes at each other when they’re not pillaging coastal settlements.

When I made this I hadn’t read as much about them as I have now.
I would probably draw them differently now, this one looks a lot like a Viking, with not enough of their unique details.

by Paolo Puggioni

Catelyn Stark

Another drawing from the first set I made for the Game Of Thrones RPG.
This one was was quite hard, I have to confess I have some troubles at drawing horses.
Horses have stupid legs, full of knees!

The Catelyn I depicted here is not the same you see in the Game of Thrones books, or in the series.
She is young here, not yet married to Ned Stark, her face void of all the troubles she would face in the future.
Or, well, of all the prodigies I can’t spoil!

For some reasons I set the scene in a snowy landscape, thinking of Winterfell rather than Riverrun, where Catelyn would likely have been during her youth.
However, despite Riverrun being further south, it gets some snow every now and then, so I figure it doesn’t really matter.
Neither the Art Director at Green Ronin nor George R.R. Martin complained about it, so here she is.

by Paolo Puggioni

Other GOT Characters

Here are another couple of characters from the series I drew for Green Ronin’s Game Of Thrones RPG, A Song of Ice and Fire.
I can’t really tell which part of the book the Knight in the Snowstorm is in, the brief was simply about a knight having a hard time in a snowy landscape, and here he is.

The second character is a generic bandit of the many who infest the forests of Westeros.
There are many of this kind in the Game of Thrones book, preying on weaker travellers and being generally mean.
In this particular illustration the villain is waiting for his victim to appear from a clearance in the forest.

I can’t decide whether I made a mistake with the composition or not.
My intention was to convey “wait” and “something is about to happen coming from that side”. However, it might be that the bright patch on the right and the guy staring at it drag the eye outside of the canvas too much. I hope I managed to achieve some balance, I was close to the deadline and I didn’t have much time left for thumbnails at that point.

by Paolo Puggioni

Another Game Of Thrones Illustration, A Sellsword

I don’t know exactly what part of the books this drawing refers to.
There are several rogue warriors and sellswords in Game of Thrones, I guess this would be a generic, less important villain.
The brief was about a sellsword showing off a severed head (which I would assume he dutifully separated from the rest of the owner).
I took the chance to experiment with lighting, I’m quite happy about how it turned out.

by Paolo Puggioni

A Game Of Thrones, Artwork From the RPG

I’ve been allowed to publish some of the artwork I’ve recently done for the RPG of A Game Of Thrones by Green Ronin (yay!)
In the next few days I’ll upload some illustrations from the first batch of inside art.

This is Balerion the Black Dread, the biggest dragon that ever lived.
According to the brief, his teeth are as long as swords, and his mouth could swallow a mammoth whole.
As a Concept Artist it’s difficult to imagine a better thing to work on.

It was been great fun to do, even though I have to admit I completely messed up the assignment and I had to redraw it from scratch after the first feedback.
Dragons in George R.R. Martin’s world have no arms. That is, they obviously have hind legs, whereas their arms evolved into wings, as it happens in bats.
I honestly hadn’t thought of that (Dragons in other settings can be quadrupedal with wings as a further set of limbs) and I’ll make sure I’ll get this clarified next time I’ll be asked to draw one.

Anyway, I’m posting the one that got rejected below. It’s not that bad, there are just two spare arms in the composition 🙁
Thanks to Green Ronin for allowing me to post this so soon.

by Paolo Puggioni

Painting Black Skin, A Shaman

Painting black skin can be quite tricky, at least for me. Dark skin gets highlights in a completely different way from White or Asian, and can go all the way to white. It’s difficult to get it right.

I started this painting a couple of days ago, as nothing more than a doodle. I had just finished a freelance assignment, and after the incredible amount of refinement and detailing I had put in it, I just wanted to paint something just for fun, as loosely as possible.
So I randomly got a sketch from the series I posted a while ago and started to develop it a bit further.
Then I got stuck, I had just painted an Oompa-Loompa.

I started again, and managed to paint someone with an orange artificial fake-tan. I was getting close.

The third time I removed most of the reds and got the base colour almost right. After that, most of the work was done. By looking at reference pictures I noticed that dark skin bounces back a lot less light than white skin (duh!), apart from some areas around the eyebrows and nose, which are more reflective.
Painting the rest was just fun, and since I kept the layers I also exported a gif of the process.

I couldn’t help noticing that most of the creative part (the fun bit) is done in the first two-three frames, the rest is pretty much polishing.
I must ponder on that.

Towards the end – hey, all this took less than two hours, that’s unlike me – I felt the urge to think of a more creative name than “untitled1.psd”, and I just didn’t want to call him “Black Guy With a Fuchsia Headscarf”.
So I painted a few tacky ornaments on his head and there you go, a Shaman.

by Paolo Puggioni

Some Runescape Behind the Scenes and Future Updates

So, some of the bits of Runescape awesomeness we’ve been working on in the last few months have finally been released, or at least hinted at:)
I haven’t worked on these particular projects to be honest, a part from one, (and only marginally).
However, go team!

This is the teaser of an imminent release, published on Runescape’s website.
The concepts for this one are by three Concept Artists of my team, who I won’t name since I’m not sure they are comfortable at being thrown at The Internet.
They made an awesome job, as you can see.

This is the same video uploaded on Youtube. I like it because of the comments:)

This is the test episode of a bi-monthly video we’ll be bringing you this summer – RuneCast.

And finally, this is the article on Edge about the next BIG update. Which of course I’m not allowed to talk about!

by Paolo Puggioni

Sketches, Even More

Other sketches I made before work.
I started off trying to keep as abstract as possible, focusing on just shapes and values but failed.

Apparently I can’t prescind from a subject matter, and after some interior struggle I thought “who cares”?
I’m being as loose as possible without falling into the temptation of planning complex scenes, I think, which is good enough for studying and practicing purposes. That is, this is as loose as I can be.

I have almost finished my freelance assignment, hopefully next time I’ll post some proper artwork.

by Paolo Puggioni

Swords

If for whatever reason you need reference images of swords, I have yet to find a website as good as myArmoury.com.
It is unfortunate I only found out about it only after long years sweating on multiple, less available resources.
All those years wasted on books!

The awesome thing about myArmoury is the compare tool, where you can display pretty much every possible kind of sword ever made, sorted by kind and historical period. It’s a priceless resource if you need consistency within a given environment – a video game for example – where you seldom have a history consultant reviewing what you draw.
In the compare tool you can place the swords next to each other and have an immediate idea about their size and relative proportions, another priceless feature.

Even if the weapons are the part of the website that impressed me the most, the armours database is no less valuable.
The site also hosts a forum, with “discussions of reproduction and authentic historical arms and armour from various cultures and time periods”, a Makers and Manufacturers section and so on.

From a concept artist’s point of view, this is the link that everyone should save in their bookmarks.
The only thing I would ask of them is having sizes in centimeters. Come on guys.

by Paolo Puggioni

Sketches, Just Some More

I’m up to my knees into my freelance assignment, which is kind of cool because I’m quite enjoying it.
Plus – I know I shouldn’t be the one saying it – but what I’v done so far is also pretty cool and I can’t wait to show it around:)

On the other hand, for a week or so I won’t be able to post anything other than my warm up sketches, I’m afraid.
So there you go.
Again, some of them are just scribbles, some others might be transformed into something.
Next week hopefully.

by Paolo Puggioni