Game of Thrones – Ser Gerris Drinkwater

A couple of days ago I was delivered my contributor’s copy of the Game of Thrones Shadow City chapter pack by Fantasy Flight Games.

As usual, I giggled with delight, both for the free stuff aspect of the thing and, I have to admit, for the good memories that the smell of newly printed cards evokes in nerdy old me.

Anyway, Ser Gerris Drinkwater below is one of the characters I illustrated for Shadow City, here he is.

Again, I didn’t trash the sketch:

As you can see, the coloured version changed a little bit from the sketch, it was flipped, his position changed and so on.
I had no memory of Ser Gerris Drinkwater from the books, so I had to resort to A Wiki of Ice and Fire this time as well.

Gerris is tall and lean and comely, with blue-green eyes and sandy, sun-streaked hair.
He has a swordsman’s grace and a courtier’s wit.
His confidence is often close to arrogance.
Gerris does not speak the Volantene dialect of High Valyrian as well as Quentyn Martell.

Gerris wears an expensive cloak of soft brown wool lined with sandsilk.
Ser Barristan Selmy thinks Gerris is shallow and a worse warrior than Ser Archibald Yronwood.

One thing I’m chuffed about is that Ser Gerris Drinkwater was picked for the bunch of cards displayed in the product page.
Although, I have to say, my favourite illustration of the whole pack is the guy right above and to the left, Scheming Septon by Aleksander Karcz.

Anyway, as always here’s the Shadow City Chapter Pack in all its glory, look how pretty it is. Look at it!

Next week I’ll post the other illustration of the pack, Aegon Targaryen.

by Paolo Puggioni

Ser Justin Massey

This is one of the (many) illustration I had the pleasure to make for the Game of Thrones game over the past year or so.

It’s part of The March on Winterfell by Fantasy Flight Games, and although the expansion isn’t out yet, the image is already displayed on the product’s page, so here it is in all its slightly higher res glory.

For those who – like me – don’t remember Ser Justin Massey neither from the tv series or the Game of Thrones books, here’s all I know about him, diligently pasted from his entry on the Wiki of Ice and Fire:

Justin is a large man with pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a mop of white blonde hair pale as flax. The fair knight has a neatly-trimmed blond beard. His tunic displays the triple spiral of House Massey.

Justin, who has a pleasing manner and a ready smile, often tells jokes with a glib tongue.
Stannis Baratheon refers to Justin as “the smiler” and Clayton Suggs considers him a “prancing fool”.

I might have made him slightly fitter than it was supposed to be judging by his description, but the art director was happy about him, so that’s how he officially looks like now.

And since I’m a good boy, I didn’t get rid of the sketch this time.

There are still a couple of illustration that I’ll be allowed to post before these Game of Thrones expansions are released, which I’ll do over the next few days.

by Paolo Puggioni

Freak Show – Thrannak #2

Here some more concepts for Thrannak, another one of the main characters in Freak Show.

Thrannak is a trans-human, and as opposed to Zaquida, she comes from a trans-humanist planet.
I haven’t designed anything of the visual style of the trans-human society yet, but I know that, where Purists are severe, modest and sober, trans-humans would make a point of affirming their own individuality, so I’d expect a more eclectic visual language.

For the Purusts I used mostly straight lines, sharp angles and dark and desaturated colours, so it makes sense that, by contrast, trans-humans’ aesthetic will be more organic and based on elegant curves.

We won’t show trans-humans environments until later on in the story, so I think this is enough for now.

As far as Thrannak goes, some elements of her home world is already hinted at in her outlook.
First of all, she is obviously a “modified human”. The scars (or seams) on her body serve as some sort of “war paint”, as well as having the function of hiding all the gear implanted under her skin.

Contrarily to Purists, who seldom indulge in frivolities, she is wearing piercings and an extravagant hairdo.
Also, well, her skin is green.

I meant her to have a very masculine build, and I think that is already working.
I did take some male body builders as a reference, and changed a bit hip size, lats and neck.

In the first version she also had some marks on her face, but John rightly pointed out that it could be confusing when next to Zaquida, so I removed them in this iteration.

With this I’m getting close to having enough material to start working on the panels.
Some of it is already done, just waiting to be posted here.

Just some polishing on a space ship, a couple of characters and we’re good to go.

by Paolo Puggioni

Freaskhow – Zaquida

I’m at the end of the concept stage for Freak Show, and I’m wrapping up the designs for some of the main characters.

Zaquida was the first one I made, so last week I went back to that first concepts page and applied the changes John and I had discussed aloing the way.
To be honest we were already quite happy with her face, but I hadn’t designed any of the clothes or thought of her overall look.

Despite her being a transh-human, Zaquida comes from a Purist planet, so before I could even think of her design, I had to figure out more things about the general aesthetic of Purists in general.

Purist society is harsh and authoritarian, and as you can see in the previous concepts, it imposes modesty and sobriety.

I figured Zaquida’s look should be consistent with those principles, but with some “twists” in her attire to account for her rebellious spirit.

For example, if Purists would always cover their necks and heads as a sign of modesty, Zaquida would stubbornly refuse to wear any headgear.
Where revealing any skin would be considered inappropriate, Zaquida would discreetely do so as a sign of defiance.
She would also wear some piercings, where those kinds of accessories would be considered too frivolous in her environment.

Basically I meant her to look extravagant and rebellious enough to her peers – as a consequence of her being a natural “free spirit” and somehow on the fringes of society – without going as far as making her look like their equivalent of a Punk.
Nothing too much in-your-face, so to speak.

For this reason I kept the rest of her clothing quite standard when compared to the local fashion: ample clothes to hide the shapes of one’s body, asymmetric tops, arm sleeve to carry wearable devices and so on.

I think I’ll pick the one with the yellow coat.
Its colour would be a further sign of her individuality (purists in Freak Show would mostly wear dark and colourless clothes), and also serve as a cheap device to make her stand out in the panels.

So there you go, Zaquida’s official look.

Next drawings about her will be style studies, that is, how she will actually be in the comic.
I have to confess I’ve been dreading that bit for a while, but it will be another couple of weeks until I start with that.

by Paolo Puggioni

Freak Show Generic Characters

After the first batch of sketches for Freak Show, I am now moving on to the main characters.
It’s not like everything is set in stone, but I thought that now that I have a general idea of how most things would look like in the first panels, I could start focusing on better defined character pages.

I meant to work on Zaquida first, then I realized that, as she comes from a Purist world, her look should at least partially reflect the kind of aesthetics you’d find in that environment.
Which is why it made sense to explore further the kind of clothes that people from Purists worlds would wear, before I committed to the design of a main character.

In video games you would call these NPCs.

There are a few features I deemed fundamental in these designs, and which will be a common trait of all Purists in Freak Show.

The first one is that I’d like their attire to be conservative: as little revealing as possible, modest, no embellishments.
Most characters would wear some sort of head gear as a form of modesty. Purist society is supposed to be authoritarian, so their outlook should reflect that.

I thought they would also wear ample, baggy clothes to hide the shape of their bodies, as you’d espect in a society that doesn’t encourage frivolities.
At the same time I tried to use straight lines and sharp angles, to emphasise the “aggressive” nature of the society.
I’m not sure I got there yet, so I might have to make more work on this.
Along the way I accidentally came up with that sort of over-trousers you see in the two people from the right, and I decided I’m happy with those. So I think I’ll stick with them, maybe with some youngsters with slightly more liberal ideas in terms of fashion.

As you might have noticed they’re all carrying some sort of touch screen, which is a feature of their technology you’ll see later in the actual panels.
The design of the clothes and their asymmetry accounts for that.

This first detailed page wraps up a bunch of early sketches I had made a while ago, in which I outlined the main guidelines of Purists aesthetics.

So, next I might be working on the first main characters, or go on on these generic concepts, I haven’t decided yet.

P

Freakshow – Thrannak Concepts

Second main characters of our comic Freak Show, Thrannak will be the one to take care of things when the situation requires physical strenght.

As opposed to Zaquida, Thrannak comes from one of the Transhumanist worlds, and all her augmentations have been designed to make her more effective in combat.

As you can see, all her augmentations are installed under her skin, and are developed when needed.
Initially I had thought the seams should be as inconspicuous as possible when the weapons are hidden.
Then we decided she would look thougher with lines running on her body in intricate patterns, like a Maori warrior or something like that, so I’ll make another version to see how she looks like.

John and I haven’t really decided yet if the communication devices implanted in Thrannak’s skull should be more or less visible.
In the concept I made them hidden under her scalp, whereas John would like them to bulge a bit more.

I’ll have to look into that too, although I have to confess that at least in “rest mode” I’d be happier for them to look more like scars.

I have to point out that these concepts are just meant to be a study of how Thrannak would look like in general, all the clothes she is wearing right now are just to avoid drawing her naked:)

I’m going to make a set of concepts to design the clothes she’ll be waering when fighting in the Freak Show, and then more sets with maybe a combat suit, generic overalls and so on.

I really dislike the “super hero costume” kind of idea, so I’d like to change her attire as often as possible as the comic develops, and instead use other elements to make her more iconic and recognizable.

Next bunch of Freak Show concepts coming up soon.

by Paolo Puggioni

Freak Show, a New Comic

I am very, very happy to announce that John Ayliff and I have started working on Freak Show, our very own comic.

John is the author of Belt Three, published by Harper Collins.

Before he became a full time writer, John and I used to work together at Jagex, where I was Lead Concept Artist and he was Senior Game Developer, one of the guys who wrote the storylines of our Runescape quests.
His story lines were always a pleasure to read. Deep, unpredictable, imaginative, exciting.
Every time I was told I was to start working on one of his Runescape quests I thought “oh, this is going to be good”, and I was never wrong.
My respect for his work is what prompted me to get in touch with him a few months ago to propose a collaboration on a comic.

I always wanted to try my hand at working on something as challenging as a comic book, but for one reason or another I never thought I was ready for it.
For an artist, it’s like the end-of-level boss, the Emperor Palpatine of our craft.
It requires complete mastery of perspective, composition, visual storytelling, anatomy, character design, plus a dozen other things I can’t even think of right now.
At the same time it’s a huge endeavour, it requires planning and perseverance.

A few months ago – I can’t remember what triggered the thought – it suddenly dawned on me:
“Hey, maybe now I can sort of do that”.
“Oh, and that”.
“Ah I can also handle that bit if I try hard enough!”

So, although I still had some doubts about my ability to do everything to professional standards (I’m not a professional comic artist yet!), I got in touch with a professional writer – John – who was happily willing to work on this together.

After a few months of email exchanges we came up with a plan, a name and a synopsis.
I obviously can’t share too many details about Freak Show yet, mostly because it’s still in its early stages and many things might still change.

Freak Show is set a few centuries in the future, where a social struggle is ongoing between “altered” humans (called Transhumans, those who enhanced their body through technological or genetic means) and “pure humans”.

On some of the planets Pure humans are predominant, so Transhumans are regarded as Freaks, held captive, and displayed in road shows, even forced to fight against each other.

The story focuses on a small group of characters, and how their story develops within one of these freak shows.

The concept below is the first design I made for one of the main characters.

Her name is Zaquida, and her particular augmentation allows her to interface with computers of any kind and gain control over them.
I explored different ages, and eventually we went for the third from the left, the 20-year-old.
My favourite was the 14-year-old, but the story needed a slightly older character.

For the next couple of months I’ll be concepting every bit I need for the first few pages of the comic: generic characters, spaceships, props, main characters, buildings and so on.
So you’ll see more of this in the near future.

by Paolo Puggioni

Pyromancer

After long thought, I ended up renaming what had been “New_Document1.psd” for more than a year, into the much catchier “Pyromancer”.

I was very happy about the new name.
I mean, it is very clever if you think about it.
I had discarded “Fire Queen”, “Fire Sorceress”, “Fireballs Juggler” and all the variations of those, when the genius finally struck me.
PYRO! Like, you now, FIRE. And MANCER! Like a Necromancer, but with flames!
PYROMANCER! I’m so brainy! It’s a new word! I made up a new word, and it’s not even my first language!

Then I checked on Google, and it looks like every game with even a little bit of Fantasy spin has a character called Pyromancer.
There are also several books with a pyromancer in it.
Hell, there’s an actual word in ancient Greek for it: Pyromancy – the art of divination by fire.
I’m sure there must be Zippo pyromancer-shaped lighters too.
Oh yes, and of course let’s not forget about Melisandre.
So well, I made up a word that’s been there for almost three thousands years.
Just, all by myself.

So there you go, behold what, unbeknownst to me, is one of the most overused cliches of Fantasy Art in general.
I just care to point out this is not a Darksouls, or a Heartstone or a Skyrim piece of fan art.

It’s just me being unimaginative.

Now, on top of that, I also have to say that this illustration has been a massive thorn in my side for more than a year and a half.

I had started it as a lunchbreak time-filler back when I was at Jagex.
I remember thinking that I could have tried making something nice and polished, for a change.
Something I had actually spent time on.

The days passed, the season changed, and I would work like 5 minutes at a time on this lunch-break project, between a peak at reddit and a bite at a sandwich.

Then I moved to another company, and to a new house, and a new town, and every now and then I would come across this 80% finished illustration and think “aw, I should finish this”, and I would add maybe another 1% to the final result.

Then I changed computer, worked on freelance assignments, start and finish several things, and still every now and then this thing would pop up, demanding a few minutes of my attention.

Long story short, this pyromancer has been sitting in my WIP folder for longer than I care to remember, so yesterday I thought “fuck it, I now declare you finished” and finally sent her on her way.

by Paolo Puggioni

Cyberpunk People

Before I finished off the cyberpunk lady I posted last week, I had started a few sketches for the same theme.
Just rough ideas, really.
I was caressing the idea of drawing a whole bunch of cyberpunk concepts, maybe tying them together in a consistent setting.

Then I immediately got distracted by something shinier that I’d like to work on, so I guess I’ll pause the cyberpunk thing and get back to it later.
That’s the beauty of personal projects after all.
You can have twenty of them going on at the same time and no one can say a thing about it.

So, here’s a sketch of some random cyberpunk people (ok this is not rough, I actually polished it a lot more than I should have).

As always, done in Krita!

The cyberpunk setting I had in mind wasn’t set like a million years in the future.
Let’s rather say a hundred years or so.
So I was thinking that in that case, most elements of our own culture and techology should still be recognizable.

The leg implants of the girl on the left are quite similar to today’s prosthetics, for example.

I took a few of the components of the winged lady from Shimano byke parts.

The old creepy guy works instead under the assumption that, in this setting, people’s life span can be increased almost indefinitely by plugging medical equipment into one’s body.

Impractical, maybe, and creepy, but better than being dead I guess.

Anyway, there’s actually another cyberpunk concept I had started working on, this time in ZBrush.

Since I’m slow as hell in ZBrush (I use it so rarely that I forget everything from one time to the other), I’m afraid that you shouldn’t hold your breath for that.

by Paolo Puggioni

Cyberpunk

I have to admit I fell to the hype for CDProjekt Red’s next project, Cyberpunk 2077.

The Witcher 3 was one of my favourite games ever, so I have to assume their new franchise will kick ass just as much.

Seeing their teaser trailer brought back my ancient love for everything Cyberpunk, together with memories of the throng of comics and books I read about it.

I even found an old link saved in one of my bookmarks folders, which led to the complete series of BLAME! (the exclamation mark is not mine, it’s in the title).
For those who don’t know about it, do yourselves a favour and give it a quick read.
The environments and the cyborgs in it are among the most imaginative pieces of art I’ve ever seen.
The mood and sense of scale of the entire comic are just superb.

Anyway.

Riding the wave of this newfound love for everything Cyberpunk, I started sketching something, and this is what came out of it.

Now, with cyberpunk you can go crazy in a lot of different ways.
With this one I meant to be conservative and focus on mood more than anything else.

Instead of tubes and cyber-augmentations and body modifications, I preferred to convey something different and through other means.

For example, the clothes indicate some sort of urban environment (as opposed to what happens here, where everything seems put together from a post-apocalyptic junkyard).

The snazzy glasses are obviously from a high-tech environment, whereas the old-style, vaguely ethnic bling is supposed to suggest another layer to the background.
Maybe a fashion coming from a society that contains elements from what are now developing countries, and that in the future might have a more prominent influence on world’s culture.

I’m quite happy with the level of finish (although I left the hair very much unfinished to leave focus on her face).
I’m still not 100% proficient with Krita, and I had to see if I could do something a bit more polished than what I’ve done so far.

Good God Krita is amazing.

Anyway, I have a couple more cyberpunk sketches to finish off, I’ll post them next week.

by Paolo Puggioni