Legacy of Pharaohs

Osirion, Legacy of Pharaohs, is another Pathfinder Campaign Setting I’ve worked on in 2013.
Since these projects are released several months after they’re actually finished, I’ve had it sitting on my hard drive for quite some time, before I realized I could actually publish it.

In the heart of the Inner Sea region stretches one of the oldest human empires still standing today: the mighty and mysterious land of pharaohs and pyramids known as Osirion. Hosting as many accursed tombs and treasure-filled ruins beneath its shifting sands as above, Osirion offers no shortage of adventure for characters of all sorts. From the cosmopolitan capital city of Sothis, seat of the Ruby Prince, to the desolate wastelands of the Osirian Desert, discover the might and majesty that lifted humanity out of the Age of Darkness and could potentially usher in a new golden age if unearthed from the past.

As the name suggests, (and well, the description above), Legacy of Pharaohs has a strong Egyptian flavour. Pyramids, lots of sand, and North-African looking characters.

Like many of the assignments I had from Paizo, this one was mostly focused on characters and I enjoyed it quite a lot.
All characters had to look either North-African or Middle Eastern, both of which have in general a dark skin tone I rarely have the chance to practice with.
A part from rare occurrences.

The Lady of the Canal, right below, is my favourite one from Legacy of Pharaohs.
She’s the first one I made (always the most difficult first!).
Thanks to her I remembered that, when painting black skin, some blue strokes on the up-facing surfaces are kind of “the secret”.

 

 

Wali Sarita Senbi and Jira Odan below, had to look Persian instead, and since I’m not too familiar with those particular facial traits I had to make quite some research before I committed to a design.

 

 

 

The only two non-characters I made for the set are an environment and a small object, both below.

Hor Aha

Osirian Scarab Symbol

There are still a few pieces left from Legacy of Pharaohs, which I will post next time!

Towns of The Inners Sea part II

Here’s the rest of the illustrations I made for Paizo’s Towns of The Inners Sea.
As I said in my previous post, they were mostly portraits, which was both good fun and good practice.

 

 

This is the one I’m maybe the happiest with. Her name is Uzmilla and she’s obviously a witch. She was supposed to have wrinkly skin that looks like leather – check; one green eye and one red eye – check; a nasty look but not too evil – check?

I’m particularly satisfied of her hand. Practicing on greys really paid off, the way they make her skin sickly and thin on her bones really works there, I think.
Looking back at it, her neck could do with some more work, and the edges of her silhouette are way too sharp, but hey.

 

 

This, on the other hand, is the one I like the least.
It came out a lot more “oh look I’m such a good chap” than I meant to. For some reason I feel like I should do something mean to him, just to spoil his day:(

 

 

This one, her name is Salodri, is intriguing. The brief didn’t explain why she is wearing an elaborate eye patch.
I like to think she has a perfectly good eye underneath, she only does that because it’s her way to be a hipster.

 

 

And this is Zundrunga. He was supposed to look strong (check) and trustworthy (check).
Fun fact, after I finished working on Towns of The Inner Sea, I realised that I made him exactly like an old friend of mine at school.
He was strong as a bull, but with a kind and gentle heart. For some reason, the moment we met he decided we had to be friends, and that his mission in life from then on was to beat the crap out of everyone who even thought about bullying me.

High school was a walk in the park for me. I hope you’re doing fine buddy.

 

 

Lord Hazic Kel Kalaar here, is the one who gave me more problems. I struggled to fit his banner in the frame, his face really wouldn’t work and I made like five versions before I decided this was was good enough.

Either way, this is it for Towns of the Inner Sea.
They are printed at a fairly small size, so the large areas with relatively flat colours should work fine (I haven’t see the prints yet).

More stuff to come shortly!

by Paolo Puggioni

More Pathfinder Artwork

This is another illustration I made for Pathfinder, again for the Player Companion: Dragonslayer’s Handbook.

Just like the last illustration I posted, the canvas aspect ratio was quite awkward, and I had a hard time figuring out how to pose the characters.

For some time I fiddled a bit with the idea of drawing the Angel further away in the distance, to show more of his wings. Then I thought “why the hell do you want to show ALL of his wings in a vertical canvas?”.
So I ended up stacking the figures on top of each other, which worked nicely in the end.

As far as the composition goes, I OBVIOUSLY strived to lead the viewer’s eye in a circular movement.
Hell, the next step would have been carving actual arrows on the Magus’ blade and maybe tattooed along his arm.
The thing is, the canvas is shaped in such a way that it’s easy to “get lost” and not know exactly where to look at. Which, in turn, would result in an uninteresting and ultimately unenjoyable image.

By the way, since I kept the sketch, here it is, because why not.

Now, as far as the colours go, I have to confess I had to cheat a bit.
The ambient lighting is obviously the directional light that comes from the setting sun, which should have resulted in high contrast surfaces with a very warm and a very cold side.

However, there was also the strong cold light created by the bolt of energy cast by the Magus, which in turn would have cooled down the lit surfaces and warmed up the shaded ones.

What to do? Simple, stop giving a crap! I used a just slightly warm diffuse light for both figures, and proceeded to scatter around almost unjustified highlights and rim lights as if they were ten a penny.

Not something I would bring to a convention about Science of Colour And Light Applied To Digital Painting. However, I’m under the impression that had I used a more scientific approach the result would have been messier, so in the end I don’t feel that guilty.

So there, this was another piece of artwork fished from my Pathfinder folder. More to come in the next few days.

by Paolo Puggioni

Pathfinder – Ranger vs Dragon

This is an illustration I made for one of Paizo‘s Pathfinder books, the Player Companion: Dragonslayer’s Handbook .
As a matter of fact, I’ve been lucky enough to have worked quite extensively for the people at Paizo during the past few months.
Which, by the way, is the reason why I haven’t been posting on this blog as often as last year: between these and other freelance assignments I’ve been unbelievably busy!

So, in theory there would be a whole lot of new stuff I could pick from my hard drive and brag about.
In practice, very little of it has been published, so I’m afraid most of it will have to wait to see the light of day.

This is for what I believe was the second assignment I got from Paizo. Which, by the way, is one of the clients I recently enjoyed working with the most .
The setting is still Fantasy enough for me to be in my comfort zone (I keep being asked to draw Fantasy stuff, have you noticed?).
However, both the visual style and the game itself have a strong personality on their own that makes it both challenging and enjoyable to draw for.

Moreover, I must add that the requested revisions are always minimal and the process admiringly smooth, which again makes my work for Pathfinder even more pleasant.

But I digress, back to my dwarf.
This is one of Pathfinder’s iconic characters. If you want to know more about him have a look here!
When I got the assignment I had to read the brief a few times, as I thought the aspect ratio of the canvas was some kind of typo.
It wasn’t.
I had never drawn anything on a canvas that tall and narrow, which made the composition of the first few sketches quite awkward.
I eventually settled with these.

I would have personally picked the first from the left, as the head and neck of the dragon had in my opinion a more interesting shape.
However, I must admit the big mass of the dragon and the smaller one of the hero have a better balance in the final one, so I’m quite happy with it too.

It looks like I’m good to post some more Pathfinder illustrations from the bunch I’ve already done.
So well, you’ll see more in the next few days.

by Paolo Puggioni