Tales From The Smoking Wyrm #5 cover.

 Tales From The Smoking Wyrm #5! 

With the launch of the Kickstarter for Tales From The Smoking Wyrm #5 this image has finally been revealed to the world.  And I am going to talk about it a bit more here. 

Final inked piece.

This is the third cover in a series of narrative covers that basically started with issue #3. That cover had the Beastmaster and the Dwarven Jaeger drinking on the front steps of The Smoking Wyrm while a sinister tentacular decended from above along with a countless mass of it's young. The cover of #4, by Brian Maikisch, showed the interior of the Wyrm and through the window you could see the Beastmaster being hoisted up in the air while the Dwarf Jaeger tries in vain to keep her grounded. Sadly this may not be too obvious in the covers final form as Brian Maikisch reduced the size of the window to accommodate the logo for the cover, but there's enough happening there to sort of make out what's happening. 

Original window for #4, by Brian Maikisch.

Trevor wanted the cover of #5 to have a perspective looking down from the rooftop of Wyrm with a view of the building across the street. He wanted the slug-guy to be seen as the heroes struggle against the tentacular. I toyed around with the some layouts but none of them made interesting covers to me. I decided on a layout that would have four planes to it and would move the viewer's eye in a way that would tell a story. 

Concept sketch.

The first plane, and most obvious would be a close up of the Beastmaster herself stabbing into the tentacle that holds her with a knife. The 2nd plane would be lower down as we see the wolf and Dwarf fending off another one of the tentacles. The third plane will have the mage blasting a way a large group of tentacular young while the slug guy and pointing lady from the cover of #1 look on. And the 4th plane shows the city guard arriving to intervene. 

Final pencils.

I added the mage from the cover of #1 since I have only drawn him twice before and felt like he was overdue to reappear. I added in the pointing lady from the cover of #1 also. 

Color piece #1.

 

The color I had visualized for this as I drew it was red. I wanted the foreground character to we washed in a red light with the energy bolt from the mage to be in a constasting color. With each of the Kickstarters of an issue that features my cover art, I do a small series of unique full-sized hand colored replicas for lucky fans to purchase. It was the perfect opportunity to experiment a bit with color. These are all done using Dr. P.H. Martins Translucent Watercolors, or dyes as we referred to them in art school. 

I decided upon completion that the red was a bit too harsh so I went in the opposite direction with the 2nd piece, I decided to go cool color against a hot color background. 

Piece #2

I really liked how this one turned out and the cool and hot color clashing really brings the image to life, at least to my eye. I decided to color saturate the background a bit more for next piece though.

Piece #3.

I loved how this one came out and I think it's my favorite one. But I had more to do so I kept up the experiments. 

Piece #4. 

For the 4th on I wanted to reduce the colors to be primarily yellow and blue with greens being formed from a blending of the them. I was pleased with this one as well, but I decided I had exhausted the extreme cast lighting experiments of the previous pieces. 

Piece #5

I wanted to base this one off of the covers used for #3 as a sort of continuity between that cover and this one. The almost solid purple hue of the background really makes the foreground character pop out a bit more. 

Piece #6.

Finally the last piece is a bit of a union of ideas from the some of the former ones. I think if has a nice balance to it that appeals to me.  I hope you enjoyed this, and I hope these sell, but I hope these are all appealing enough to cause a bit of indecision to the first few backers as they struggle to decide which ones to select!  

Also, I must note, that the scans I have seen online aren't as true to the real life images as you see here. These color images are photos, where the ones on the Kickstarter and the Goodman Games website are scans. Neither the photos nor the scans are as intense to the eye as the actual real life pieces.

(C) 2022 Blind Visionary.