Tuesday Art Day: Haz Mace, Will Raid

I’ve been trying to expand the range of WordPress options that I’m using, specifically when it comes to displaying images and any other media. For the Well-Dressed Paladin contest I thought the gallery display was rather successful. It was nice that folks could comment on individual images and scroll through them at their own pace.

I think the same function might work well for Tuesday Art Posts, but let me know if it’s more cumbersome. I usually put the images in the body of a post, as in Rhidach’s post.

After I’d posted the aforementioned banner done for Rhidach, I received a comment and e-mail from Antigen of Haz Mace, Will Raid. He was interested in a banner of his own. He’d been wanting to revamp his blog’s colour scheme and wanted something a bit more custom. In order to reflect his dualistic paladin nature, the banner he was imagining had two versions of his character: a protection version, and a retribution one.

Throughout the course of working with him I’d switch back and forth between the two – first spending some time on one and checking in with him, then working on the other while I waited to hear back. It actually worked quite well!

This was the initial sketch for the protection gear set.

The same, but now with flatted colour!

Further colour to bring out that voluminous hair.

Now with new “Icecrown” teal!

The only thing I’d forgotten was a glowing mace!

Here is the intial “retribution” gear set sketch.

Edited, now 100% fiercer.

Now with more colour! Unfortunately, little visible hair.

Further colour added.

I actually did these spell effects *before* the protection ones… They didn’t start out as good.

I ended up scrapping and just re-doing all of the spell effects wholesale.

Blinded by the Light! Then the next line I just mumble because I never understand what he’s saying.

Most of my usual narrative is contained in the gallery captions and descriptions, so you can browse through them there. The final banner image looked like so:

Blinded by the Light! Then the next line I just mumble because I never understand what he's saying.

You can also see the finished banner at Antigen’s site, in place! They always look better in place. This commission was a unique challenge and quite a bit of fun. Many thanks to Antigen for asking me to do it in the first place. More art leads to more blog posts and I’m sure that’s a good thing. I’ve been hard at work on the images for contest winners so expect to see those in the next few weeks as well. Until then, remember, retribution paladins… BY NO MEANS RELAX, or your DPS will decrease. It’s been proven. I have no advice for protection paladins, maybe someone who plays one can oblige.

About these ads