Today, I am happy to share the process and steps for my contribution to the Dungeons & Dragons supplement, Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerun. As mentioned previously, while I created three pieces for this project, sections of the book were removed during production, which left only one of my illustrations included. While I was aware of the Phaerimm, I had never done anything with this particular monster before, so it was fun to get to working on something new. Here is a look at my final illustration for the Phaerimm.
You might notice that this monster has a background. This was one of the new requirements for the monster vignettes, as they have backgrounds now. No more isolated figures now. The Phaerimm is a strange plant monster horror thing. I am good with that, so no complaints. I got to work on some thumbnails for this one.
The thumbnails were well received, and the second one was chosen. With a selected thumbnail, I got to work on the drawing for this one. When the linework was finished, and before I completed the rendering, I scanned the image to use the line art in the painting process.
The drawing was approved without notes, and it was time to work on the painting. As mentioned above, these now have backgrounds. This also means that the creature and the background need to be on different layers so effects and vignetting can be done by production. For me, this means painting the background first and painting out the monster to some degree so that there is plenty to work with and no layering issues. I then go back in and work on the monster on its own layer set. This part I am very familiar with. There are other things I can say about this one, but that should wait till later when other pieces are eventually released.
Here again is how the final painting turned out, as well as a look at the piece in the book. You can see in that image how having the background as a separate layer works with the layout. On the page, the monster now breaks the borders of the image.
That's all for another exciting Wednesday on the blog. See you back here on Friday! Until then...
