Wednesday, March 27, 2013

The Carrion King - Process

Back in February I shared with you the wily and slightly insane Carrion King, from Dragon Magazine issue #420. Today I have for you the steps and work that went into making the final illustration. Before we look at the process, here is how the final piece turned out...

The Carrion King
© 2013 Wizards of the Coast

The piece centered around the huge and crazy lord of the Myconids, the Carrion King. The Carrion King was described as a huge mushroom creature that had two mouths and one eye... and was a little insane. The other element of the piece was a gnome that needed to be interacting with the Carrion King in some fashion. Beyond that, it was all left up to me. I needed to come up with something fun and cool for the big ole mushroom king. I have been a huge fan of Myconids ever since I first laid eyes on them in the Monster Manual 2 (many moons ago). I looked at a lot of mushrooms and got to work on some concepts and thumbnails...

The Carrion King - Concepts
© 2013 Wizards of the Coast
 
The Carrion King - Thumbnails
© 2013 Wizards of the Coast

When I feel strongly about a concept or thumbnail I often mention this to my art director when I send them in, it never hurts to be honest about what you are excited about and want to work on. With these I really felt all over the place and could not get a good feeling for what was really working and what was not. I liked concept "B" a lot but didn't know if that would be too weird... or not weird enough. For the thumbnails I was really liking "C", but again I was not sure about them in the larger picture. Sometimes I will get too close to the concepts and loose an objective perspective. When I am working on them they are constantly changing as I move, scale, redraw, delete, and otherwise work out and problem solve the composition... and sometime I just don't know if I made something good or not in the end. The importance of the objective and separate art director!

In the end concept "B" and thumbnail "C" was chosen and I was given the go ahead to move forward. This pleased me on a couple of different levels... they were my preferred options and the mushroom idea came from my own discovery in the wilds of north Florida. Maybe a week before I was contacted to work on this illustration I was riding on our weekday trails when something caught my eye. I stopped and took some photos of a very interesting cluster of mushrooms... little did I know that they would soon become a monster...

The source of all good mushroom monsters... REFERENCE!

With concept and thumbnail approved I move forward with the final drawing and made sure that I used ALL the lines and put in ALL the details. Not sure what got into me but I really went to town on this piece... I remember now, I was working on this drawing on my trip home from Illuxcon last year. I had a lot of time to kill in the airports and on the planes... so I poured it all into this drawing...

The Carrion King - Drawing
© 2013 Wizards of the Coast

The drawing was approved but I was asked to make sure that the detail level and complexity did not overwhelm the image and distract from the story of the illustration. Looks like I got a little to crazy with the drawing this time... with all the mushrooms on the ground, the gnome's gear and attire, and the Carrion King itself. With this in mind I got started on the painting...

The Carrion King - Process progression

With as complex as this piece is, it really came together quickly for the most part. 90% of it was done very quickly. The last 10% of making sure everything worked together, advances and recedes, and other wise reads correctly to the eye took as much time as the 90%. The lighting and clarity or the story were first and foremost and everything was secondary. This gave me the confidence to knock the foreground mushrooms into shadow and not worry about the loss of detail and drawing time. I know all the detail is there... and that is good enough. All that detail on the foreground mushrooms does not make you understand what is happening between the Carrion King and the gnome any better.

Again, here is how the final piece turned out...

The Carrion King
© 2013 Wizards of the Coast

That is all for another exciting Wednesday on the blog, see you back here on Friday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

4 comments:

  1. it's very interesting to see how you started from thumbnails! thanks for sharing

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    1. You are very welcome! Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

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  2. I really love seeing how other artists progress from concept through to finished piece; it's always interesting, and often inspiring. This piece turned out great, too! :)

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    1. Thanks so much! It sure was a fun one to work on :)

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