Hellfire Engine - Dungeons & Dragons - Process

Today I have for you a monster that was released just over two years ago, the Hellfire Engine. This devilish construct was part of my work on Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. Going into this particular assignment, I was a little concerned I would figure this monster out. It was an update of an existing monster, but the reference was a little sparse. This left me a lot of room to explore and figure things out, it also gave me a lot of room to potentially go in the wrong direction. In the end, it all worked out, and I had nothing to fear, but as I was working on the thumbnails, I couldn't tell if I was knocking it out of the park or striking out. Before I get too far ahead of myself, here is the final painting for the Hellfire Engine.

Hellfire Engine

Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes

11 x 14 - Digital

Art Director - Kate Irwin

© 2018 Wizards of the Coast LLC

Since this was a crazy metal devil siege weapon, I jumped into thumbnails without a reference photoshoot. I had a supplied piece of reference, but it was small and heavily cropped. I decided the best course of action for this monster was to get into Photoshop and start playing around to see what works. Here are the three concepts/thumbnails that I ultimately submitted.

Hellfire Engine - Thumbnails

© 2018 Wizards of the Coast LLC

While there are things about 'B' and 'C' that I still like, I can definitely see why 'A' was selected. That said, production did have some notes that they wanted to see implemented before I moved on with this monster. They liked some of the things that the other designs had, like more open mouths with more fire, and they wanted fire and smoke coming from all of the horns. Makes perfect sense to me, and I was happy to oblige. Here was the updated thumbnail for the Hellfire Engine.

Hellfire Engine - Revised thumbnail

© 2018 Wizards of the Coast LLC

Now that there was an approved thumbnail, it was time to flesh out a final drawing that would be the groundwork for my painting. Sometimes with my thumbnails, I am working more with volumes and shapes to get a feel for a design's silhouette, and I am a little less concerned with how something would work in reality. This was one of those times. I had this vaguely triangular composition with a lot of jutting points and curved panels, but the specifics of what was going on in there were a little vague. I didn't know how those clawed hands worked, how the wheels worked, and what was happening with the body behind the front blast plate. I had to figure all that out in the drawing. Thankfully, I find figuring out clarity in a squiggly mess to be a lot of fun, and it is how I draw most of the time. Especially when working on personal work, my thumbnails and sketches are scribbled chaos, and I make sense of them as I render. Here is the final drawing for the Hellfire Engine, with 100% more concrete forms and shapes.

Hellfire Engine

Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes

11 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Kate Irwin

Original - SOLD

© 2018 Wizards of the Coast LLC

The drawing was approved, and I was ready to paint. This was a reasonably straightforward painting, all things considered. I wanted to make sure that it felt like there was hard frontal lighting so that there would be hard shadows that helped establish the different layers in the overall form. The pallet was limited because this monster is mainly bronze and iron, but I threw in some greens to give it some contrast. Here is the Hellfire Engine taking shape.

Hellfire Engine - Process

© 2018 Wizards of the Coast LLC

Last year I shared with you a custom miniature of the Hellfire Engine created by Miguel Zavala. I still think it turned out pretty cool, and as far as I know, there is still no official miniature for this monster.

Hellfire Engine Miniature by Miguel Zavala

Image courtesy of Miguel Zavala

While looking to see if there is an official miniature for the Hellfire Engine, I stumbled upon the model work of Noa Belfer. They were responsible for making a version of the Hellfire Engine for the Neverwinter game. I had no idea that my monsters were showing up in the game, and I think this is pretty amazing. Noa did a great job of translating my painting into a three-dimensional game character. It is fun to stumble over things like this when you never expected to find them. Of course, now I wonder how many of my D&D monster designs are out there in D&D games that I don't know about.

Neverwinter: Hellfire Engine Mount

Sculpture, modeling, texturing and skinning by Noa Belfer

Lastly, I will leave you once again with my final painting for the Hellfire Engine. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes was a great project to work on, and I was able to make so many fun monsters.

Hellfire Engine

© 2018 Wizards of the Coast LLC

That's 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