hey so i got to work on this cool project called "The Folk of Dalentown vol 1" which is coming soon by @timbannock and was okayed to share with you some of the visual development! so here you go, a thread
#dnd5e #art

There's three playable peoples of this module- the Antlings, Bovathi & Cawbrie! They're all based/inspired by certain animals (so ofc I was like hell yes a project that lets me nerd out about animal species !?)- ants, bovines and birds!

The bovathi are the bovine inspired people, but i didn't want them to feel just like generic cow-people so I ended up looking at a lot of wild bovine species as well as different breeds of cattle w/interesting feature (the gaur, highland cow, etc)

I sort of lean more animal in my own "animal people" versions so the first pass was too-bovine! With some good feedback/direction, I finally landed on a more humanoid face w/cow proportions (eyes higher up, less forehead)/features that worked for what they wanted

The third pass got these which were closer (also trying to lean into attire that works for them- the barbarian is leaning quasi roman whereas the druid was a bit more pict/celtic-y). They were still a little too long/lean tho and so were reading kind of more goat than cow

I went back to reference of strong/big people ("strongman" competitors, olympic weightlifters/shotputters/etc) since my previous few passes just weren't bulky enough/didn't convey the strength of the bovathi
(i also leaned into the celt/pict look a bit more)

these are the finals- as you can see the druid didn't change too much (just got refined inks, shored up colors, fixed up the anatomy of his bird- it's a gyrfalcon if anyone cares lol). These are limited palette washes with a watercolor brush

The barbarian/fighter changed the most (mostly lightening up her color scheme a little) and adding lots more details/knotwork to her weapon and armor. They especially wanted a skin variant that was similar to cow fur patterns, so those are visible on her

The cawbrie are the bird people and i gravitated to the concept immediately b/c I'm an ornithology nerd. There's supposed to be two variants of these which are based on their environment so I initially was looking at bird families that encompass several ecological niches

Tim et al were very clear they didn't want them to feel like other existing bird people at all (harpies, etc) which lean more into the horror side, so I tried to stick to passerines & parrots and stayed away from birds of prey

I was initially going to base them all on types of bee eaters (family meropidae) b/c they tend to have similar features but are also distinct to their particular environments (they also come in lots of cool colors/patterns) .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee-eater 

But the initial brief had mentioned rainforest birds and I just love Rainbow Lorikeets SO MUCH that I had to do at least one with their coloration (and since that was the only full color illustration, that concept won). I tried to pull more of the bird's colors into the apparel

Apparel/armor wise, I looked at people who live in the some of the same areas where these birds live (bee eaters have an enormous range) and tried to utilize similar materials & textures that might be used (wood armor instead of leather, woven fabrics etc).

The antlings (ant people) were honestly the hardest (i'm not sure why, they were pretty fun once i got started, but starting was like "insect people...idk?").

The two different forms of the antlings also posed an interesting problem since the emissaries are much more humanoid but I wanted to give them ant-like proportions (which caused them to look generally more femme)

Pass 2 with the magic user one- toned down their hips a little and moved their wings out so they're more visible and did a first pass on the drone. The drones are essentially ant centaurs so there was definitely a learning curve of how to put armor on it and what sort of armor

I didn't want them to feel just rooted in that kind of generic western european medieval look you get in a lot of fantasy armor, so initially pulled from more byzantine styles which ended up being too much armor for the look they wanted w/these

The next feedback was more that they scavenge/utilize monster parts for their armor which ended up being a good hook for the drones' armor so I just incorporated bones into a lamellar style and spent several hours staring at prehistoric reptile jawbones/fossils for weaponry

this ended up being the final for the drone (which as you can see is not far off the concept sketch at all). Really just added more shading with the inks and then with the limited washes

the emissary look here was inspired by looking at neolithic apparel in northern/eastern europe (mostly) which used a lot of bones/fur/hide. it ended up being too close to the drones' look tho (the emissaries are really supposed to be more refined/worldly),

so in the next pass, reverted back to something closer to the previous look (but refined a bit more- i looked at apparel in northern climates where animal bones are incorporated into clothing for closures). Also opened the pose up so you can see more of the figure

this is the final for this magic user emissary - lots of layers, some uses of bone/tusk (hilt of the knife, closures) added some texture patterns. I went with blues and tans to call back to the drone a little bit/complement it (rather than being matchy matchy)

anyway, hopefully y'all are interested in maybe picking up the folk of dalentown when it comes out! It was super fun to work on and I'm excited to see it all together! https://timbannock.com/shop/dalentown/ 

if you're interested in materials, i did all these in clip studio paint! i almost exclusively use @/FRENDEN 's really amazing brush pack: https://frenden.myshopify.com/products/clip-studio-800-brush-set
( i work at ~600dpi and then size stuff down, lets you do lots of stupid tiny details)