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Xanathar's Guide to Everything
Completed April 2017, AD Shauna Narciso
As Handsome Man continues his 2-year-long beauty sleep, let's look at the process for my first D&D cover. A challenging composition in terms of clarity, but one of my fav pieces. Thread ->
Completed April 2017, AD Shauna Narciso
As Handsome Man continues his 2-year-long beauty sleep, let's look at the process for my first D&D cover. A challenging composition in terms of clarity, but one of my fav pieces. Thread ->
Before we start, how I got the job:
I'd been only doing mtg work up to that point, & Ixalan was just wrapping up. Apparently Cynthia Sheppard had my jadelight ranger open for review while Shauna came by asking "Know anyone who can paint goldfish?"
I guess the fins were my in :)
I'd been only doing mtg work up to that point, & Ixalan was just wrapping up. Apparently Cynthia Sheppard had my jadelight ranger open for review while Shauna came by asking "Know anyone who can paint goldfish?"
I guess the fins were my in :)
Brief! Was pretty delighted to have something that expressed a ton of character, had a lot of inside references etc. Shauna had also expressed a desire to see it rendered as much like John Singer Sargent as I could. no pressure :P
As always for me, thumbnails first.
"Thumbnail" is a bit of a misnomer here though. "Horrifying scribbles" would be more accurate. As the comp had tons of small detail I was more interested in the general placement of the elements for clarity.
"Thumbnail" is a bit of a misnomer here though. "Horrifying scribbles" would be more accurate. As the comp had tons of small detail I was more interested in the general placement of the elements for clarity.
Here's where things started to get very dicey for me. being close enough to see the detailed items while also fitting a giant beholder in frame was a real challenge. things often felt cramped and I struggled to give a few options that were unified and clear;
A request/change I made was since the brief mentioned the fish being koi-like, and xanathar's light-coloured face was directly behind it, it would make sense if it was a black koi as a usual goldfish would be sort of lost against a yellow background.
I love taking reference, and this piece was perfect for buying and digging up all the unique objects I could find. Was happy to include unique pieces my family lent out and had a great time setting everything up and finding the best composition.
Jade liked the setup too, and while I couldn't include a fuzzy baby in the pic I did manage to etch her into the dessert tray on the right for the final :)
Always good to look for reference you cant shoot yourself;
GIF!
You can see, closer to the very end of the process there was a change; the piece was too cluttered. I removed some items and moved Xanathar up to create some breathing room. in the end it wasn't too much extra work and the piece is so much better for it.
You can see, closer to the very end of the process there was a change; the piece was too cluttered. I removed some items and moved Xanathar up to create some breathing room. in the end it wasn't too much extra work and the piece is so much better for it.
Some details. I figured it'd be more menacing and interesting to depict the giant iris with all of the normally hard to see details on full display.
And finally, a quick explanation I sent to Shauna earlier on to show which items would end up on display, some of which didn't make the cut. Thanks for reading!
