For this week’s Art Insider, I want to share the cover art for the upcoming “Legend of the Witchfire” adventure for the 5e Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game Kickstarter. For this illustration, I tapped the always-amazing Carlos Cabrera to bring Alexia and the Orgoth undead to life. The description I sent him was as follows:
Alexia sits upon an ancient Orgoth throne made of black stone. She stares with a grim and malevolent expression intensely at camera. In one hand, she holds the hilt of the Witchfire, the sword pointed downward, its tip resting on the ground.
The throne is in an ancient Orgoth crypt, possibly illuminated by flaming braziers, lanterns, or torches, burning fire of an unnatural green color. The throne and walls, etc., should be adorned with Orgoth sculptures and design. Around her, beside her, before her, and behind her are undead. Some are ancient skeletons, risen from the grave. Others are freshly dead Nonokion Cultists (Infernal Cultists from Oblivion) that just perished at Alexia’s hands moments ago. There should be a variety of undead in various states, but all have flocked to her side and should appear ready to fight alongside her. The scene should make Alexia come across as super powerful and in total command of everything around her. It should be a scene that would be terrifying to look upon if you were just a measly first-level adventurer getting your feet wet for the first time.
For Alexia’s outfit, she should be unarmored. She’s been sick for months under the care of Morrowan sisters. Likely, she’s returned to her white frock but maybe has the leather duster over it. She should look somewhat disheveled, maybe like she just threw these clothes on. Likely she’s barefoot. She’s not equipped for battle, in other words, but she should also look like that doesn’t really matter to her—she’s still going to kick your ass. I’m kind of looking for a cross between the original first cover and the second, but with that “King Conan on the Throne” vibe.
With that description in hand, Carlos was off to the races producing thumbnail sketches!
D was the clear winner and was approved to move to the next stage!
In this stage, Carlos started blocking in the Orgoth and Alexia. The overall vibe is there for Alexia, but the framing and scale of the Orgoth were off. I sketched directly over the art to add in a couple of Orgoth on either side of her and gave the foreground figures more prominence to help further frame her and make the scene feel a bit claustrophobic.
Moving to the next round, you can see Carlos has nearly finished the rendering and it’s now just a matter of refining little details throughout the piece.
This is the final grayscale pass of the artwork before he applied…
…the color to the scene. The piece has now come to life, but there were a few things I didn’t think were quite working with the lighting. I requested that the god light in the middle of the scene gets toned down, have the edges tightened up, and finally asked that he work back in some more contrast in the shadows on and around Alexia.
With those revisions made the image was approved as final!
This may be my favorite RPG cover to date and it has me really excited to show you more work when the time comes…and that’ll be soon (early 2021)! For the time being, stay safe out there and get your game on!
