by Mike Vaillancourt

In this art Insider, I’ll walk through the process of creating the cover art for the Iron Kingdoms: Shadow of the Seeker adventure by Carlos Cabrera. To kick off the process, the following description (with appropriate visual reference and inspiration) went to Carlos.

The image depicts the main villain of the adventure, an eldritch warcaster who uses powerful Vyre weapons and technology. He can wear armor similar to Goreshade 4 but is a withered undead Iosan eldritch and his color scheme doesn’t have to be limited to white/green. His main weapon should look like the Vyre Electromancer leader’s staff.

Over his shoulder, a looming Aeternae warjack. A unit of sythyss Houseguard are silhouetted behind him.

The image should be a dark mirror of the older Retribution cover mixed with a Frazetta painting.

With the description in hand, Carlos got to work. As the description and reference were very clear as to what was being asked for, this piece was pretty straightforward. Carlos sent me the sketch you see below and only one minor adjustment to the myrmidon was needed before moving forward. (In the interest of flow, I’ll be showing the stages of the piece that are a part of the progress check-ins.)

With the thumbnail sketch approved, Carlos moved forward with the following color pass:

At this point we needed to dive into the design of the central figure, the eldritch.

These roughs looked great, but one thing we needed to do was adjust the anatomy and stretch him out. Color palette wise #4 was the version we liked the most, as it departed from the standard Retribution of Scyrah color palette with the cloth. There were several other details that I had worked up in revised sketches and sent them off to Carlos. In addition, I requested a few more backpack iterations that you can see here:

Taking backpack A and modifying the bottom a bit, Carlos then presented the revised version of the figure below.

We regularly have concept art done before an illustration begins for WARMACHINE & HORDES, but for the RPG, we come up with characters on the fly for new artwork, and this piece was no exception. The one difference is that, as opposed to most RPG work, the main figure was also being created as a miniature.

With the eldritch’s design finalized, Carlos got back to work on the cover and presented this update.

Details were starting to take shape here, and proportional adjustments to the Halberdiers were the only changes requested moving forward.

Nearly complete! The only adjustments requested now were the proportions to the Halberdiers and to change the cloth color for the eldritch.

Above, you see the final cover art for the Shadow of the Seeker! I look forward to hearing what you all think about the latest additions to the Iron Kingdoms, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the peek behind the curtain for the creation of the cover and concept art for the upcoming miniature!

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