Magic the Gathering – Evidence Examiner

And just like that, I received the proofs for Evidence Examiner, one of the cards I made for Magic the Gathering Murders at Karlov Manor.

The set has been released, and it’s always a huge privilege being featured among such amazing artists.

Evidence Examiner is a Magic the Gathering Multicolored Card, which means it’s printed in a golden frame, by far my favourite.
It’s awesome, it glitters:)

I also received the proofs for my previous card belonging to the same set, Magnifying Glass.

It’s an artifact, so the border doesn’t glitter, but still.

Once again, I managed not to delete the sketches.

This first one was rejected for obvious reasons, as the Evidence Examiner’s face wasn’t visible. That’s too bad, as I thought the perspective was a bit more unusual. But yes, I agree it made less sense than the one we picked.

In the second sketch I made a mistake, as I thought the Examiner were a male. Now that I think of it I’m not sure the brief specified their gender, but I eventually had to make another version with the final face.

There was also a big change I had to make at the palette after I had started rendering.

Evidence Examiner is multicolored green-blue, and the Art Director felt like the palette of the initial rough (on the left) was a bit too warm for its purpose.
In the final version, on the right, I made the background a lot colder, which together with the green drapes in the foreground made the category of the card much clearer.

You might notice that in the final version I also added some more fins to the Merfolk Detective, which in the first draft was a bit too light in that department.

Thanks again to AD Deborah Garcia for the flawless direction. Once again, everything went super smooth and it was a pleasure working with her.

by Paolo Puggioni

Magic the Gathering – Magnifying Glass

Magnifying Glass is one of the Illustrations I made for Magic the Gathering.
It’s part of the Murders at Karlov Manor set, that will be released on the 9th of February.

The set isn’t out yet, but since the cards are already being teased I’m allowed to show it around.
Wizards of the Coast just let me know that the artists’ proof are about to be shipped, so I can’t wait to see how the print turned out!
In the meantime, here’s the digital version.

Since lately I’ve been super diligent, I have even kept the sketches.

Since I haven’t seen the set yet, and art briefs don’t usually include gameplay or cards stats, the information I have about Murders at karlov Manor are mostly from the MTG Wiki:

“Murders at Karlov Manor is a top-down designed murder mystery set, featuring the tropes of the genre. Murders and mysteries are woven into the game itself. Play detective as you collect evidence, don disguises and identify suspects to decipher the deadly murder mystery at the heart of Ravnica”.

“This set is the first to feature 15-card Play Boosters that replace both Draft Boosters and Set Boosters (one card being a marketing card or art card). Because of the decrease in common cards in a pack, the total amount of common cards in a given set is also going down. R&D lowered the number of commons from 101 to 80 (and increased uncommons from 80 to 100). The rare surveil lands are put in the “wild card” slot of the boosters rather than taking the “rare” slot”.

As it happens, Magnifying Glass was an artifact already present in the game, Illustrated by Dan Scott for Shadows Over Innistrad I believe in 2016.

Anyway, thanks to Art Director Deborah Garcia for the super smooth and pleasant direction.

As usual, the production times for Magic the Gathering cards are super long. I delivered the final illustration on the 12th of November 2022 and the set is coming out just now.

I have to confess I almost forgot I made this. Checking in my Archived Work folder I also realized that there are five other cards that I made about that time that haven’t been released yet, so I hope I’ll be able to post them soon!

by Paolo Puggioni

Clouds Port

I made Clouds Port a while ago but as usual I forgot to post it.

Basically I was looking for the best way to create believable clouds in Blender for something completely unrelated, and I came across the awesome CloudScapes addon.
So, this is an obvious attempt at messing around with volumetric clouds. Did I overdo it? Maybe! But I have a thing for clouds, I like to draw them, paint them, take pictures of them and now generate them in a 3D scene.

I then just hastily put together a very cheap couple space station just to avoid having a picture just of clouds.

Clouds Port

As all this work I’m doing in Blender is pretty much a way to learn something new every time, along the way I learned how to better manage volume shaders in Blender, which is something I hadn’t spent much time on before.

The one thing I’ve learned about Blender is that it’s the deepest rabbit hole I could ever have dived into.
You learn one new thing and another three pop up that you had never thought about.

As for the rest, the greebles and paneling are just displacement maps made with SciFi FLEX, and since the scene ended up being super low poly I put together a short animation because why not:)

For the 2D image I did very minimal editing. Mostly the lights from the ships’ engines, as I really didn’t have the time to do those in Blender.

I know, it’s just 5 seconds, but apparently that’s the attention span of the average Internet user.

by Paolo Puggioni

Circle Ward 27

I made Circle Ward 27 as part of my ongoing learning process in Blender.

I have reached a level where I actually find it faster to mock up a scene in 3D than draw everything from scratch, which is a good boost to my workflow.
I have always used 3D as a block out for big environments even in studio, but I always relied on 2D for the final result.

Being more confident with Blender means unlocking a whole lot of subjects I hadn’t bothered with so far.
For example, drawing the aerial view of a big city like this in 2D would mean days of painstaking work, unless one doesn’t resort to completely different workflows like photobashing and matte painting, or goes for a much, much less polished and more “impressionistic” work with just brushes and patience.

I resorted to a couple of awesome add-ons for Circle Ward 27.

The main one was the great BlOSM (Blender Open Source Maps), which allows you to pull any city in the world from the OSM database and import it into Blender.
Well, at least a small parts of them, if you don’t want your graphic card to blow up.

The learning part here was about texturing each building, for which I did a “meh” job to be honest.
Next time I’ll use displacement maps to make them look less flat, and maybe add some reflections and specularity to the windows.
I wasn’t going for a production-level of quality here, so that’s good enough for now.

The second add-on that I’m really getting fond of is SciFi-FLEX, which cuts down by A LOT the tedious and repetitive process of creating and scattering panels and greebles.

I also did a mediocre work here. By the time of writing I got a lot more competent with it, and next time around I’ll use displacement maps instead of the hundred thousands polys I scattered around here.

I still did quite a bit of overpaint and editing in 2D using my trusted Krita, I don’t think I’ll ever turn into a 3D artist any time soon.
I’m basically a Concept Artist who happens to use 3D.

Anyway, I’m having huge fun working with Blender.
This was done in my spare time while learning new features (to me). For my freelance work I’m already completing a huge scene for a Star Trek illustration that it would have literally taken weeks if done in 2D from scratch.

As it happens in publishing I won’t be able to post that for months, so you’ll have to trust me on that for now:)

by Paolo Puggioni

Just Another Spaceship

This is just another spaceship, the point of which was mostly to try out some features of Blender.

I’ve been practicing with Blender a lot lately. I’m almost turning from old school/old fart 100% 2D Concept Artist into one of those 2D Concept Artists who also happen to use 3D.
This seems to be the standard at the moment, so here I am. I’ve been messing around with 3D for ages, but I’ve included it in my regular workflow only recently. I should have done it sooner, really.

I have to confess I’m falling in love with Blender, especially for environment design.
As a tool, 3D allows you to design complex scenery in a 100th of the time it would take to do the same thing just drawing. I mean, I shudder at how long it would have taken me to do this with just 2D tools.
I’m even getting half competent at making not-so-shit topologies!

Anyway, this was just another spaceship without pretense. I was trying out the main features of Box Cutter and Hard Ops, the two mandatory Blender add-ons to work on hard surfaces.

I won’t go into the features themselves, as there are tons of tutorials about them on Youtube and a very well written documentation. I’ll just say that they speed up the work immensely, especially for someone who wants to focus mostly on the design aspect of things and skip some of the technical steps.

As far as the design go, I REALLY have to put more thought on it going forward.
3D tools in general are a big trap. Adding details in 3D is really easy, which means it’s common to fall into the temptation of scattering them everywhere.
In hindsight, I could have done a better job at grouping them in a better way, leaving more resting space for the eye and all that.
I obviously focused more on how to do things rather than why.

I’ll be more careful on my next work.
Yes, it will probably be another spaceship.

Game of Thrones – Approaching Lannisport

Approaching Lannisport is the second illustration I made for The Rise of the Dragon, the latest Game of Thrones illustrated book by George R.R. Martin.

First off, in reply to some, I know the Amazon title says “Volume One”, but I know nothing of it. I haven’t been contacted for a second volume yet, so I know as much as you guys.

Approaching Lannisport is set, like all other illustrations in the book, before the time of the Game of Thrones books.

It depicts king Aenys’ trip to the port city of Lannisport together with all his court.

Lannisport is protected by a ring of walls, high and strong. The city
is renowned for its goldwork and goldsmiths and produces a spiced
honey wine. Lannisport is policed by the well-trained City Watch.
The city has a great motherhouse. Like King’s Landing, Lannisport has
higher quality brothels. Merchants from Lannisport often trade with
their counterparts in the Free Cities.

This one still had lots of people in it, but at least they weren’t all supposed to be crammed in the foreground. As a result, the composition was a lot less troublesome than End of Regency.

Obligatory list of known characters: Aenys is the guy riding far away in the distance, with his King’s Guard knights at either side.

The lady on the far left is Princess Rhaena, and the girl at her right is her favourite Melony Piper.

All others are randos of the court.

Excerpt: It was on this journey that the young Princess Rhaena, now
fourteen, drew increasing attention from would-be suitors—though her
behavior was sullen for much of the progress, as her dragon [text cuts
off here]

Once again, I’ve been a good boy and I have kept the sketches. Well, at least the one that got approved.

Like literally every time I look at one of my illustrations after some time (this was completed about a year ago), I’m not at all satisfied with it.
Lannisport in the background should be affected by a lot more atmospheric perspective, whereas its values are pretty much at the same level of the bushes next to King Aenys.
Damn that really bothers me now.

Also, I could have managed the level of details A LOT better, focusing them more around the characters in the foreground and making the background more painterly. Again, this bothers me a lot. It’s something that happens when you stare at a picture for too long, and you stop noticing the mistakes.

Long story short, I would spend another day on it al least. Oh well.

Note to self: start scheduling a couple of weeks between the time you finish an illustration and when you submit it.
I say it all the time but I never do it.

In other news, The Rise of the Dragon made it to the New York Times best sellers.
It’s not like people bought it because of my drawings, I suspect George R.R. Martin’s name, or the Game of Thrones franchise in general, had something to do with it.
But still, the fact that it’s there is still a big source of pride somehow.

It’s still not clear to me why it’s been put in the “Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous” category though.
I guess How to Train a Dragon would have been more suitable for it.
i mean, we had to compete with the winner and runner-up Go-To Dinners and Atomic Habits, which doesn’t sound fair to me.

Anyway, nice to know that my Approaching Lannisport is there, in a respectable fourth place between The Woks of Life and The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse.

More Game of Thrones stuff next week.

by Paolo Puggioni

Game of Thrones – End of Regency

End of Regency is one of four illustrations I made for The Rise of the Dragon, the latest illustrated Game of Thrones book by George R.R.Martin.

Like most of the work I get to publish, this bunch of illustrations was commissioned a little over a year ago. Since the book has just been published, a little ahead of schedule, our embargo has been lifted and we are now allowed to share our images.

I say “we” as, like The World of Ice and Fire which I did back in 2014, The Rise of the Dragon is a collaboration of many of the best artists around.

Some of them I know by reputation, others, like Marc Simonetti, or my old friend John McCambridge I’ve worked with in other projects, including the first Game of Thrones illustrated book, World of Ice and Fire.

There are already a few articles about this new one, and here’s a list of all the art credits.

If you’re tempted to buy Rise of the Dragon and fancy reading a little bit before you do, here are a few places where you can start:

– Obviously George R.R.Martin’s blog;

– A Wiki of Ice and Fire, still in progress by the looks of it;

– Empire: The Rise Of The Dragon – Exclusive Illustrations From George RR Martin’s New Targaryen Tome;

– Forbes: ‘The Rise Of The Dragon’ Review: A Beautiful New Book By George R.R. Martin;

– IGN.com: The Rise of the Dragon: Preview of the House of the Dragon Art Book;

The book is a 700+ pages coffee-table beast, filled with art, covering the rise of the dragons in Westeros along with the House who mastered them, good old Targaryen.

It’s really a must for Game of Thrones fans, as it covers many events that were just hinted at in the books and the series.

My first illustration, End of Regency, depicts the moment when young Aegon Targaryen, backed by his best and most loyal knights, walks into the council’s room and conveys strongly that the time of regency is ended and he is now the king on the Iron Throne.

As always, there’s also the super polished final sketch.

I have to confess that I struggled a bit with composition for End of Regency, as it featured a lot of characters that needed to be in the scene, one of whom is a short boy and another a 2.3m tall giant.

I’m still not convinced the tilt of Aegon’s head is 100% correct, but hey, it was approved so if it looks right to others then it’s right.

Before my beloved Game of Thrones nerds – or even journalists – start to speculate like last time and poke me on different platforms to ask for details, the characters in End of Regency are as follows:

Sitting: Right from Aegon (the blonde guy at the center) is Torrhen Manderly, the Hand of the King. Further right is Grand Maester Munkun and bottom right Lord Grandison.
Sitting left from Aegon is Lord Merryweather, while bottom left is Lord Stackspear.

The HUGE knight behind Aegon is Sandoq the Shadow, while the other four are unspecified Knights of the Kingsguard.

End of Regency:

“Lord Manderly,” King Aegon said, in the sudden stillness, “pray tell
me how old I am, if you would be so good.” “You are ten-and-six today,
Your Grace,” Lord Manderly replied. “A man grown. It is time for you to
take the governance of the Seven Kingdoms into your own hands.” “I
shall,” King Aegon said. “You are sitting in my chair.”

This is the book, in case you couldn’t be bothered to click any of the links above:)

I’ll post the remaining illustrations over the next few days. Obligatory thanks to the art directors at Ten Speed Press: Elizabeth Strongberg and Claudia Sanchez, and obviously to the people at Random House.

Working with them was super positive and fun.

by Paolo Puggioni

Magic the Gathering – The Knight

The Knight is one of the cards I made for Magic the Gathering Commanders Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate.

When Art Director Dawn Murin sent me the brief and I read the words “Baldur’s Gate” in the email subject I fainted a little.
I mean, not only I lived in Baldur’s Gate with my imaginary character while playing D&D. I also played the crap out of all the video games when they came out a billion years ago, to the point that I could almost draw the map of the city out of memory.

Look at this ancient beauty.

As far as the Knight goes, I was a bit troubled about the release.
Wizards of the Coast published the list of cards for the release last month, but I couldn’t see mine in it. I kind of thought it had been culled or something like that.
Then a friend at work, who is kind of a Magic the Gathering Pro, dug it up and pointed it to me.

Being it a token card is not part of the regular bunch, hence the mistery.

If you’re curious, here’s the page with all the token cards for Magic the Gathering Commanders Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate.

Anyway, here she is in all her fierce Tiefling beauty.

The Knight is a member of the Order of the Flaming Fist, patrolling the riverside on her Eriskay pony.

Talking about the process, the same friend asked me if I had worked on her face separately and then moved it into place, which obviously I didn’t.

But that made me realize that her face might look a bit overworked compared to the rest, which it probably is.

I have to confess that the things I always struggle with the most in a painting are faces. I often over-compensate by spending a lot of time on them compared to most of the rest, which often results in them being more detailed and polished than the overall composition.

I think that from now on I’ll try and do the same number of passes in all elements of the picture and see if that improve things. Thanks Levy:)
Upside of going to the office: people talk.

Since I’m a diligent boy, I kept the sketches.

There’s still a whole bunch of cards that I made that haven’t been released yet, this one was finished more than a year ago!
However, together with the ones already out it starts to look like a line-up:)

Also, and this a huge thing for me, I kind of graduated to the standard game, so this time I got the printed proofs, and they look awesome.

Fun fact. This was the first time I had worked with AD Dawn Murin. I received the brief while I was already working on two other cards, and the moment I accepted it I scheduled the time on my planner and took it off my mind, as it was weeks ahead.

Then one day I came across the art order again and “OMG I MISREAD THE DEADLINE DATE! IT’S TOMORROW! I HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED”

So I wrote a super apologetic – and admittedly panicked – email that sounded like “I MISREAD THE DEADLINE I’M SO SORRY CAN I HAVE MORE TIME?”, to which I was replied something along the lines of “dude chill, you are misreading it now, it’s still two months ahead”.

“Oh, ok… well that was me, nice to meet you then:)”

Everything ended well and nothing was damaged aside form my self respect.

By the way, if anyone wants signed proofs drop me an email.

by Paolo Puggioni

Magic the Gathering – Captain Eberhart

Captain Eberhart is one of the illustrations I made for Magic the Gathering back in 2021 (or was it 2020?)

On top of the fact that I keep being pretty busy, the COVID lockdowns have added another layer of confusion to my already troubled head.
I keep thinking of events and placing them in my mind time-line in the wrong place. Like “that thing happened three years ago, right?”.
Nope, it was five man.

It’s as if my brain stopped recording stuff for a couple of years, I should have kept a diary.
Or maybe not, most of the pages would have been something along the lines of “still locked down. Looking outside through the window”.

Anyway. the only good thing of that period is that I made a bunch of cards for Magic the Gathering, which is about one of the coolest things I could thing of as an artist.

Captain Eberhart is part of Magic the Gathering Alchemy, which is the digital format of the game.
For those unfamiliar with it:

“Alchemy is our MTG Arena format based on the Standard format that incorporates new-to-digital Magic cards alongside rebalanced Standard cards to create a fast, ever-evolving experience for our players.”

Working for Alchemy is obviously just as good as working for the standard game. The only downside is that the work that goes straight to Alchemy isn’t printed, so we don’t receive any artist proofs.

Also – and this is my entirely personal feeling – I suspect some artists are asked to do some work for Alchemy before they level up to the standard Magic the Gathering format. Not that Alchemy is something less, but still.

Here’s Captain Eberhart, one of the most kickass Cathars.

I have to admit, looking at it after all this time I’m not 100% happy about how it came out.

I can assure you the anatomy is correct, but the super bulky plate armour makes his head look to small, and possibly angled at an odd position.
Still, I’m sure about the anatomy, but in hindsight I could have picked another angle to avoid that effect.

Oh well. The card does look pretty good though.

Just to provide some context, Captain Eberhart is one of the Cathars, a sect of soldiers of the Church of Avacyn.
The Church had been founded by vampire Planeswalker Sorin Markov with the purpose, among others, of protecting humans from the predation of the plane’s monsters.

Within its ranks, Cathars are involved in a broad variety of activities related to countering monsters: investigating crimes, helping the population and so on.
Captain Eberhart is one of those who go face to face with the most dangerous creatures, and this illustrations depicts him in the quite moments after a battle, cleaning his sword from gore and blood.

I think the context is quite unusual, I loved the idea of drawing a character not in the middle of the action but after it.
So, my thanks to Art Director Andrew Vallas for it.

After Electrostatic Blast and this one, in 2021 (or 2020?) I made another couple of illustrations for Alchemy and then “graduated” to the standard game.
I’m waiting for some proofs to be delivered probably this week, and then I will share at least one of those.

by Paolo Puggioni

Star Wars – The Child

The Child is the co-star of the awesome Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian, and thanks to Fantasy Flight Games, another check on my list of main Star Wars characters drawn.

Crushed by the guilt of not having posted anything in months, yesterday I rummaged though my “work completed” folder and noticed that I still have A TON of Star Wars artwork I haven’t shared yet.

This adds up to the throng of illustrations I haven’t posted from the Children of Dune book that I’ve recently finished illustrating, and the bunch of Magic the Gathering cards that I might (I have to check) be allowed to publish.

But.

Let’s go in order.

As you might know, The Child (whose real name is Grogu, as we learn later in the series) is one of the main characters of the Mandalorian series by Disney+.

I’m always super happy to work on anything Star Wars, but the pleasure for the bunch of artwork I made based on The Mandalorian was on another level.

You know, I have to confess that I wasn’t a big huge fan of any of the prequels or even the sequels, although Rogue One was actually quite cool, and I didn’t mind Solo.

But The Mandalorian, well, that was probably, in my opinion, the best thing to come out of the franchise in a long, long time.

It was fully consistent with the spirit of the original Star Wars, it had a wonderful pace, it took all its time to define all characters, had the right balance between action and narration, and the scenes were just superb.

Also, and this is one of the things I enjoyed the most, it didn’t stick CG everywhere. The Child was almost entirely animatronics, so there wasn’t that unpleasant Jar-Jar plastic uncanny valley that spoiled the prequels to me.

The Child was believable and sweet without being cheesy.

So, in short, I was super happy to draw it.

As you might notice, the illustration is very close to its corresponding scene from the show.
That was a specific request on my brief, so I didn’t have much wiggle room there.

As far as the character goes, we don’t know much about it.

Grogu obviously belongs to the same race as Yoda. We know he was raised at the Jedi Temple in Coruscant during the Clone Wars, and that at the time of The Mandalorian he’s about 50.

That’s pretty much it. All the rest is Internet memes, as at the time Baby Yoda was about the most popular source of memes on the whole internet.

For once I’m not completley oblivious of the destination of my artwork. The Child (together with another few Illustrations) was part of the Razor Crest Expansion pack, of which you can see a preview here.

In the linked article you can see a couple of the cards I made, Kruill and Peli Motto, which I’ll be sharing shortly.

by Paolo Puggioni