Here are some Wildlings I designed for the Game of Thrones RPG.
As I said before, the game sheds some light on the various tribes dwelling North of the Wall.
It’s not that the books don’t cover them, it’s just that most times what makes them peculiar is just hinted at.

These drawings in particular have been quite a bitch. You see, a characters line-up like this would normally take as much time as three or four illustrations, at the price of one.
So if you don’t want to lose time and money you have to be efficient (and possibly go through little or no revisions, yes that would help).
They still took the better part of eight hours, which is pretty much what it would take for one single character with this level of polish.

So, well, I took shortcuts, used textures and I grabbed the colour palette from photographs. Much quicker than figuring out the colours along the way.
The only one that I “improvised” is the second from the left in the first picture, which is in fact slightly inconsistent with the others. However, its the only one set indoors, (not many Wildlings in Game of Thrones do) so I thought it would fit anyway.

So, from the left: a member of the Cannibal Clans, with trophies of previous killings and painted in blood; a Cave Dweller, painted in the green and purple of his clan; a Hornfoot, who walks barefoot even on snow and carries all his belongings on his back; an Ice Wife warrior on a bear mount.

From the left: a Nightrunner girder for war. These guys carry heavy armours usually collected from enemies (he’s sporting some Night’s Watch items); Walrus Men riding a whale-bones sledge pulled by dogs; a Thenn warrior in bronze scale mail, bronze headed spear and shield. They live on grassy mountains instead of frozen wastes.

AsI said, I don’t remember many of them while reading the Game of Thrones books. Maybe the Thenns and Hornfoot are mentioned? Anyway, since my 5 years old daughter can beat me at Memory Game it might also be that they are and I don’t remember.
In any case, they look pretty cool on print:)

by Paolo Puggioni