Hey everyone, happy Tuesday to you all! Today I wanted to show off a selection of some of the art you will find in the Blood Throne Core Box rule book and the Hero Expansion book.
I will go into depth on the process of getting art done for a project like this in a future podcast as it is a big topic. Suffice it to say: finding artists or a studio that can produce a high volume of quality art within budget is no easy task. However, the effort and expense is well worth it as in my opinion, the art really brings the setting to life.
First I wanted to show the process of how getting custom art goes in most cases. You start with a written prompt and possibly a conversation about what you are looking for, and then the artist comes back with an initial concept to be sure everything is on track before doing too much work.
Back Blood Throne Here.
Join the Blood Throne community here.
For this first piece we wanted to depict a key moment in the lore. Two of the primary heroes of the world prior to the Throne Wars, Zaphael and Kerioth who were the mortal champions of the goddess of creation and god of destruction respectively now locked in combat. They were once like brothers but during the penultimate moments of the Throne Wars were forced to fight one another. It is an extremely dramatic moment in the lore and we wanted to show it in visual form!
I was happy with the initial composition so we moved on to an additional layer of detail. In this version we see more clearly what the characters look like. Zaphael with his Lethgelio Spear wrought from a bough of the sacred tree of the same name, and Kerioth with his great sword, Drakkslav. Each leads a force of soldiers reflecting their factions and behind them is the Blood Throne itself!
Here you can see a black and white version of the final piece which we wanted to have for variety. Often you use parts of art or a modified version to add more life to the pages of the book so it isn’t all walls of text! It would be awesome to be able to have beautiful custom art on every page but it just isn’t feasible within the time and budgetary restraints so finding ways to get more mileage out of each piece helps a lot!
And the final piece in amazing full color! Zapheal and Kerioth are shown in all their glory as the one time best friends now cross blades in mortal combat at the foot of the Blood Throne, with the fate of the world in the balance.
We worked with a number of different artists on this project but a huge props to Sonderflex studios based in Indonesia for doing a big chunk of the work and to our partner Creature Caster for providing a lot of the concept art and color hero art. They were extremely professional and we look forward to continuing to work with them in the future!
Likewise when designing the miniatures, it all starts with concept art as in the image above of Kar Bjornson, Shaman of the savage Delgri tribes and one of the heroes in the Core Box.
From that essential starting point we are able to get the model sculpted.
From there we go to the digital artist to color the model which provides the jumping off point for the 2D artists to depict that character in other art and provides instruction for the model painter as well.
That then gets us to the final product: a fully realized and beautifully painted hero model! But it all starts with the art, and that is why it is so important to get a good foundation in art direction to really breathe life into a setting like Blood Throne and try to keep a consistent look and feel.
We also have some different art styles from independent artists as well such as that above. This piece, which I love, is pencil and ink depicting Belphegore in the process of earning his moniker as the Lord of Sacrifice. This grim piece really shows you how cruel and debased Belphegor has become and brings you into the dark and gritty themes of the Blood Throne world.
And above is the absolutely stunning full color art for Belphegore which was provided by our awesome partners at Creature Caster! Many of you have already seen this one but wow is it awesome. We would like to include more work like this in the future but this piece took a LONG time, haha. Not hard to see why as it is so detailed.
Above are two of the options for the heritage choice of your own custom heroes, the rules for which can be found in the Hero Expansion. We have over 25 heritage options for creating your own heroes and included a wide selection of art depicting them. Above are a Zri’San and Catfolk respectively. Zri’San are the mortal children of Zenith, the goddess of creation. They are very rare now due to the decimation of their kind during the Throne Wars but are gifted with her ability to heal and are famous for their noble deeds in the past.
Catfolk are man sized, bipedal, sentient cats and are relatively common in Cheol. As you have already seen in the previous update, Catfolk come in many shapes and sizes. They have smaller cousins, the Bestat such as the hero, Jemden in the Hero Expansion who are roughly Gnome sized cat people known for their mischievous nature. They also have larger cousins such as the Acama–or Jaguarmen as they are known colloquially–which the hero Ttama is one of, also in the Hero Expansion. They are large and powerful but found almost exclusively in the jungles of the People of the Sun.
The world of Cheol is large and filled with all manner of sentient beings struggling to survive in a world gone mad. We wanted to give you as the player a sandbox to bring a party of heroes in this world to life! In the Hero Expansion, each heritage has a wealth of information about their customs, biological or paranormal quirks, etc. to help you envision how they would or would not fit into a custom party of heroes.
We have also included art in the Hero Expansion for each class in the game to illustrate what a “generic” version of that class would look like for custom hero creation. As the named heroes in the Core Box and Hero Expansion reflect what their class would look like from their homelands, we wanted to provide a visual inspiration or jumping off point for custom heroes of the same class as they could be reflected in the wider world of Cheol.
This allows you as the player to use the extensive Blood Throne lore to conceive of a version of each class in the game that is unique to you but that won’t feel out of place. As many nations of the world have fallen, and there are desperate bands of survivors and small enclaves of Kith in hiding, you have a wide canvas to explore different themes for your own heroes. Above is a Human Monk, ready to administer justice to those that would violate the natural cycles of life!
Lastly, I wanted to show off one of the pieces we had commissioned to bring the backstory of Blood Throne to life! This is Ha’Sathan, the god of destruction. He was the foil to Zenith, goddess of creation, both of whom are now slain leaving the world of Cheol godless. I really love how this piece came out, the studio did a fantastic job showing Ha’Sathan’s power and scale.
There is a LOT more art to enjoy in the game, this was just a sample to give you all an idea of what to expect and hopefully to communicate the level of care that went into building this world for you all to enjoy. This is not a game world with paper thin backstory just to sell a product, we really went deep. We are trying to make something special and I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as we enjoyed creating it!
I will have another update coming soon, I didn’t want to blast it all out in one gigantic update so be prepared for more fun Blood Throne information soon!