Thalassia Skybreaker, Human Sorceress of the Storm
Making-of a Dungeons & Dragons character design, a fantasy noblewoman with an attitude, and lots of power at her hands
I was commissioned with the design of a Dungeons & Dragons character artwork for Thalassia, a Human Sorceress with the powers of wind, rain, and lightning.
With this article, I wanted to highlight the care I put into each of my character designs, from the preliminary sketch through linework, up until the final, colored deliverable.
If you are new to D&D, here are a couple of additional details you might want to know about sorceresses. Sorcerers in D&D are magical folks who are born with their powers rather than learning them, drawing on an innate connection to magic for spells and often having a unique origin story like a magical heritage or a brush with wild magic.
Thalassia Skybreaker is a 26-year-old storm sorceress from a fancy family. She used to be spoiled but got into trouble trying to be the boss. Now, she's on a special mission to prove herself. Thalassia is a bit full of herself, with a loud laugh and a belief that she's better than others. She wears cool outfits, and she has a dagger and a magic tool. She's a mix of a fancy noble and a stormy wizard, making her a unique character.
With all the information collected from the initial briefing, I jumped straight into drawing the preliminary sketch:
If you want to know more about my design process, check my previous two articles, the making-of of Benji the Bard Puppeteer, and of Zephyr Swiftstrike the Air Genasi Monk. To summarize:
Although my preliminary sketches are quite rough, their primary objective is to establish the main pose, body shape, general outline of the equipment, and some additional details about the background. I avoid going into more detail at this stage, as revising such basic elements of a composition often requires re-designing the entire thing from scratch, which would consume additional time and money. Neither I nor the customer would want that, so everyone is happy with this extra step
While I won’t cover every single detail of the rendering process here, I wanted to highlight the revisions stage: Taylor — let’s name my client like this — requested the boots, sleeves, and cloak to be edited, here’s a quick comparison of the two sketches:
I took a relaxing couple of afternoons to do the linework. Taylor only had a minor edit to request, and here’s the completed linework:
I was then off to flatting and shading the character design. I’ll have to admit that the color scheme is not my usual muted, earthly colors — but I think she turned out just fine ;)
After some additional, minor adjustments to the coloring, I was done. I delivered the character to Taylor, who left me a glowing review:
Just got a comm and was super happy with it! Great and professional work and service! I especially appreciated the frequent communication. I've commissioned artists where so much time went by without an update that I forgot I had commissioned them, not at all the case with Flygohr!
Here’s the final design exactly as I delivered it:
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy this series of making-of-posts, as I have more planned. If you have any questions about my commission process, please feel free to leave them in the comments or chat, and I’ll be happy to respond to everyone.
If you need an illustration done, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me personally. I’m leaving the link to my landing page for art commissions here, hoping to have you as my client someday. Thank you again for your time and attention!
Remember to breathe deeply!
Cheers,
Flygohr