The Making Of Rothar

| I thought it might be interesting to show you the process involved in creating the first image of a Zagoran character from my story. There's a lot of work that goes into this sort of art, and it's not often people get a behind the scenes look at it.

The story of how this art came to be still shocks me to this day. Well talking to Teaselbone in the usual mail, he asked if I could do a story for him - that in itself shocked me and I was more than happy too, but in payment for the story, he offered a picture! I was shocked - but I knew just what to ask for when I replied. Thus the quest for Rothar began. This all took place quite a while ago - around May or June of 2001, I think.

The biggest problem was trying to convey what Rothar looked like. As his creator, he and all other Zagorans are clear as day in my mind, but try conveying it to someone! Well, the first step was to make sure Teasel was reading the story. He hadn't at that point, but said he'd check it out. Not long after, he had whisked through the first 7 chapters! Glad he liked it at least. Besides the description of Zagorans in the story itself, I wrote another more detailed one for him, and grabbed a few pictures from the Net that each had some traits of a Zagoran body - shape, feet, maw, etc. For example, one of the many visual samples was Draco, from Dragonheart:


The expressions that Draco had were one of the best examples I could think of as to how a Zagoran's face might seem when showing various emotions. The picture on the right is VERY much the sort of look Massic tends to have. :) Now, Draco wasn't perfect though, since Zagorans don't have horns or quite the same shape of head, but he was a good working example for the snout and expression. ^_^

| One other thing I tried with my VERY limited drawing skills at the time was a basic look at some of the features of a Zagoran:

This image showed the general shape of the chest, toe claws, foot, hallux, eyes and such, as well as showed the look of the garments they wear (even how the leather loin-cloth like thing allowed room for their tale). If you're wondering, yes - my drawing skills are getting MUCH better than this early attempt at things, so you're welcome to make fun of it, heh. The eye was the only thing I didn't think right on - drawing it too human like initially. This, along with the other pictures and writings, gave Teasel the basis to work on the first few concepts.

| Along with the descriptions and images, also came the basic rules of usage. Normally, I'm not a picky guy, but with Zagorans, my one big rule is no yiffy pics. Suggestive, sure, but nothing any naughtier than that. Teasel was fine with that, but I do mention it just in case anyone else out there would like to have a go at drawing a Zagoran. Why? Well, Zagorans are a creation that mean a lot to me - they are deep souled and wonderful beings, and though they do have a wicked appeal to many herp fans, I want people to keep those thoughts second to what they represent to me, and hopefully to others. Ahh... as for any other characters of mine... knock yourself out. :)

| The first thing that happened after a little while and a few questions was a concept sketch of some Zagoran/Rothar features. Teasel sent them and asked, basically, what was right or wrong about them. Here's the first sketch I saw:

The first one Teasel sent is on the left. I think I broke a big grin seeing that lovely sole and claws, heh. The initial stuff in this sketch was pretty good. What I then did with some photo manipulation and some careful mouse work was retouch the image to mould things a little more toward how I figured they should look. The claws were made black, the foot was widened a bit, and I tried to change Rothar's head a bit to make it more sleek and a bit meaner looking. Not that he is mean, but he has that look about him! My changes are the sketch on the right.

| With the right ideas in mind, Teaselbone began work on the final image. The following pictures are a progression of the images over the weeks as we each found the time to tend to them:


On the left is the first sketch of the final image. Teasel had begun this one just before I sent the changes back fro the last, which is why there's no head or much detail yet. On the right is the first completed draft of Rothar. From this image, we began to refine him a little.

From Teasel's first draft, I worked with the image again to reshape the head slightly as well as shorten the tail just a little. I also made slight changes to muscles, limb shapes... etc. From that, Teasel got out his eraser, fixed up the sketch, and did the first background for it. Notice the more conventional shelf and bed - I mentioned that it would be a shelf moulded from the clay wall and a fur pelt, and poof... Teasel made the change for the final sketch.

| With the final sketch perfect, the image was to be coloured. At this point, I was really humbled by Teasel's efforts - I had felt horrible about correcting him! To do the colouring, I had to suddenly create a scheme of colours that represented Zagorans:


On the left is the colour template I created. On the right was the draft colour image Teasel provided, along with a minor fix to the eyes by me.

The rest is pretty much history. From the colour draft, Teasel airbrushed in muscle tones and gave depth and realism to the image, bringing Rothar even more to life. From that image, I did some minor lighting work and a little effects work to make the eerie pale eyes seem a bit more real, and it was done!

The work to create Rothar took many weeks of effort, that's for sure. I think I certainly got the better part of this exchange with such a fantastic image of my favourite character. Teasel did an amazing job with not the greatest help from my end (least I didn't think I was very useful), and my thanks certainly goes out to him for this, as well as letting me show you his early efforts to see how artwork like this is created. We really tried to keep this a big secret, even though it was completed about a month ago. I wanted to release it with Chapter 15 of the story, which was very slow in coming (sorry!). Will there be more images of Rothar and the many other Zagorans? Maybe... you'll just have to keep visiting and see! Thanks for checkin' it out, and don't forget to drop Teasel a BIG thank you for this one! - mail teaselbone -