Enter Al - Game designer and concept artist
Creating an icon, even for such a "local" environment as a game, is one of the most challenging tasks I've ever had to face as a character designer, and I don't even know if I've succeeded. Only time (or rather you) will tell.
I was really excited when the concept design phase of the Warcrow: Adventures characters came, I had been waiting for months—now, years—and then... I had to face the blank paper (or screen, actually).
Luckily, I had quite a lot of baggage with me already.
I've been playing my role-playing matches as Dungeon Master in a prototype of the Warcrow: Adventures setting for years now, imagining what the characters of the various nations (with provisory names) that populated the world back then would be like; but even then, the whole team had been working tirelessly for months on creating this new universe's fluff and working on the characters from a mechanical point of view.
At that time—depending on the iteration—Nayrawas called Faisca ("spark" in Spanish) or Lusco (back when her twin brother's name was Fusco, our concept designer Grégoire will tell you more about him later). As members of the development team always imagined Nayra as a medieval elven version of Miranda Priestly, Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada.
That alone set a very solid design foundation regarding her behavior, the quality of her clothes, and her style. But there was still an issue: she'd have to provide a vision of an entire nation, the Hegemony of Embersig.
The Hegemony of Embersig is defended by its Black Legion, which fights with pride to protect its multicultural empire, made up of humans, Aestari elves, and Ghent dwarves.
Despite the ever-increasing competition from other nations during the new magic cycle, the Hegemony has managed to expand thanks to the sheer might of its professional army.
At that point, the design department was already devising some early proposals to set certain concepts, we had many Art Deco-inspired elements in mind... I must admit that it's one of my favorite art movements, so it was easy for me to combine it with the clothing sketches I had been imagining.
On the other hand, I liked the idea of the Hegemony uniforms having a lot of quality in their patterns and manufacturing, even for the low-rank soldiers. I imagined that the best tailoring schools and the most renowned seamstress and tailors would be part of the military rather than being mere civilians. So, what can I say about a high-born elven lady, dean of a University of Magic? All that skill and luxury had to be on display.
I had quite a few leads already, I just needed to dive into the sea of Pinterest, art books, and film and television costume books to find some inspiration.
As you can see, it didn't take many iterations to reach the final choice.
It's possible that the most difficult choice was whether to choose pants for her travel outfit or the more traditional tunic. In the end, we opted for the tunic to set her apart from other wizards that we might design later on and to give her a more formal look, worthy of a dean of a magic university.
Then it was time to decide on the color of her clothes, which would set a precedent for the color scheme of the Hegemony of Embersig itself.
And finally, the easiest process was hands down arming her with her wizard's staff. Surprisingly, we ended up designing three in one sitting. They came out so well that soon enough they became the illustrations for her equipment cards (this is the painted version that the amazing Stephanie Boehm created based on my designs).
Enter Grégoire Veauleger - Concept designer
When I was asked to make the character of Naergon, I inherited a difficult task: he had to resemble Nayra since both characters share a bond... But at the same time, we had to make sure they were different enough. It's always tricky to find the right balance between similarity and difference!
Unlike the usual work process, which involves making several proposals for different designs to choose from so we can direct the rest of the research, I felt the need to create a first version of the character directly. I needed to know whether or not I understood the idea behind Naergon.
The first version features certain characteristic elements of the Puppeteers of Yaldabaoth (like the double handkerchief or being barefooted) as well as design sketches of the soldier outfits of the Hegemony of Embersig, which were still in development at the time... Moving forward, we continued exploring other options for outfits and equipment (for example, adding elements from Nayra's designs, such as the belt or the haute couture collar).
We gradually moved towards his final form (technically, his double form) by mixing and redesigning several of the previous versions.
It was following this process that Naergon was finally born! Some additional adjustments were necessary, but the cleanup work could begin to bring the character you know today to life.
This character took a lot of work after all! But I'm happy with the result, and I hope you'll be happy with it too.
And that's how the Caladren siblings from Warcrow Adventures were born.
Nayra is a Core box character and Naergon is a Kickstarter-exclusive miniature. To get both of them run to get your pledge at Gamefound before June 6.
