All About Art Direction with Brian Scott Walters (Patreon)

To explain what I do as an Art Director, I'm going to walk you through the creation of this piece by Aaron Miller and how I give feedback and make choices:

Art by Aaron Miller

I needed a nice full-page color image for an upcoming Humblewood release. An artist, Aaron Miller, who I knew from my work in the art convention convention circuit had expressed a lot of interest in working on Humblewood and so we started discussing the piece. I sent him this preliminary description:

"We are looking for a group of adventures traveling through mountains called the Horned Ridge. There is an attached image showing a map of the setting. Location is around the Stonebell area. Think something like the Pass of Caradhras scenes from LOTR but set in the Rockies.

There are 4 characters. These are all medium-sized humanoids, approximately 4-6 feet in height.Tilia (Gecko humanoid)Eluran (Cat Folk)Capran (Goat folk)Arma Hedge (Pangolin/armadillo folk)

If one of them could be helping a character up onto the path they are traveling or along it. Clothing for the characters should be adventuring gear, but the clothing should be varied in style. Standard Humblewood clothing, Jungle clothing, Colder climate clothing."

Aaron turned in the following sketches.

He sent in color roughs shortly after.

I liked the energy from the one in the mountain ledge, but the large creature was distracting from the characters (the focus of the piece). 

So I did a drawover of how I would refocus it:

Aaron took that and ran with it. Turning in 2 updated sketches.

It was a tough call, but I picked the one that had a bit more energy and movement. You can see the major elements of the final piece at this stage like the eye catching pink magic. We also liked the moment where the eluran is directly helping the tilia, and that both the arma and the capran are helping with the rocks with might and magic. It really showed a party working together like it was a scene straight from the middle of a game.

The next step was a sketch of the characters.

This was coming along great, but I needed to give some feedback based on notes from the content team. The capran could use some more flavor to really highlight a part of their culture of decorating their horns. The tilia’s guitar also had a rhino head, but we needed it to be a more Humblewood region-specific animal (a buffalo-like creature called a gargath which you can see stats for in our Humblewood Tales book). 

Aaron moved ahead with the painting, taking those notes into consideration. At this stage, the painting looked great, but there were some moments like the eluran’s tail being too close to the capran’s jacket, causing a visual tangent that could take away visual focus. Plus, with the angle of the ledge, if the big arma character’s feet are where I think they are, then they have no ability to brace, and they’re going over that cliff when the rocks hit their shield. So I did some quick drawovers to help illustrate for the artist:

Aaron took that feedback and turned in the final piece. From first contact to final submission, the process took around 5 and a half weeks.

This is the final scanned piece, which we were really happy with as it shows off these adventurers so well!

And here's the final piece in Aaron's studio. It's oil on panel: 

So that’s mostly what I do. Find the artist. Form a contract with the artist. Then work with them to make sure what we are looking for fits the product and the world. Working with such fantastic artists and exciting subject matter is one of the best parts of the job of Art Director!

— Brian Scott Walters