This promotional illustration titled Swidhelm was created as a character design for a sequel to a game called ‘The Bard’s Tale’.  The character Swidhelm is a blind, gluttonous, traveling salesman who rides in the back of an amphibious cart which is pulled/rowed by his frail, deaf brother.  Swidhelm yells out directions to his brother who can’t hear them…and profit ensues.  I was tasked with “come up with a traveling salesman” and I wanted to add visual gags and create a unique vision -  more than a dude traveling with his wares - by adding depth to the character such as the relationship with his brother.  We were working in the Unreal Engine to create a stylized look using more photo-realistic than painterly textures.  This illustration was painted in Photoshop, with rust, wood, and rock textures overlayed for surface detail.  Usually I strive for a more painterly look, where after layering on textures, I’ll go back over everything and blend out the gritty details so the rendering looks more like oil paint.  In this case, because we were developing a more photo-realistic texturing approach, I left that gritty surface on the finished product and didn’t paint much on top of that layer other than the brightest highlights. Deciding how much of that texture to leave on your finished product can be a major factor in your overall style.  While exploring new techniques to establish a visual direction for Swidhelm, I sculpted the head and chest, to be 3D scanned and used as source for the in game model.  Try not to stare at his nipples, he may be blind … but he knows…