Rise of the Figatures

Well, thanks for popping by. I hope you enjoyed reading the backstory of how the following little dudes came to be.

If you missed it you can check it out in the Game Design section of the Warriorelite forums at

warriorelite forum

The anatomy of a Figature

As usual, it starts with a sketch. While this wasn't the hardest part, i did have to know what i was doing.

I'll be showing you a Dzaa Cavalry, so you can compare the look to that which appears on a Troop card.



As you can perhaps see, the proportions are somewhat different. Miniatures are sculpted with an exaggerated anatomy that works for miniatures but looks abit strange in illustrations - no names mentioned. Certain appendages are larger and detail is simpler. One reason for this is so that it can be seen easily at the smaller size.

We decided to use this same principle in creating the look of the Figatures, as using the standard anatomy as seen in art so far would have been harder to see. This style of art is also seen in the Faction banners in the War Unleashed book.



The sketch becomes more fully fleshed out before final simplification as above.

As you can see, there are two mateys. In an infantry Unit there are three guys in the front rank and so there are three figature individuals used to represent this. For cavalry, there just isn't the room to have this when using them on the Terrain Maps, to be bluntly honest. And making the Terrain Maps larger would have made them unwieldy.

For the following progression i'll stick to one cavalry individual.



Here, the basic linework is done. This gives weight to the lines and cleans it all up for scanning in and further work, which will definitely be needed before the figature can be easily seen when made smaller.



At this stage i add shadow and give more weight to the form with the use of black areas and line thickening, building on the linework that is already there and simplifying the look to make it easier to see.

It's now ready for colouring.

Again, to keep things simple, a 'flat' colour look was used. Adding further shadowing with deeper colour, or adding textures would overcomplicate the image, so i avoided this, though the temptation was great - up until i viewed it at its small size and totally appreciated the need for simplicity (though with enough detail to give character to the figature.)



So there you go. I hope you enjoyed this little trip into the backstory of a figature.

Ash