The Ice-Bristle Wolf: From idea to creation
So for all of you who have read Supermage, you know that one of the defining challenges for Morgan was his battle with the Ice-Bristle Wolf. The wolf was technically at a rank that Morgan couldn’t possibly hope to beat, yet despite that immense challenge, he persevered and overcame it. In addition to being such a defining moment, the wolf is also among the coolest beasts visually in the series. In the coming months, we’ll be doing a series of posts where we describe the creation of new beasts in the Rise To Omniscience series! The awesome artist behind the artwork is Daniel Simon. His work is really awesome, and you can check out his work on his website, or follow him on Instagram or Twitter. Now join us as we take a deep dive into the Ice-Bristle Wolf’s creation. Enjoy!
The description for the wolf is as follows. It’s a massive wolf, with icy blue and white fur, and ice-like teeth and claws. Its body gives off a blue aura, and it’s able to harden the fur on its back, making it sharp enough to cut steel. So, initially, we started off with a preliminary sketch on paper.
Ice-Bristle Wolf Paper Sketch
After the sketch was done, we moved on to the line work for the wolf. It went through several revisions, filling in the finer details of the wolf, trying to make it appear as lifelike as possible.
This was essentially the final line art of the wolf…
… but we just wanted to change the positioning of the fangs so they were more inline with the face.
After we settled on the final line art, we began the process of coloring the wolf. Since there wasn’t really a real-world creature to reference, Daniel just went with his imagination and creativity.
We took the basic line art of the wolf, and added blue shading, as well as darker shading on the snout.
We then added light gray shading on the main body of the wolf to give some contrast.
We then colored the eyes, claws, and fangs, and also added more colors to the body of the wolf.
At this point, the coloration of the wolf was almost complete. We added glow effects to demonstrate the icy aura of the wolf, and added shadows to the underside to make the effect more prominent.
Finally, after all adjustments were made to the coloration, we added a wintry background, some shadow work, and the wolf was complete!
We really hoped you enjoyed this deep dive into the Ice-Bristle Wolf’s creation! You can look forward to the next piece in the series, the Sonic-Cerberus Chicken, in the coming weeks! Please like, share, and comment below if you enjoyed!