arcane-villain-blog

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Tyrande the Warden, inspired by Heroes of the Storm Twisted Fate thmed skin.

Pose by SenshiStock senshistock.deviantart.com/

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Ashenvale

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Updated Kelares Outfit collection!. Upscaled the resolution of all hisoutfits furing the Holidays and added a few more, yet more to come in preparation to BfA. Okay, they are arranged chronologically (thought there is overlap) and underwear look to break off his major physical changes. Time period details on the captions, and hope y’all like these!

More in depth description of these outfits coming soon!

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Character presentation: Name: Vaenni Surname: Nightrunner Title: Sentinel Race: kaldorei Sex: female Age: about 3500 years old Eye color: silver Hair color: dark blue Status: alive Birthplace: Auberdine, Darkshore Dwellingplace: Maestra's Post, Ashenvale Class: Hunter Specialization: Survival Faction: Darnassus Faith: Elune, Goddess of the Moon Reputation: friendly with Darnassus, honored with Silverwing Sentinels Companions: Sombra (timber wolf) (updated with gray background)

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Sentinel Vaenni, my first WoW character ever. If you're interested in portrayal of your character with similar design and style - let me know.

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WIP of Vaenni’s character sheet.

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Commission for Maranas, thanks!

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“Working for free? No.”

For a long time I thought I wouldn’t need to write this entry because I believed that with time it will get better with the spread of awareness. Everyone heard stories like this and that’s why I though that will change people’s thinking. I am sad to announce that… there’s no shortage of people asking for ‘work for free’ or ‘work for exposure’. Basically wanting your work without paying. I get theses messages every week and I feel like there needs to be a general response from me to a behavior like that.

Every mail start the same. It’s just plain copy/paste. Though they sometimes try to start like you are the unique and special artist they write to. So beginning is pretty standard:

'Hey! I love your art/ your art is amazing/ I’m your biggest fan.’

The target as much artists as they can because, there is probability that out of 1000 mails few will agree. And it’s a win. Unfortunately I must say that these people prey on the weakest and most vulnerable this kind of scam. Exploiting to work for free. It can be done by one person or by company. A well known companies even. Yeah. It goes from the bottom to big guys.

I haven’t seen even once a project that brought something good to exploited artist.

I will quote you one of messages I got, to give you as an expample:

Your art is really amazing, I’m a huge fan!

My friends and I are making a board/card game and we’re contacting our favorite artists in the hopes of finding art we can put to our game.

This is a huge opportunity for both of us to get exposure for our work as I make an awesome kickstarter and social media campaign. if we can work together! We have some professional *censored* players on our team and a great game design, so I know we can offer you effective advertising as we promote each other. In just the past 5 days put campaign has reached over 10,000 people and our website is getting hundreds of unique visitors each day, which means lots of traffic seeing links to your artwork and increasing your potential for commissions.

So pretty standard. Someone offers you 'EXPOSURE’ instead of paying you. First issue. Why that should be a valid point? How you will monetize exposure? They can’t even explain you this because they know that’s a hollow slogan. So the logic goes - they will get project done thanks to slave work and that way people using the project will ask you for more possible… free work for them ? Wow! Amazing!

Maybe if exposure would literally everytime translate to money. Then heck yeah. Also I wouldn’t need people like that exploiting me, because my tactic then would be I just care about 'exposure’ to my own sites and social media. If every single view = money, then I would just market myself and following that logic… money would come 😀  Becuause, maybe…probably… there will be someone who will finally be willing to pay for my work. That’s a flawed logic.

The thing is…. the more artists are being victims to exploitative work, the more it becomes normal, the more 'clients’ expects that artists will work for free. And this way vicious circle that bites artists in the backside begins.

There are projects that someone has to make. Every project needs visuals, that’s how it sells. That is our - artists - job. Yeah exactly - job NOT hobby. Probably we love what we are doing, that’s why we’ve chosen art career. But starving artists jokes are no longer funny since it’s just a grim reality.

Why we are the ones that are assumed to work for free? Why are other professionals, like doctors, engineers , plumbers not expected to work for free? How absurd would that be to ask a cook to cook you diner for free. But some people don’t think twice about asking that artist. And not only me, but even way more known and working longer in the industry.

There was a guy that asked me if he can take my work (works you can see in my gallery) and use it in his personal project. You know… potentially commercial product but he didn’t want to pay a cent for visuals provided for the project. Although the most disrespectful was when he mentioned that 'hopefully in the future when I will gather funds to print the project it will be sold in shops’. Whoa! So he just admitted : he will pay EVERYONE, so graphic designers and printers who will edit and print project but… won’t pay artists who provided art for the product itself ? 'Where is the budget for artists’ I asked. 'If you feel like your project will be successful you would take the risk on yourself and actually pay people making project. If you don’t want to take the risk it just looks like you don’t believe in your own project. Don’t expect strangers to be invested in your ideas then.’ I declined of course. He gave me longer reply, but the most horrific was to see that he scammed … 170 artists before me… My jaw was on the floor. So basically what he’s done was exploiting most vulnerable people.

Also. People who want to use your work that you have in your gallery. Just imagine this situation but in traditional gallery. Let’s say some guy walk into Luvre. Picks few paintings , and proceeds to taking them down. He is stopped by security for doing that. When they ask him why did he do it he replies: 'Well, it does not hurt you to share paintings. They are just gathering dust. So what do you say… I can take it to promote my product?’ Is this absurd? I want you think about it like that when you are asked for your work to promote someone’s products.

Personally I can work for free in only 3 cases : pro bono for charity that I support, for someone closest to me when I want to make a gift and lastly on my own projects that I will myself would love to publish one day.

I was exploited myself back when I was just starting. Guess what. It haven’t brought me anything. Slavery work is just slavery work. Brings nothing to artist and a lot of value who are using you. That happened to me so I could become stronger and experienced. And I want to share warning with artists who are clearly still out there who even consider working for free.

There is also another example, not so harmful, but I encounter it a lot. People requesting you working for them to draw their portrait/portrait of their dog/mother/brother/ girlfriend. Again. Just imagine this scene in reality and not done through exchange of emails. Imagine that you are artist who sits on the side of the road, during holiday season, a lot of tourists passing by and you are offering to draw portraits. Those artists sits there because this is how they make extra money. They have their price tag put next to them so you know the rate. Either you pay or not and just don’t take the offer. So how it would look like if a person walked to the artist and demand drawing him/her for free? Of course artist would ignore it and wait for a customer willing to pay.

And if I have to make it even more grim to my fellow artists, just think of this, Even prostitutes get paid. No one expect that it’s their hobby that they do for free.

Somehow artists skills aren’t valued and it becomes the norm. On the internet at least.

There are many project that needs to be made. And artists need to work on them. If every client would pay normally, without trying to have free work for you, there would not be jokes about 'starving artists’. We are all in this together and we are our ultimate shield of protection against exploitative practices.

If you want to work without payment go ahead do it. But consider always the situation. What it is for, with who you work for and why. Is it something you will do with friends, do you really believe in this, do you believe that you will profit and not someone else only? Don’t be shy, you won’t offend anyone by defending yourself.

When I share individual stories with my artists friends we are sure of that we need to work together. Or our industry will never change and we can expect to be flooded by 'working for free’ inquires.

There is so much that I probably didn’t cover. Still. I thought that making statement is important.

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Continuation of NE doodles. I suffer sameface syndrome, especially when it comes to drawing elves, so I needed to practice some different facial features of both males and females. My models are: Illidan Stormrage: I’ve choosen his appearance from times of WoTA. Facial features are based on his Warcraft 3 cinematic models and some artworks, skin and hair color are based on TGC art. I also decided to not draw Malfurion since it clueless this time, his facial features were exactly the same like Illidan’s. Fandral Staghelm: based on his Majordomo Staghelm model, colouristic is from comicbooks. Jarod Shadowsong: based on both official artoworks and my version of Maiev, I wanted to make them looking similar like brother and sister would be. Broll Bearmantle: loosely based on his portrayal in comics and action figure.

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commiccion for @vaesha-draecon

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lovely!

Hello friends! For a long time I had a desire to see more unique features for the character, for example, physique. Many people, including me, like to do 3d render and art installations about the adventures of heroes and just the inhabitants of Azeroth. Using as a tool a 3D program. Initially, I did this pack for myself, but in the aftermath I decided to share it, so that each artist could make his characters and make stories about them. You can follow my creativity and support it here https://www.patreon.com/Reggieart

Soon I will finish my project and share it with you, you can download it here https://www.patreon.com/Reggieart Thank you friends for your attention! 

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Continuation of nelf doodles. This time I wanted to practice different facial features and color schemes to avoid sameface syndrome. My "models" are: Tyrande Whisperwind, Shandris Feathermoon, Maiev Shadowsong and Azshara. Of course I remember about dudes, they're coming next. 

Tyrande: used her WoW model as reference for facial features. Markings and color scheme are taken from HoTS model and Warcraft 3 official artworks. Also I decided to make her hair color less greenish and more blue, just like in War3. Shandris: markings are my idea, but general color scheme and ear shape is based on her official artworks and action figure. Maiev: no one really knows her face, huh? In WoW, when she’s without armor, she uses generic NE model. So the face shape is my idea, especially that she was described in WoTA as “not very attractive”. Her skincolor and white hair is based on her WoW model in armor, markings shape and color are inspired by her portrait in Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne. Also, I wanted to keep her green eyes. Azshara  based directly on her WoW model, I only decided to darken her skin color and pink markings to make this color deeper and more vibrant.

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I’m Thinking About Him

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I played Warcraft III since 2003 year, when I had 12 years old and I was a huge admirer of Tolkien and his Middle-Earth. When I started orc and human campaign, I loved everything from Warcraft, but Night Elves filled my heart with special kind of love. Now it’s 2017, I have 26 years old, I don’t play WoW much since few years, I even don’t know exactly what’s going on in Azeroth now (well, there were some alternative universe-timetraveling orc bullshit, fanservice-zombie-elf-bitch is the Warchief of the Horde, there were some spaceship Star Wars with Legion on the spacegoats’ home planet, in Suramar is still blooming civilisation of lost elves even if Maiev never met them in the Frozen Throne, Illidan has strong personality disorder after plot resurrected him again so he broke Turalyon’s favourite glowing Lego, blah, blah, blah) and it’s not the Warcraft I felt in love with... but I will never stop love the Night Elves. I don’t care they turned into sissy-hippie-treehuggers in Cata and MoP, I will still remember them as they were in Warcraft III. Enough of preface, blah, blah, blah, it’s not interesting at all. What is interesting is the fact, that I will draw the Night Elves even if WoW will turn cold dead game remembered only by “90′ and 00′ kids”. They made me, now I’ll made them the way I remember them. So I wanted to doodle them again and ugain until I’ll master them enough.

First doodle is classic “perspective doodles”, I wanted to estabilish the most common and typical features of Night Elves, adapt them to my style with keeping the soul of Warcraft 3 and WoW models. Used Wowhead modelviewer as a referrence. They are Night Elven John and Jane Doe, next excersise will be practising some different facial features to avoid my tendency to sameface. Second doodle is playing with color schemes. From the top: 1. Common “Ashenvale” elves, as they are portrayed on most of official artworks. 2. Common elves - just like above, just lil’bit darker version, let’s call them “Darkshore” elves. 3. Druidism influenced elves - with amber/golden eyes, more brownish skin and greener hair. Let’s say they are “Hyjal” elves. Common color scheme used with portraying druids. 4. Arcane magic influenced elves, with more exotic color scheme - mostly used for portraying Highborne caste. Let’s call them “Suramar” elves. 5. Emerald Dream/Nightmare possessed elves. I hate the Fire Druids bullshit (really, druidism and fire? Who was drunk enough to made up such thing?) and I will never accept this, so I prefer the alternate lore version about Nightmare Druids. 6. Fel influenced elves. Theme used both in Felborne and Demon Hunters portrayal. .................... Forgive me sarcasm and harsh language. I’m normally nice and kind person, but I’m also very fanatical and antiquated when it comes to Warcraft lore, that’s why I usually don’t discuss about that. Let’s say that on my blog art is the only important thing, so I can promise there will be more and more art and less lore digressions and opinions.

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mini preview of my piece for the @artistsofazeroth fanzine ☾

want to see more? stay tuned and don’t forget to buy the zine, all proceeds go to charity!

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Pride of the Forest: Ferndel Woodrage My brother’s OC, the Night Elf stalker from Ashenvale.

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Damn, that’s a wonderful idea. I could go into this.

DEVIANTART FACEBOOK FA

MEGA HOW TO DRAW WORLD OF WARCRAFT CHALLENGE 

So like, when it comes to wow. it honestly feels like my art is “alright”. I love wow, I love the styleand while it might seem slightly excessive to do a YEAR LONG CHALLENGE. I really believe at the end of the year I (and we) are going to be fucking awesome painters capable of making any beautiful wow art. 

There’s also so many skills that we’re gonna learn from this. 

IF YOU WANNA DO THIS WITH ME, TAG ALL YOUR RELATED POSTS WITH #WOLFUUPACK SO I CAN FIND YOU. 

Even better - follow me, reblog this saying you’re gonna do it and i’ll follow you. Let’s be blizzard standard together guys <3 If you want to be an excellent artist - why not start tomorrow? 

I am so done with saying “maybe another day”