Kyrian Whitemane

I've been playing a lot of Fishing Priest in the latest WoW expansion, and as soon as I saw the Kyrian Whitemane skin, I had to get it. It looked way too cool. When the concept got posted, I really wanted to model her, I've always liked the skins the Hearthstone team gives Whitemane, and Bastion is one of my favorite zones visually so it was a no-brainer.

I've been into handpainted characters lately and love seeing how different artists approach them, so I wanted to try it myself. This ttime I focused a lot on values. I worked mostly in grayscale to lock in the material reads and shapes before using gradients to get better read of the character, and further push and even remake entire areas with more polished paint. The baked maps gave me a good base but to get that really hand-painted look I had to go back to fundamentals.
This is the latest personal project I’ve done recently that wasn’t tied to work, so it felt really refreshing to just make something for myself for funsies. Whole character took about two weeks from start to finish.

For the crusade!
Original Concept by Tales Irie https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3EQPJD