This month, I'm having a guest 'columnist' share details on how the 2D art for Revenge of the Firstborn is created. Read on the learn all about it!

Salutations, adventurers! Today we’ll talk about the art behind the portraits of Revenge of the Firstborn. My name is Heitor Queiroz, also known as The Lizard Soup. I’m the artist responsible for bringing the bestiary’s visuals to life, helping adventurers like you identify the monsters you’ll face in battle and plan your strategy against them.

Portraits are a fundamental part of the game’s UI. They carry much of each character’s personality, allowing the player to read their health points and identify who is performing an action, whether ally or enemy. My challenge as an artist is to amplify the immersion of the game’s 3d creatures’ models through their portraits, making them truly feel like part of the world. Because of that, I always place great importance on theatrical expressions, gesture, atmosphere, and storytelling. Without sacrificing the visual clarity required for UI design, I strive to create striking silhouettes and compositions, using value and color contrasts to guide readability and make each encounter memorable.

The next question that naturally comes to mind is: how are these portraits created?

With over 125 monsters in the game, it was critical to find a balance between quality, consistency and production time. Given that I’m the only artist working on monster portraits, working efficiently is critical. My digital workflow takes place entirely within using Clip Studio Paint.

I draw a great deal of inspiration from the old-school art styles of franchises such as Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and Warcraft. I’m particularly fascinated by the balance between realism and the sometimes almost cartoonish exaggeration found in comic art. Among my greatest influences are Frank Frazetta, Bernie Wrightson, Alex Horley, Wayne Reynolds, Justin Gerard, and Jim Murray. What I admire most in their work is the way each of them, in their own unique manner, creates striking silhouettes, theatricality, and a deep sense of atmosphere.

The challenge of every 2D artist is translating a 3D object into a 2D medium while still creating the illusion of depth and volume, especially when working with realism. All of the art work I create for the bestiary is based off of existing 3D models, so the first thing I do is conduct deeper research on each monster based on screenshots, 3d model viewers in asset stores and the like. 
Once the research is done, I move on to the sketch phase. My focus is on the core concept: exploring gesture, searching for a dominant and striking shape that highlights the character and makes it instantly recognizable. This kind of planning is fundamental in any artwork, but especially important here, since the portraits appear at a relatively small scale in the game, meaning the visual readability needs to be extremely clear. With that in mind, I explore the character’s expression, whether it behaves aggressively, whether it’s a mysterious magical creature, or a brawling bruiser. Experimenting with several quick sketches lets the developers and me align on a pose and angle that reads well to the player and instantly helps them understand what they’re up against.

The Mohrg, for example, uses its tongue like a whip

Meanwhile, the Gelatinous Cube needed the help of its victims in order to truly come to life in its portrait

The next stage is blocking out the main shape and shadows in a greyscale image. This helps define what areas should carry the most visual interest and ensure the composition feels harmonious with the feel of the character as determined in the sketch process.

The Mohrg once again. You can already feel it becoming a little more sinister here with the addition of some values, can’t you?

The next step is refining the greyscale image. My workflow for this used to rely on highly detailed lineart, similar to inking in comic books to refine anatomy, composition and expression. More recently, I’ve shifted to a more direct penciling approach, reworking the existing sketch until it becomes solid and consistent with the end goal being the same – to refine anatomy, composition and expression.

I build volume directly with a brush that simulates graphite, which introduces grayscale transitions, form and depth in a much more immediate way. This not only saves time, but creates a dirtiness, noise and grittiness that works beautifully for more deformed or organic monsters, giving it a textured feeling.

The final step before any color is applied is refining the shadow areas and expanding the grayscale structure. This process ensures that the gray of the teeth does not behave the same way as the gray on skin or hair.

T The grayscale work can be thought of as the foundation for the whole piece. If the underlying drawing and value structure are weak, reaching a strong final painting becomes extremely difficult, so most artists prefer this sort of step-by-step approach before any color is applied.

This is a bronze dragon, already with all of its values properly organized and ready to receive color.  

Finally, it’s time for color. I usually begin by blocking in the base colors already present in the 3D model. Then comes my favorite part of the entire process: thinking about atmosphere and the relationship between light and material. One recurring characteristic of the Revenge of the Firstborn portraits is the constant contrast between the temperatures of light and shadow.

To handle this colorization process, I work extensively with blending mode. The atmosphere is planned very carefully so I can build two harmonious palette variations: one with warm shadows and cool lighting, and another with the opposite approach. For example, a warm key light cast over green skin can easily make it appear too yellowish, so balancing these color relationships requires a great deal of attention.

The background color is very simple to avoid visual clutter given how small these portraits usually appear on screen. I spend time testing different colors for the background, either by creating contrast, usually through complementary colors opposing the character’s dominant palette, or by integrating the character more directly into the scene through repeated or analogous colors.

This is a Troll with the lineart as I used to do, and warm light and cold shadows

This is the troll with the opposite color palette.

Next comes the rendering stage, by far the most time-consuming part of the process. This is where everything comes together, and where extra life is added to the piece. Rendering is the stage where the drawing is transformed into a finished image, defining the relationships between volume, light, color, and texture so that everything feels believable and solid.

In 3D, rendering refers to the software automatically calculating the final image. In 2D, however, the artist performs this process manually. This where I soften or sharpen the image and where additional lighting and shadow unfold. It involves defining effects such as reflected light, occlusion, shadow intensity and specular highlights. This helps ensure, for instance, that an ordinary tooth will not shine more intensely than a polished piece of armor.

This process becomes a constant push and pull; refining certain areas, simplifying others, and making adjustments until the portrait finally reaches its finished state. This is achieved using a variety of techniques and blending layers. It’s important to keep the brushes and special effects to a minimum to avoid ending up with a cluttered look or obsessing over details that ultimately make little difference. Because of their small size in-game, silhouette, expression, gesture, and the initial shading structure matter far more than rendering alone. Rendering serves to reinforce and elevate the image, adding another layer of realism. It enhances the already-existing work done long before rendering is started.

Here is a good example of the value organization. Even without seeing its colors, it’s still easy to identify the type of metal used in the armor.

Did you imagine something like this?

Working on everything from decaying undead to scaly demons to metallic automatons, it’s been important to keep in mind that the portrait must be recognizable as the 3D model, but should be striking, expressing and visual compelling on its own.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this deep dive into the artistic process behind the portraits for the game and I hope they enhance your playing experience!