"LOTR Rise To War" Commission Process

Recently, I did some commission work for a Lord of the Rings mobile game (any excuse to paint Middle Earth is a good one IMO!), and today I'd like to share the final from the first image in the series, now that the NDA has officially lifted.  

The commission: Dwarves in a mountain fortress as an orc army masses below!

 The schedule I was given was somewhat tight for this, so I began with a very simple, scrappy drawing before moving on to a tighter clean drawing. (I cannot overstate the importance of a nice clean drawing somewhere in the process, even if it is only a digital one!)  

When I finished the drawing, I sent it in to the client, along with a breakdown of the scene, to help better differentiate the armies in the scene:

Dwarves in Blue, Orcs in Red. 

Once this was approved I dove right into the painting.  I didn't spend a lot of extraneous time on an underpainting for this one as the schedule just didn't allow for it. Instead, I went right in with full color. (Something I rarely do!) I had good mountain reference and the client had provided excellent reference for the characters, so I felt confident enough to start painting right over the sketch. 

I have no steps for this color section because it was produced in a fever dream, all on one layer. 

The client asked for a WIP shot as I was nearing the end of the painting process, so I sent in what I had thus far. As is often the case with game projects, the team responded by asking for a major change at this point. The designer asks if we can axe the orc army. 

I responded by saying, "One does not simply Axe an Orc army..."

I didn't. But it would have been really cool if I had. Instead, I went back to the tablet and reworked the section as a snow-field: 

In the end, I actually like this more tranquil approach, which contrasts well against the grim faces of the dwarves, but it does lack some of the drama of waves of orcs assaulting the walls.  

After some final touch ups to give the dwarves a bit more craggy texture, I sent in the hi-res to the client! There was one other stipulation in the contract, which was to post the image to Instagram with the client's branding. This marketing bit is becoming more and more regular in the past 2 years, and is part of the reason that I try to keep my social media pretty clean and work-focused.  It is not often that I get these requests for cross-posting, but when I do there is often a generous amount of financial compensation added in to the project that makes it worth it.   

And here is the final product!

There are several other NDA projects that I look forward to sharing with you soon when they are officially released!