Rough drafts for nearly all the various character archetypes seen in
The Mistborn Adventure Game, available at fine game stores and online retailers around the world.
I finally nailed the definitive Koloss with these designs. And it was here that we developed the monsterwraith, the result of a normally placid mistwraith absorbing the corpse of a koloss, and thereby gaining power and aggression without awareness. Such are the stuff of skaa nightmares. I ended up designing a much better version of the Inquisitor's glass-bladed axe, but that generic version still made it to the final. Most of these rough designs were changed very little from here to final cleanup, it helped a lot that I was able to discuss directly with Brandon details like the inspirations for Luthadel fashion and the state of the textile industry in the Empire. That saved a lot of revision time on the back end.
If you're wondering at the draw-through you see between various characters, it's because each of these were illustrated on separate Layers, effectively making 30 or so single-character spots, rather than six groups. In the final publishing they ended up being composed individually and larger than I had originally expected, but it worked out all right as I'd put in a lot of fiddly detail at high resolution.
Everyone's more or less to scale with each other, there's a faint line that marks 6' as a common base. In retrospect I don't know that the Terris people as a rule are naturally taller than everyone else on Scadrial, but it's something you can work around as needed.
If you happen to run your display at 1600x1200 then it makes a nice wallpaper. Drawn on the Cintiq in Manga Studio EX v.3 back in early 2011.
`anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
Sta.sh
The skaa and nobles are exactly as I pictured them, I did see the Steel Ministry slightly different - the Inquisitors I always pictured more as Grim Reaper figures, but I like the warrior look about them. It's less insidious sneak and more brutal monster.
I especially love the smaller Koloss.
The big-n-bulky Steel Inquisitors is one thing I will almost certainly change up on my next opportunity to illustrate one, because it seems like a lot of people saw them as more cadaverous and creepy-scary vs. intimidating-scary.
As a general rule, Brandon is sparse with description specifics unless they're relevant to the narrative or he has a strong feeling about how something should look. This is one reason why we don't do portrait illustrations of specific characters in his books unless we have to. And with the Inquisitors, what I find reading through the text is that he never really tells us one way or another if Inquisitors are bulky, or thin, or even for the most part if they're short or tall. We know about the spikes, and the ropes, and the weapon, and the rest is that they're terrifying because people are terrified of them (and later we see actions that tell us why), but it's all about show and not tell, which is good writing but hard on concept artists.
My conclusion (tacitly backed by my colleagues, I believe) is that they all look a little different, because Hemalurgy may or may not affect your physique depending on your spikes, and because they're all originally normal people. That means we're both right, and that's best awesome (also, now I want to do a fat Inquisitor, and a Lady Inquisitor at some point, just because I can).
The fat Inquisitor is something I HAVE to see!
Since then I've also seen the clever kids over at 17th Shard write up ideas for a dozen other ways you can use Hemalurgy to create monsters, and with 1000 years of history in the Final Empire there's room for a couple hundred years here or there that explain why we don't see these things in the book. It makes the game just a little more fun for players who want to feel like they can write a part of the history.