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OLD WORK - Swashbuckler

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Illustration for Mystic Eye Games, done about 2-3 years back when I had just started drawing for RPG publishers. I still like this one today... I think I nailed a certain "attitude".
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© 2004 - 2024 Inkthinker
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:star::star::star::star: Overall
:star::star::star::star-half::star-empty: Vision
:star::star::star::star::star-half: Originality
:star::star::star::star-half::star-empty: Technique
:star::star::star::star::star: Impact

There's a word for this sort of artwork, that used to make an appearance in many old black-and-white RPG supplements, but it escapes me. It was a modernization of an old style used for book covers, pamphlets and etchings that was meant to make the most use of texture and depth to make up for a lack of colour. As a style, it was a rejection of many of the mainstream painting styles that used colour extensively but whose only texture was in the thickness of the paint, and an interesting microcosm in and of itself.

I've always had a soft spot for it.

This piece is a duelist, a fencer, a type of character and trope I also have a lot of fondness for. The artist has the style, the insouciance, down pat. Overly elaborate salutes, devil-may-care wink combined with careful footwork and eye on the opponent, ridiculous hat and fluffy sleeves combined with skin-tight leggings made to emphasize freedom of movement. It's a combination of machismo and charisma and careful planning and tactics which emphasizes a duelist, and where so many artists get it wrong and don't include the second part - to the detriment of their portrayal.

But I won't just fill this up with praise. They call it a 'critique' for a reason. This is an old work of the artist, and so perhaps their current work has already fixed this, but there are a few flaws in the execution, and a few in the design.

The largest flaw is a certain disassociation between the face and the body of the character. Thankfully the proportions are correct, but the angle of the head and the shape don't fit particularly well with the body. This is a common problem with fantasy art that stretches from when artists would draw a headshot instead of a full-length body for a character - common due to the small amount of space on a character sheet for a 'portrait', and immortalized in games like 'Baldur's Gate' and older fantasy roleplaying books featuring pages of 'characters' that were just headshots and a name.

There is a little bit of weirdness in the angle of the legs and the far arm, but those are relatively minor quibbles. The basketwork of the hilt is unnecessarily jeweled compared to the rest of the outfit, but again, fantasy setting so we can pretend that the jewels hold spells or some such nonsense. Face positioning is a bit odd, ear positions are slightly physically impossible, face is a bit wide-angle-lens at the edges but holds together well if not for the dissimilarity between face and body prompting closer examination.

The angle of the body implies that either the torso is irreparably truncated, or the body is leaning at an angle it is clearly not. If not for the face being the focus of this piece, this would be the largest flaw - proportion and angle are key to keeping humans out of the 'uncanny valley' in artwork, and despite the angle of the legs and ruffled arm hiding it a bit, this is clearly inhuman.

The hair is a very unelaborate kludge, made slightly more palatable due to the common nature of that style in other roleplaying book art of the time.

That said.

I really like this.

The angle of the sword.

The bow.

The wink.

The hat off to one side.

The boots too big for the feet with the flappy Musketeer lapels.

The puffy sleeves.

The sense of motion in the placement of the legs.

That ridiculously fluffy feather.

It feels like a swashbuckler who is going to come from that stepping-forward bow and do a forward flip to clash blades in a spray of sparks with the main antagonist, one who isn't going to do just the back and forth of blades but fight all the way around a room while walking on tables and the like.

There's a sly certainty in the raise of the eyebrow, and there's a hint that this isn't some fresh-faced character off the RPG character-maker, that this person has Been Places and Seen Things. That any fight they instigate will have a dramatic entrance like them kicking a guard off a raised platform or swinging in on a rope and disarming both the king's guards - or maybe even shanking them. It conveys a lot.

I like the reflection from the metal hairband, even though I know it's just there to give more interest to a black and white drawing. I like the idea that that much thought has been given to tieing back hair that metal has been used for it.

I like the seams on the gloves, and their floppy, again Three Musketeers, nature. I like the outlines of the muscles against the bandages on the legs.

I like the tiny cheeky bit of cleavage.

I like the detail on the cobblestones.

But mostly I like the insouciance, and the flair. I like the idea of a cunning, intelligent fighter who goes that extra mile due to vanity, to the idea of shock and awe maybe, and makes their fighting as flamboyant an act as any stage troupe has dared to perform (and perhaps a little more).

I like the idea of swashbucklers and duelists being something more than swordfighters or poseurs, perhaps a bit of each, but also something more.

And this, has that.