It’s been a while since I officially had an art deadline to meet. I honestly don’t recall the last piece of actual concept art I did for WARMACHINE or HORDES. These days, my art contributions amount to little more than scribbles on the back of napkins as I try to communicate a basic shape or silhouette to the art team at Privateer. In fact, most of the illustration I’ve done over the past year or so has been either storyboards or creature design for my upcoming LEVEL 7 film project and that’s been very much at my own pace. I was setting the deadlines, so if I needed to, I could move them. Not anymore.

As we were reviewing the concept documents for all the new models that will be in the next WARMACHINE book, I started to get the itch to do some drawing again, and I made the mistake of opening my big mouth. It started with an upcoming character for Cryx. It’s something we’ve never seen in that army and I have an image in my head that I need to get out by way of the illustration. I tentatively expressed my interest and thankfully found out the illustration wouldn’t be due until fall. No problem! One character in the next 4-5 months? I can fit that into my schedule. Then Ed Bourelle, Privateer’s Creative Manager got greedy and suggested I tackle some more. “You could feature it on your blog!” chimed in Simon Berman, our Community Manager. They made it sounds so easy.

Fortunately, some of my better judgment won out and I didn’t take everything Ed threw at me, but there was one I couldn’t refuse: the new incarnation of Eiryss, the much loved, much loathed Mage Hunter who now stalks the Iron Kingdoms with the fanatical Retribution of Scyrah.

Eiryss is one of two mercenary solos in the original WARMACHINE: PRIME book that came out nearly ten years ago, and she’s one of the first characters I ever created and designed for the game. She’s also the first appearance of an Iosan (elf) in WARMACHINE and is for me, one of my all time favorite personalities featured in our fiction. In our next book, we’re reinventing Eiryss once again, and not how you might expect! Instead of going solo, she’s joining up with some rank and file troopers as a Unit Attachment. That’s right, Eiryss, the original Iosan badass will now be making an entire unit of badasses even more badasser. Who would have ever thought she could be a team player?

See? I got all excited just writing about her. I almost forgot to tell you what the problem is: the due date on the concept is July 16th! Now maybe that sounds like plenty of time to do a simple illustration of one character, but to me, that feels like tomorrow. I’ve got a list of things that have to be done between now and July and heaping concept art responsibilities on top of that is insane. But like the saying goes, no rest for the wicked.

So now I’m going to do something I’ve never done before — I’m going to ask for suggestions on how to design this next incarnation of a very beloved character. NO! Not rules — don’t even think about making a suggestion for her game rules. Jason Soles graduated her out of play testing months ago. We’re just talking about the visuals, here. We’ve seen Eiryss in a dynamic leap, Eiryss stalking from a rooftop, Eiryss walking with a sexy swagger. Now she’s going to be leading a unit of razor-blade-wielding, human-hating, homicidal zealots — where do I take her from here? The only thing written in stone is that she’ll be retaining her signature weapon combination: A sword and a crossbow fixed with a nasty bayonet.

Things I have to think about:

Pose: Action, Heroic, Stealthy?

Costume: More armor? More skin?

Details: Hood up or hood down? Is it time to see Eiryss’ ears? I’m not sure the world is ready for that…

If you’ve got a good idea, let me know what you think. I have a feeling I’m going to need help with this one…

And whatever I do, I’ll show you here — progress to completion, pass or fail! Stay tuned!