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Gaspode5 β Bishop - Redfallows Watch
Published: 2011-09-14 19:09:18 +0000 UTC; Views: 3397; Favourites: 77; Downloads: 39
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A huge thank you to anybody who favourites and/or comments on this picture. I really appreciate it.Please view full size or so much detail will be lost. An yes the original is enormous. I put up a detail of the image here [link]
So, what is this? Bishop, a ranger and one of the companions from the RPG Neverwinter Nights 2. He's an all around nasty piece of work and great fun to have around. This is a scene from his back story when he's training to become an assassin. The final test is the razing of a village and, carrying a bit of a grudge, Bishop chooses his own home village. He seriously fails his exam by trying to warn the villagers and then turning on his fellow assassins, almost getting killed in the process.
I spent ages on this and learned a lot, not the least about textures. I love textures. I went with the iconic Mad Max/Terminator/Hawke/general hero pose after much ruminating. I know it's been used to death but that's how the image lodged itself in my mind when I first thought of it a couple of years ago.
Since I'm about a decade behind everybody else when it comes to fan art there will probably be more of Bishop in the future.
I always listen to music when painting and often there are particular songs that matches the mood of the picture. I've never mentioned it before but this time I thought I would. These two stood out as particularly apt to the mood I was looking for: Requiem for a Dream [link] and Mein Hertz Brennt by Rammstein [link]
I used some of these brushes for the blood on his armour [link] and these brushes were used for some textures and details on his face [link]
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Comments: 49
This is amazing this is excatly what I think of when I think of this scene! Β Also when listening to this badass music with it check it out!!! Β
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKJIS9β¦
Let me know what you think!
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I do actually listen to Two Steps From Hell on occasion when I paint and it works well with this picture. 
Thank you for the kind comments. I'm very glad you liked it.
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You truly captured the mood of that scene, well done.
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Aw, thank you! 
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Thank you! I'm glad it works for you.
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Omg... Sorry, I found it only today >.<
This is awesome, exactly as I pretended!
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Thank you very much. 
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Oh yeah 
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Blown away here. I can almost feel the heat. This is an awesome piece of work. Simply wonderful
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I say, thank you! And there's no nudity whatsoever. 
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This, my dear, is honestly the most awesome work you've done so far!
You did such a great job with *everything* here - the characters, the buildings, the details, the fire... it cannot have been easy to work with such a limited colour scheme (I try to avoid it for that very reason 
I'm very impressed, and I'll love to see where you'll go with your newfound techniques once your wrist feels well again!
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I'm humbled. Thank you so much!
Funny you should mention the colour scheme. I seem to spend a lot of time doing paintings where the only light source is fire. I kind of find it a fun challenge to work with such a limited palette (although it's not actually deliberate) and sometimes it helps to create unity in the picture.
Yes we may not actually bleed for our art but we damn well hurt. This time it's the elbow but meh, it'll go away.
My next project is not quite as ambitious, my partner's long awaited barbarian babe. No doubt it'll present me with some terrible and completely unexpected challenges.
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Ohoho... Barbarian babe, you say? Can't wait!
Tell me about the skill never matching the imagination... that's a constant source of frustration here, too. But I guess you're right - it's the spark that drives us to work on ourselves and to improve step by step, and I'm happy when I notice some progress in my skill now and then.
I noticed a lot of progress in yours, too, so I'm really looking forward to see your next works. And I followed your lead and experimented with textures in my current art project (a digital version of my Hawke character
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The sky is the limit!
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Amazing! Brilliant! The pose, the face, the background, the fire...
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Oh, I say! It warms my heart to hear that. Thank you.
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It's amazing. The mood and character of the Bishop are transferred perfectly with the help of colors and environment
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Yay, I'm so relieved! Thank you.
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I had so much fun doing the fires I think I went a bit mad there...
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It's seriously amazing, you did a very nice work here! 
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You're welcome, I realy appreciate you nwn 2 fanarts.
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No, seriously, there's so much work and stuff to oggle in this piece, it's amazing
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I feel all warm and fuzzy now. I thank you most humbly.
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Since I'll be having nearly a whole chapter about this episode in my story, I'm always so fascinated with how other people see it. your varient is one of the best ones (of both written and drawn)
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Wow! Thank you. 
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The scene with Duncan was always interesting for me, too
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It's his fee for being tormented with all these guys I paint. She'll have big boobs and impractical shoes too.
The scene with Duncan has so much potential but it will be hard to convey since Bishop is almost dead at that point and having a picture of an elf hovering over an injured person wont tell the story. I'm currently bending it into shape in my head as it were.
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Boobs!!! 
I'm currently sketching Del in a 'some pretty medieval-fantasy dress for a change' (as was requested) for the same reason. With a fan, no less
As for Duncan - I was always so damn curious as to what exactly happened there. Especially after Duncan realized whom the Hells he saved 
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I think he knew all along, the sly dog. I also don't believe the story about a debt, Bishop wouldn't care less about debts, he'd just bugger off. I think Duncan knew, decided to be charitable, later realised he had a talented smuggler who could bring him cheap Luskan whiskey (or something) across the border and decided to try his hand at a little blackmail. Bishop has a comfy room when in town and a nice grudge to keep him warm at night (we all need something to live for). They need each other!
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Hm, the theory is sound but it only works if Bishop actually stayed on as an assassin. Instead he went off and became a ranger and stayed away from civilisation as much as possible. I always had Duncan down as a bit of 'grey' person. He was an adventurer so that makes him a bit of an opportunist. I don't think he's bad, he just bends the rules a bit.
The way I see it the two guys meet at a juncture in life. Duncan wants to stop adventuring and Bishop wants to stop living. Duncan sees burning village, watches horrified from the bushes, sees the last man standing, i.e. Bishop and can't quite bring himself to let the man die. He drags slowly healing Bishop with him to town and dumps him in this building he's has bought for his adventuring savings. Bishop sulks and heals, heads into the wild, perhaps even to top himself, has an epiphany, becomes ranger and meets Karnwyr. Once in a while he heads back to town for booze and wenches, stays with Duncan because having an enemy to hate creates purpose where there's none and Duncan gets a handy man. The black mail is probably only hinted at, like 'Oh yes, you have contacts in Luskan, you're a sneaky bastard, why don't you get me some of that really expensive booze, very cheaply, and I wont tell anybody about what you really are'. This theory is not the property of Obsidian but my own to fill out their glaring plot holes. Phew. Apologies for the long reply.
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Well, since Obsidian didn't give any proper theory at all, I think we all have the right to imagine
The way I saw it Bishop was always sort of a 'ranger' - perhaps, more of a lone hunter-tracker type rather than nature-loving guy. So in Luskan he was frequently used as a scout and stalker, with assassin-training being sort of an icing to the cake ('The guy is good in tracking, why won't we teach him how to kill properly what he stalked down - then he'll be even more handy. Who cares if he wants to or not?') Whether he stayed on as an assassin or not is a good question - perhaps, he didn't view it as a job or something, but that doesn't make him any less of a person who can easily and in cold-blood kill someone just because. (Oh, and in my varient he had Karnwyr already in Luskan. So the pup probably had a heart-attack when his human nearly died in Redfallow's Watch. Who knows, maybe it was even Karnwyr who ran off into the woods looking for someone to fix the human (as a varient, I like coming up with tens of those)
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I agree that Bishop was always a ranger and I also agree his skills as a hunter would have been used by Luskan. After all, in Forgotten Realms these 'professions' are more of a calling, something you're born to. However, in my murky imagination it would have been dormant in Bishop and not really surfaced properly (I don't count him learning to hunt and track as a child) until he freed himself from the assassins guild. Bishop would most certainly kill without hesitation if he felt there was a need i.e. somebody threatening him, annoying him, stealing his ale, looking at him sideways...but I don't think he'd go as far as razing villages, it would be so in practical and I see his character as too pragmatic for that. I can also imagine Bishop doing a bit of assassin work as a sort of a freelance but I don't see him as ever being with any organisation or guild ever again. After all he hates being ordered around. I like the idea of Karnwyr being with him during the razing of Redfallows Watch though. On the other hand Bishop makes it quite clear he really wanted to die there and I can't see him wanting that if he has Karnwyr...Hmm...
This is why plot holes and clunky graphics are so much fun. It gives us fans so much room to play around. This is also, I think, why I so far have no inclination to do any fan art of Dragon Age. I'd just end up mimicking the graphics in the game. Perhaps in a few years time...
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