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Description
As much of my work is, this is a real hybrid piece...
The background and staff modeled and rendered in Carrara.
Kashara's pose worked out in Poser, Gakyals pose from a picture of me sitting as I envisioned him, the unimaginably bored child facinated by his own toe in the name of sanity.
The shapes of Kashara and Gakyal created in vector layers in photoshop, then the shaded by hand, with a mouse and the brush/smudge tools.
The rune circles were made using the same Sanskrit font on the pillars, in illustrator, then perspectived, and composited over a sky made in photoshop.
Lastly a crack brush was used over bits of the background to add detail.

Not counting the background which was made several months before the rest, then tweaked over a couple hours, probably 14 total for Kashara and the staff, then another 6 for Gakyal.

A happy accident of drops in WoW inspired the image and further the idea of Kashara, a mage of innocence not corrupted, but definitely lost.

---

Kashara was born with the gift, not uncommon, many know the calling of the arcane threads of the world, the temptation, perhaps right to pluck at them. She was apprenticed as a mage, a noble, restrictive view of the nature of magic, shunning the more shadowed layers of the arcane strata where dark things lurk. Yet a twist of fate would send her down down the troubled path between shadow and light, to walk the dark places...some would call her witch, she would not entirely disagree...

We fear the dark, perhaps rightly so, but not all things that dwell there are evil, though the twists of chaos make such exceptions, not the rule. The line between chaos and evil can be obscure at times, malice is the line, hatred, true evil is a thing for which there are few words, only a sense. The imps, by in large, are not this, they are merely chaotic half flesh, some more stable than others. Gakyal was an imp of noble linage, if such an idea is to be understood, though mischief is their nature, some discipline is expected of the noble imp, and Gakyal was too much a child for his father's tastes, so he was tasked to a mortal, to serve, bound till he would obey a master for a life time. Imps are immortal, and so his father's decree did not command one master alone, but for the mortal life time. Three times his service would be passed from fallen masters till Kashara would defeat a band of brigands, and find her self saddled with a questionable servant that would bring her nothing but trouble with her own master.

There was no breaking the bond of servitude, she found in time, without extending his sentence to yet another master. And so, pest that he was, she learned to tolerate him as the small mischievous child he was, but in the end would be cast aside by the mage order for her choice, and so find her self on the shadowed path.

Description
As much of my work is, this is a real hybrid piece...
The background and staff modeled and rendered in Carrara.
Kashara's pose worked out in Poser, Gakyals pose from a picture of me sitting as I envisioned him, the unimaginably bored child facinated by his own toe in the name of sanity.
The shapes of Kashara and Gakyal created in vector layers in photoshop, then the shaded by hand, with a mouse and the brush/smudge tools.
The rune circles were made using the same Sanskrit font on the pillars, in illustrator, then perspectived, and composited over a sky made in photoshop.
Lastly a crack brush was used over bits of the background to add detail.

Not counting the background which was made several months before the rest, then tweaked over a couple hours, probably 14 total for Kashara and the staff, then another 6 for Gakyal.

A happy accident of drops in WoW inspired the image and further the idea of Kashara, a mage of innocence not corrupted, but definitely lost.

---

Kashara was born with the gift, not uncommon, many know the calling of the arcane threads of the world, the temptation, perhaps right to pluck at them. She was apprenticed as a mage, a noble, restrictive view of the nature of magic, shunning the more shadowed layers of the arcane strata where dark things lurk. Yet a twist of fate would send her down down the troubled path between shadow and light, to walk the dark places...some would call her witch, she would not entirely disagree...

We fear the dark, perhaps rightly so, but not all things that dwell there are evil, though the twists of chaos make such exceptions, not the rule. The line between chaos and evil can be obscure at times, malice is the line, hatred, true evil is a thing for which there are few words, only a sense. The imps, by in large, are not this, they are merely chaotic half flesh, some more stable than others. Gakyal was an imp of noble linage, if such an idea is to be understood, though mischief is their nature, some discipline is expected of the noble imp, and Gakyal was too much a child for his father's tastes, so he was tasked to a mortal, to serve, bound till he would obey a master for a life time. Imps are immortal, and so his father's decree did not command one master alone, but for the mortal life time. Three times his service would be passed from fallen masters till Kashara would defeat a band of brigands, and find her self saddled with a questionable servant that would bring her nothing but trouble with her own master.

There was no breaking the bond of servitude, she found in time, without extending his sentence to yet another master. And so, pest that he was, she learned to tolerate him as the small mischievous child he was, but in the end would be cast aside by the mage order for her choice, and so find her self on the shadowed path.