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Butterflies | Concept Art

Concept art and progress pictures made for ‘Butterflies‘, a worldbuilding project born from a story (a Fable: The Lost Chapters fanfic!!!) I wrote years ago.

In 2022 I joined the Artstation’s Dragon’s Rise: The Forgotten Realms challenge to transition the fanfic setting to an original universe, and also develop fresh examples of character concept art, environment designs, and keyframes for my portfolio.

I’ve been posting in-depth step by steps and insights in social media and Patreon, and learned a lot in this journey. This became a treasured universe I’m loving to polish.

And I’m rewriting chapters (in PT-BR) of the story in Ao3.

A concept art style lineup of 6 fantasy-themed characters.
A small story intertwines these characters in a single scenario.

The Story

An artisan who lives in a windmill finds a wounded woman in the woods.

He saves her and contacts the local young priestess to help heal the mysterious woman, who may or may not be cursed to become a beast.

Character concept art. The background has a soft smoke effect. The character is a mid-to-dark skinned young priestess named Carbuncle.
A young priestess named Carbuncle. She has a best-beast friend called Teju Jagua, and one of her artifacts is missing (villain stole it).
A concept art style digital painting of a serpent-like creature that is an interpretation of the Boitata myth. This picture's version is a long, large snake with sepia-colored scales from which a bright orange interior shows through each space between the scales, as if the creature had molten lava as its innards. Its head is square-ish with rounded corners, and the eyes are bright yellow. The creature curls and twists around itself, and the tail erupts in flames.
Boitata, the great fire snake.
A painterly character concept art sketch of a pale man whose body was mutated onto new sprouted limbs with saturated, bright purple extremities, which I painted to remind the viewer of poisonous creatures and lizards. The man has large, asymmetrical hands with black claws. Three long, muscly limbs sprout from his back. Two seem 'unfinished', as if still sprouting, the 'formed' one has a gray-and-purple-ish skull at its end, the expression permanently halted as a vacant-eyed, wide-open jaw screech. The skull's sockets still have eyes attached to them — they're watery and unfocused, like a zombie or dead fish. It's a dummy head. The real man's head has a crown of purple bone protuberances sprouting from it. The man's expression is resentful, painful. His eyes are red — from rage, and tears.
Zahhak craves draconic power, to be free of gods, mentors and beasts. This is taboo, forbidden art. He steals treasure keys from a young priestess. Easy job. He leaves with the artifacts and an unnoticed gift. Hours later, the gift sprouts.

A greedy man seeks dragon powers for himself only. This is taboo, forbidden art. He steals an artifact from the young priestess and ends up cursed by her dragon-dog friend, Teju Jagua.

This villain morphs into an abomination, powerful and rich as he wanted, cursed as he’d never be able to imagine.

This new man-beast hybrid flees in a rage into the night, trampling all on its way. Coins fall from his pockets. What use is in gold if all you have to handle it are bloody claws and enraged howls?

Yara — Trained in a guild/monastery, works by escorting all sorts of colorful people through the woods. Masters a ‘ghost bow’ technique. A survivalist who enjoys both the ranger life, but also town centers bursting with activity and foods. Later on she‘ll change into her signature silver-y short hair.

The villain attacks a lady. Barely sees her as he slashes her.

A great fire snake burns the starry skies, watching them.

And this brings us back to the blacksmith.

"Digital painting of a full-body character in a cool-toned gradient background. It's a man with a dark, olive skintone, dark curly hair and a goatee. He wears glasses and has acne scars on his cheek and forehead. His costume is a cream-colored,buttoned-up shirt with sleeves folded up, dark trousers and boots, and a long, brown leather apron decorated with several pins and sewing tools like a scissor, measuring tape, wool, green rags, pencils. He holds a large, unfinished iron gate with his left hand, and a small, curling iron piece (part of the gate?) with his right hand."
Morthwyl (Chew) is an artisan who lives in a windmill. He tries to live a balanced, disciplined entrepreneur life but things don’t often go as planned. The iron gate says a bit about his personality as well — more defensive than offensive, but has some mean ornate spikes when needed. He’s not a fighter, but strong enough for his craft, dexterous and attentive to detail.
Chew close-up – sans glasses

Sketches and development

Chew and Yara concept art

A lineup of full-body, full-color poses and simple line sketches of my characters Chew and Yara. Both characters wear earth-tones in their costumes. The man wears his signature artisan apron, and the woman wears layers of a pilgrim or traveler clothing, complete with a long green cloak. Yara's bow is also in the picture — a spectral weapon painted with white and blue tones. It resembles a series of twigs neatly arranged and twisted together in symmetrical fashion.
Character concepts: Exploring personalities and features.

Creatures

A digital concept art drawing of a cartoon-ish cyan-colored quadruped dragon who has 6 heads. Some of the heads are more lizard-like, while others resemble canids. Their expressions also range from fearsome and teeth-baring, to submissive, laying on the ground, and licking itself for a routine grooming ritual.
The Teju Jagua find humans funny, love their food, and all 6 heads take their grooming rituals very seriously. Watermelons for scale.
A digital painting close-up of a blue creature-s head as it drinks from a water stream.
One of Teju Jagua’s heads.
Some references for Boitata.
Lineup WIPs
Initial poses exploring the characters’ silhouettes and personalities.
Exploring how the characters express themselves in the story and their environments.
The villain Zahhak is having a bad day.

My main inspirations

Painting cultures helps me in structuring and memorizing my history studies. Please don’t hesitate to send me a message if you find something odd or wrong. 🐲

  • Damascus/Syrian food and architecture;
  • I’m studying Islam (to bring the main blacksmith guy and his town some light Muslim references for their routine and culture. Also a single God that has no physical representation — although there’s all those colorful deities and beasts around them.)
  • Persian myths for a palace that has a dragon-god. The villain guy comes from Zahhak, a Persian myth.
  • Latin American nature and culture (I’d love to draw some foods like cuscuz, brigadeiros, coxinhas, cafés da manhã, pão de queijo 🥵🥵🥵 Maybe as props later?), people (Brazil’s indigenous Guarani Kaiowa mainly, and other ethnic groups) and folklore (the dragon-dog Teju Jagua, the fire snake Boitatá)

Enjoy and thank you!

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