Laughter of Dragons

I completely missed the fact The One Ring: Laughter of Dragons was out already!
I did a LOT of art for it, and here it is:

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Got My Sword Nicked by a Shark

Update 2017: After some delays, I finally heard the final word from Fat Shark. They completely deny any inspiration, or even similarity between my design and their 3D asset. Apparently, that asset was inspired by "celtic swords".
Well, good to know. Here I was, thinking they just blatantly copied my drawing. 
Yeah, I'm not gonna go to court for 150-ish USD, which they of course know.
Still, I'll leave the blog up, as a reminder of their shameful display.
Shame! Boo! Thieves! 
Sad.

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(original post follows below:)
In October I got my friends a game on Steam, which I wanted to play with them.
It's called End Times: Vermintide and it's set in the Warhammer universe.
It's developed by Fatshark.

We had a good time, each playing a different character. After one session, I noticed the elven ranger Kerillian (played by my flatmate) used a dagger with a design which was somehow familiar.

///Edit: The post was edited to focus on the one specific sword design, the rest was confusing.

Eventually I realized it reminded me of a drawing I did in 2009: (2nd from the left)
http://merlkir.deviantart.com/art/Elven-Sword-Evolution-128393180

This is what the weapon looks like in the game:

The thing is nearly identical.  

The way the crossguard is composed of two levels of curls (each curling in the opposite direction), the shape of the blade, even the pommel is heart shaped with inward curled edges.

Here's a comparison (thanks to Hessper), so you can see the designs together :

At first I thought it was funny, a big videogame company using designs from bloody DeviantArt.
Then I thought it was a bit lame. This game is a commercial product, they continue to make money on it, as it's still being sold and played by thousands of people every day.
I thought I should say something, because this should not happen.

It's especially baffling to me, since the game is based in the Warhammer universe, and has loads and loads of existing art under that license, any of which they could've easily use for inspiration.

So I decided to contact them, looking for an explanation rather than big bucks. (don't get me wrong though, I still asked them about a licensing fee)
I wrote them an email through their official contact and waited.
This was in October and I'm still waiting for any kind of reply whatsoever.

To sum up - Fatshark, if someone at the company reads this - I would still love to hear from You and find out how this happened. 

I'm drawing again!

Hey, long time no post!

I've been stretching my drawing muscles lately. I seem to have forgotten a lot, it's always a struggle at first. When I get into it though, it's a lot of fun.

Here are 4 illustration I've done for the "Picks and Hoes" book - it's quite rare to see interior illustrations in fantasy books these days:

(there will be two more in the book, still working on those. All "ink pen" over "pencil" in ArtRage)

And this is a drawing I did for a LARP group reenacting the men of Dale from J.R.R.Tolkien's Middle Earth, for a poster I think. It felt like I was drawing this for myself though - very relaxing, no stress over reference, I just drew what I knew well and enjoyed the process very much.

("pencil" in ArtRage)

  

I'm quite pleased with the result. It weren't necessarily the Osprey illustrations I was thinking about while drawing it, Victor Ambrus fans will no doubt see my attempts to be as loose and effortless as he was in all his wonderful elf drawings.

Focusing on the armies of the north of ME was also interesting. I've done many drawings and paintings of the Gondorians, the Haradrim also - all southern nations. But the elves of Mirkwood, men of Dale, Beornings, the Woodsmen, those were all neglected for some reason. They don't appear in LOTR that much and somehow don't seem to fit - the inspiration, their source and origin is more obscure, yet rooted in history and mythology even more than that of the southern people.

Quite possibly it was a combination of purchasing The One Ring role playing game by Cubicle 7 (illustrated by Jon Hodgson, Tomasz Jedruszek and John Howe), reading The Hobbit again in English and also reading "Road to Middle Earth" by Tom Shippey, that made me want to illustrate these less explored parts of Tolkien's world. Less eplored in the past that is, and in the better known media. I'm sure the MERP games have done all kinds of books on the North, but it seems to me that TOR is the one game that deals with it properly at last.

The North isn't quite as boring as I once thought it was. Hopefully I'll get to draw or paint some more of these mysterious lands.