New marilith/balor pictures

[Gothmog]

Yep s/LaSH, I like your version a lot better than the one on the WoTC website. She does look alien, but the big head still doesn't seem quite right to me somehow.

Unfortunately, I am a crappy artist, and I have an image in my head of a marilith that would be SOOOO cool to see depicted. I simply don't have the talent to render it. Imagine this:

A long serpentine body coiled on top of a mound of skulls, some fresh, others stripped to the bone by abyssal scavengers. Atop the sinewy serpent's trunk is the upper body of a woman, with six arms, each holding an implement of death. Her face is framed in a mass of tangled hair, and her face would be beautiful if it were not contorted into an expression of hatred and murderous rage. Her lips pulled back in a feral sneer, bearing sharpened teeth, and to look into her eyes is to tempt madness and death.

Thats a marilith.

 

[kenjib]

I really like it s/LaSH. You've got a lot of talent.

 

[Scarbonac]

Not bad, not bad at all, s/LaSH. I definitely wouldn't mind seeing it colored. The only qualms I really have about it are:


1) the odd way her top right arm and middle right arm cross; I might have drawn it with the top right arm in the position held by the middle arm and vice versa. I'd probably have switched the weapons in those hands, too, now that I think about it;


2) I can't for the life of me make out what the weapon in her top left hand is supposed to be -- I'd have tried to show it in more of a three-quarters view;


3) w/o color, it looks, well, a bit light; I wouldn't mind seeing a more rendered B&W version with shadows and visual textures to give the piece more weight. -- but then, I'm a sucker for strong B&W graphic illustration techniques.

 

[Gez]

Kiddies, get parental permission before clicking.

You know, boobies are made specifically for little kiddies.

And by the way, your pic is nice, but her boobies are placed too high. There's the distance of one hand between the clavicle and the breast.

They are not Mariliths, but they looks rather like them, the Naga from Heroes of Might & Magic:

 

[reiella]

The Balor isn't too memorable for me.

The Marilith I like. The 2e Marilith and 2e Yuan-Ti looked similiar as well. I like the variety of weapons shown (one weapon with reach, and 5 without is mean ). I like the more purple/white color pattern (as it does help diffierenate it from the artwork of the other Snake-critters ). The thing that irks me right now is the hair, and that's probably just from the image quality, it looks soooo greasy, that or exposed brain.

Is it just me though, or have just always wrongly assumed that Marilith's were about the same size as Balor? Might have been the 2e art that set that falsehood in my mind (Ah the pic Gez shows agrees a bit, that's a giant Marilith, or well, a Giant Evil Snake Lady ).

And since someone brought up Demogorgon.

http://www.interplay.com/bg2throne/images/demowall.jpg

The best picture I've seen of Demogorgon yet . Although I have to say. The Demogorgon in BoVD is actually the first one to freaking abide by the original text description, to which I give alot of credit (although I still perfer the two headed mandrill to the two headed hyena).

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I don't know if they will get changed in the revision, but here are the current description of the balor and marilith:

"Mariliths appear as giant snakes from the waist down, with green, scaly coils, and attractive female humanoids above the waist. Besides their half-snake bodies, mariliths are distinguished by their six arms, each one holding some exotic weapon and sporting many bangles and jewels. Mariliths stand about 7 feet tall and measure about 20 feet from head to tip of tail."

Green scaly coil ? She's purple. Attractive female humanoid ? Only if you're into underage Roswell aliens (except that Roswell aliens are grey, not purple). All that IMHO off course.

Do these artists even read the descriptions before they draw?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

And since someone brought up Demogorgon.

http://www.interplay.com/bg2throne/images/demowall.jpg

The best picture I've seen of Demogorgon yet . Although I have to say. The Demogorgon in BoVD is actually the first one to freaking abide by the original text description, to which I give alot of credit (although I still perfer the two headed mandrill to the two headed hyena).

In the MM1 Demongorgon is listed as having the heads of Hyenas? I'm not so sure about that.

 

[Wolv0rine]

I dunno about that Demogorgon pic, myself. He looks like a mellow drunk guy (disposition-wise), there's no evil to him, visually. And those heads look like lion heads wearing baboon masks.
And no, there was no mention of hyenas at all in demogorgon's 1E entry, I'm entirely sure of it.

 

[s/LaSH]

Not bad, not bad at all, s/LaSH. I definitely wouldn't mind seeing it colored. The only qualms I really have about it are:

Coloured version is on the way. It'll take me a few days, though.

2) I can't for the life of me make out what the weapon in her top left hand is supposed to be -- I'd have tried to show it in more of a three-quarters view;

Just a big, curvy knife...

3) w/o color, it looks, well, a bit light; I wouldn't mind seeing a more rendered B&W version with shadows and visual textures to give the piece more weight. -- but then, I'm a sucker for strong B&W graphic illustration techniques.

That's how it seemed to me too. I normally work for computer colour, and my own colouring methods don't like grayscale-rendered pieces too much. I'll be using a heavy hybrid style when I colour it (the mockups I did looked promising), which should give it a lot more depth.

You know, boobies are made specifically for little kiddies.

And by the way, your pic is nice, but her boobies are placed too high. There's the distance of one hand between the clavicle and the breast.

True, and true. Although there's a little bit of displacement due to her having a triple helping of pectoral muscles, and she's leaning back slightly, thus making my error not so noticable. I'll try to use shadows to make it even less obvious when I colour.


Hm, it looks like nobody hates it... maybe next week I can start a petition to get WotC to use my work instead of their highly-paid, experienced artists... heheheh.

 

[Klaus]

I have my own images for devils and demons (which I'll have to explain some day in a Dragon's Breath column) but suffice to say that I see Balors like Darkness (Tim Curry) in the Legend movie, to have them be really different from Pit Fiends.

As for Mariliths, I like the 1e2e versions, as can be seen from my Demons & Devils wallpaper (Marilith on the left, Glabrezu on center, Nalfeshnee on right), here .