Netflix has a hit on its hands with The Witcher, a new fantasy series based on the books by Andrzej Sapkowski. The first season dropped late last year and gained a lot of fans, or at least a lot of people who couldn’t get that “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” song out of their heads.
The show is set in a sprawling fantasy land called the Continent, where humans, elves, drawves, halflings and other Middle-earth-ian races try to live together side by side, with varying degrees of success. The show introduced us to several of these races, but not all of them. Now, Pixoloid Studios has released some of the concept art they created for the first season, some of which was used, some of which was altered, and some of which didn’t show up at all.
So far as the first season goes, the designs for the creatures and fantasy races and monsters mostly went over well, with at least one big exception: fans did not enjoy the armor worn by the soldiers of Nilfgaard, an expansionist nation that threatens the northern kingdoms where most of the action happens. And since it kind of looks like the soldiers are wearing crinkly trash bags for protection, I get where they’re coming from:
WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO TO NILFGAARD ARMOR HOLY SHIT pic.twitter.com/Lsv14WbZuE
— Jhzargo | Commissions Paused (@Jhzargo_Art) May 28, 2019
As it ends up, the discarded-candy-wrapper look of the armor was planned from the beginning, although we wish they’d have gone with the alternate design:
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Incidentally, showrunner Lauren Hissrich has promised that the Nilfgaardian armor will be “totally different” in season 2. We’ll see.
Pixoloid also mocked up a take on dryads, wood nymphs who mostly occupy the woods of Brokilon…and don’t take kindly to anyone encroaching on their territory:
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In the show itself, the dryads looks a touch less green, and their outfits include more armor-type accents:
Image: The Witcher/Netflix
We also have Pixoloid’s studies of dwarves in various states of dress and undress:
Image: Pixoloid Studios
On the show, the dwarves looked a little more ordinary:
Image: The Witcher/Netflix
Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think we met goblins at all during the first season, but Pixoloid was ready with renders of them, in both “criminals/thiefs” and “average townsfolks” varieties:
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A study in halfling ears:
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And finally, this sweet render of a mage appearing out of shadow in a swirl of mist…or he’s teleporting, or he’s fighting a smoke monster…I’m not 100% sure but I don’t think we saw it happen in the first season:
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And there’s more concept art where that came from.
I enjoyed the first season of The Witcher, even if some of the elements looked a little lower-rent onscreen than they did in the planning stages. The show is cleared to resume production, so hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to see what the team has in store for season 2.
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h/t CBR