12/05/2022 20:32:58 ¶ ●

# How to Smuggle a Vampire to Novigrad – Q&A

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What the hell is this?

HTSAVTN is my series of fully painted backgrounds featuring Geralt and Regis from The Witcher 3. Their object is to travel to the city of Novigrad. As it turns out, it’s not an easy trip.

Who’s traveling with Geralt?

Shortly summarized to those who haven’t read the series or played Blood and Wine, Regis is a 400-year-old vampire, who has for the time being overcome his addiction to blood. His title is a ‘’barber-surgeon’’ (in the books he’s the group’s healer or something? haven’t read them). He hasn’t made an appearance in the Netflix show (yet).

He aligns his beliefs as a pacifist and has integrated himself in the human society so that if you didn’t know better, it’d be difficult to tell him apart from a regular human.

How do you construct these images?

What I do is travel around the map and meditate (changing the time of day), until there is a pretty scenery in front of me. I screencap it, start painting by comparison and slap the characters in it.

How long does this process take you?

The first ten-ish images have taken me about a year. I estimate it takes somewhere between 22-40h per image, plus motivation breaks. I posted them in groups of few images as soon as I finished them, and then I tweaked them to fit the narrative that had slowly taken form in the meanwhile. There’s at least ~40 more artworks to come.

Why is the title of your series so stupidly long? It doesn’t even make for a cute acronym.

I kept thinking of a catchier title for the series, but this was one of the first ones and it ultimately refused to worm its way from my brain.

Is there a full story connecting these images?

Yes. It’s for me to know and you to find out.

Are you really going draw them traveling all the way up to Novigrad?

Yes, or I’ll die trying.

Why would you spend your time like this? You are in university and instead of picking courses that strengthen your future job skills you spend hundreds of hours painting backgrounds. Your apartment is dusty and there are small dirty plates gathered all over the place. You don’t even make any money from all this work. This is a ridiculous waste of time.

I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you.