I drew the lineart for this picture in February 2008. Around February of this year, I decided it would be a lot more interesting with some color. I’d always mentally titled it “Kids in Shatt”, thinking of the children from the orphanage in Lower City, so I filled in the background with an appropriate screenshot. The wrong angles and sizes of various ears and the Draenei boy’s missing chintacles are due to the early date of the drawing. Fortunately, the much-too-small size of the Gnome girl’s head in the original lineart was easily remedied in Photoshop. I’m not sure anymore whether the Troll youth was originally intended to be a boy or a girl. The idea for the sign he-or-she is carrying came from my very poor recollection of this classic Norman Rockwell painting.
A doodle from February 2009. I’m not entirely satisfied with it because I drew the Gnome child first and then all the other children ended up looking much older than him. The gender of the Night Elf child is intended to be ambiguous.
I love the Rockwell touch! I looked at the pictures before I read the post and in the second one I thought the small child was one of the bigger one’s little brother who tagged along. I thought it was nice of them to include him!
It was nice of them to include him, wasn’t it?