The Last Will and Testament of Obediah Felkner…

… is a particularly weird and wonderful RPG adventure for DCC, recently (and successfully) kickstarted by author Stephen Newton of Thick Skull Adventures. As these things go – it has it’s teeth well and truly sunk into the Weird West genre – and if that sort of thing floats your boat, then head over to the Kickstarter for a full synopsis.

I had been already been commissioned for a couple of panels, when the kickstarter hit it’s stretch goals, and I was fortunate to pick up an extra meaty monster pic. There’s quite a nice little flow of images in the design process here as the final picture takes shape – so I thought I’d share them.

1: Super basic early scamp:

I’m a little embarrassed about how basic and uninspiring this doodle might have looked to Stephen when it plopped onto his lap. It was, to be fair, only meant to convey the following information. Double page spread – monster one side, wing and text the other. Still – this was enough to get a green light and on to the next stage.

2: Still a scamp.. but…

… starting to flesh the idea out. Initially – this looked to be something a bit bestial, squatting on top of a pile of crud. On reflection – it seemed to lack the dark intelligence that this creature could be harbouring (as a quasi-deity). So I decided to push the next version harder and give it a semi-humanoid form.

3: Lord of Decay…

With each stage, and as I bear down on the final concept – I tend to invest more and more time to rendering detail. It’s also interesting to see which elements make it through from one iteration to the next. Much of Stephens writing described the effects of Ggck’ Kalic’s powers (all of which are rather unpleasant), so I introduced a victim to better exemplify the necrotic and disease inducing shenanigans at he/she/its disposal.

4: And it’s quarry…

Because the victim started to feel like a major element of the image, I put together a separate character sketch to get a better feel for him. Not looking happy. No sir.

5a: Final Image

Inked. You can see I doubled down on our victim looking even worse than before. It didn’t seem like the time for subtlety! I also moved the hands away from holding the head – the principle being that something about to happen is more visually gripping than the thing itself. One’s mind/imagination fills in the blanks with far more visceral detail than I could render!

5b: detail

Lovely. What’s that you say? This would make a lovely print for the fantasy art fanatic in your life?! I quite agree; go to Redbubble to pick up a quality print (the phone cover looks especially delicious!).

Last but not least, a quick word of thanks to Mort, a big hitter for DCC,  especially this side of the pond (UK). A mutual friend to Stephen and I, who put in a good word for me at an opportune moment. Thanks, man.

Dark Trails RPG…

It feels great to be limbering up for a few new pieces, and the forthcoming  Dark Trails RPG looks like a project with BAGS of potential. The basic premise is a fusion of genres that sees a gritty take on the Wild West, colliding with Cthulhu mythos, seen through a kaleidoscope of Native American mythology, peppered with a plethora of Central and South American culture… Weird West! It’s the brainchild of David Baity (Carnival of the Damned), and looks likely to kickstart this year sometime. I’ve already had a shot at play testing the current version (that like Carnival – riffs off the excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics system) – and have to say I had a blast. I’ll be posting links as soon as I hear any more.

Here then, is the first of a few pieces I’ve submitted. The tentacled badge just came to me, like a slide dropping into my head. All I had to do was project it onto my sketchbook. There was a little bit of tweaking, as I felt that I needed to make the badge a bit more legible for the whole image to read a little easier – but it was that most rare type of art; one that happily falls off the end of your pen onto the page.

Sheriff Cthulhu Sketch

Sheriff Cthulhu

Art nerds will spot a little of the process (I traced an outline of my preferred version, and then used a grid to enlarge a master outline, from which to develop further). The sketchpad is an A4 moleskin. They’re not cheap, and the yellow tint isn’t for everyone, but graphite glides beautifully across the surface of the page – and they are robust enough to take hard working images without pilling, tearing or in any other way giving up on you!

Finally – this image is leading the charge on my RedBubble POD assault. I haven’t really moved in yet (expect a series of attention seeking posts when I do), but if you wanted this image printing on anything from ‘under-crackers’ to a ‘bearskin rug’ – that’s the place to go!

I sells Eye cells…

Another piece for the Umerica Survival Guide,  this time revolving around a market (of sorts) selling all kinds of weird and wonderful contraband. I thought it might be interesting to put together a little blog post describing some of the design decisions I made along the way (for even a modest little image like this!).

First, I knock some ideas around on scrap paper and sketchbooks. I know the image commissioned is going to be used at 1/4 page, so a wide establishing ‘landscape’ would be a bit lost (any details becoming incredibly minute on the page as used). The image above shows me trying out a variety of scenes, where I get a bit closer into the action. There’s an early idea (bottom right), using the market stalls to tonally frame a series of little portraits depicting sellers and customers. Above that – the focus is entirely on some kind of robot butcher, perhaps selling dodgy alien meat. On the next page I start to combine the two ideas, but using perspective to pull visual focus towards the market seller (who is now out from behind the stall, which felt like a barrier between the viewer and the experience).

I gave quite a lot of thought to the composition here. There’s a lot going on, and if this wasn’t orchestrated with due consideration, things would get a bit messy. I wanted a visceral sense of market smells and noises. The main focus of the image should be the eyeball vendor, shouting out to the customers  – maybe an offer relating to his dubious product (notice his fingers are signalling ‘three’ – indicating some kind of numeric significance  – rather than an open hand or a pointing finger). I established a rough one point perspective, which converges close to his mouth. The straps of his little basket also lead the eye in this direction. The original sketch was wider, and devided the picture into three planes – which is a classic compositional device. It left the image looking a bit too symmetrical though (given there were stalls on both the left and right hand sides), so I lopped off the right hand third. The robot customer at Dirty Dongles was then introduced as a strong vertical element (notice that ariel!) to re-establish ‘thirds’,  but one that didn’t mirror the opposite side.

If you’re used to reading books from left to right, the odds are you read paintings in the same way. Humans are also predisposed to look at faces and eyes. There’s a little trail here, all roughly the same horizontal, to lead you to Mr Eyeballs. If you go too far, the final face looks back into the picture at the vendor… and by design – so should you!

Triangles take you to their peak…

Spirals do the same job. The eyeballs are a big visual draw here, but if that’s where your eye has ended up, it needs directing back upwards. The shadow that cuts across the box  joins the stick that the robot on the right carries, then up the arm, and round the face. The accumulative effect of all this is that despite their being a multitude of little narrative details and distractions in the picture…

… to name but a few; the image should feel cohesive and harmonious – with a clear point of focus.

And the feet? Taking inspiration from the master of composition in his tour-de-force: Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Manet knows to show more than he tells, and includes any number of mysteries and ambiguities to breathe life into his work…

(detail from the top right hand corner of Manet’s masterpiece).

Obsessive? Me?

Tower of Scrap

Little post to update blog with another commission for Umerican RPG Kickstarter. I’m having to work these up pretty quickly, but please to say there’s still time to develop them a little bit in sketchbooks. These preliminary drawings are drawn in graphic markers with a little posca pen to highlight. The main event was largely painted in gouache and drawn into with pencil crayons (with a smidgeon of digital tinkering for 5 minutes at the back end).

I felt like i was drawing inspiration from Joos De Momper the Younger’s anthropomorphic landscapes, although mine are no where near as subtle. Not sure I do subtle.

Joos de Momper the Younger, Anthropomorphic Landscape c.1600-1635

The Flats…

… is an area in the City of Scrap wholly given over to post apocyliptic car racing. The participants evolved along with the drawing. They seemed vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on where the inspiration had come from, or where I might have seen them before. The octopoid arrived first, and his geometric companion arrived shortly afterwards (his cuboid form implimented as a juxtaposition to his wobbly co-driver). My ‘artistic’ decision. Then it struck me…

Dead Tree 2

Here’s the finished piece. Pretty pleased with how it turned out. I was aiming for an etheriel kind of mood here, and I think I just about found it. Because of the complexity of the main trunk (and the thousands of notices pinned to it), I gave the landscape a shallow depth of field, and the blurred foreground and distance served well to juxtapose (and not clash) with the mid. I also used a little one point perspective in the buildings to send the views eye straight to the same area – although thats pretty subtle – and you’ll notice the antenna all pretty much act as sign posts, leading you to the same point.

Dead Tree

This one is currently on the drawing board. Another piece for the Umerican Survival guide. My design issue here, was that I wanted to amp up the post-apocalyptic theme here, but was struggling with a design solution. My initial idea was to include some of the city wall in the background, and maybe add some cranes and other industrial equipment. Problem was, this would interfere with the branches of the tree somewhat. While drawing the tree from A5 sketch to A3 final, the foreground suggested something a bit more geometric to help describe the perspective. In order to flag these shapes as rooftops (and keep the sense of scale with the giant, dead tree), I thought about putting ariels and transmitting devices on them. This both took the pressure off background ‘dressing’ and will provide opportunities to mirror the shapes of the branching tree. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, design just resolves itself!

Railipede

What do you get if you cross a subway train with a centipede? One for Crawling Under A Broken Moon.

Diving for Salvage

Data Bat

Cover Art Alert!! OK – as alerts go – this one is a year late.. but as I’m populating this new blog… Cover Art Alert!!! I called this one ‘Data Bat’ – and it made the cover of Crawling Under a Broken Moon Issue 13.

This came off the back of playing a lot (too much) Destiny – The Taken King; and I think Oryx muscled his way through the loose constraints of my subconscious and onto the page. Maybe.

City of Scrap

A freshly minted piece for an up and coming kickstarter ‘The Umerican Survival Guide‘. The moon peeping in top right is a little homage to local hero, artist Joseph Wright of Derby, whose paintings chronicling The Enlightenment often included the moon, eerily looking on from afar –  an esoteric reminder of how little was still known about the world, and the darkness from scientists were in the business of extracting themselves from (with their own particular brand of magic).

Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump, 1768