d r a g o n b o n e s    

It all started with Dr. Jonathan Jacobs of The Core Mechanic. Or, that is to say, it all started for me with Dr. JJ. Jonathan had been kind enough to include me in the artist list for Open Game Table: The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, Volume 1. It was the first time I’d ever been published anywhere but the web. It felt great to be a part of the creation of such a fun book, and I was really happy that I could take part.

A few weeks after the release of OGT: The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, V.1, I received an email from Jonathan saying that he had another project in the works. Since I’d taken part in the Anthology, he was wondering if I would be interested. I was. Like… a lot.

The first thing that needed to happen was a call to content providers like myself. Jonathan and his partners needed to collect a large number of people who would be interested in something fairly new. They wanted to crowd source content developement of gaming suppliments. They had a rough idea of the direction that they wanted to move in, and a large number of people who might be willing to help out.

So Jonathan asked me to do a ‘promo poster’ featuring a ‘sci fi or steampunk’ version of the famous image of Uncle Sam by James Montgomery Flagg. The result is what you see before you. I tried to recreate the lettering  and feel – even if not the border (I wasn’t quite sure how Jonathan was going to be using it).

I did a couple of sketch versions before I started on this final as I tried to work through his posture and the mood of the image. In the end, I think that I got the right mood, while taking Sam in a rather steampunkerly direction. Yes – steampunkerly.

And here’s a little video to give you a feel for how it unfolded…

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I’ve decided to start a new (and regular) follow-up to the work I’m doing with Nevermet Press. Why, you ask? Well – a couple of reasons actualy:

1. This group is awesome. I think that they deserve more attention than they are currently getting. Don’t get me wrong – we/they are just starting out, and there’s already been attention from Wired.com’s GeekDad blog and there’s a team up with the Kobold Quarterly already in the works. That’s enough to tell me that people are taking notice, but I would like to see the focus on NMP be… even more impressive. We’re (I’ll use ‘we’ since I feel like I’m part of the team – and not some really a standard contractor) using a crowd-sourcing model, and the very concept is fascinating to me. I’m very curious to see where it leads.
2. Since NMP is posting all work under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License I thought that it might be nice to retain a copy of the images that I do for the site here for all three of you – my adoring fans. I’ll tell you a little more about the process I use and the media involved when it’s here on my sight so that we can keep the focus on art here and the focus on gaming there. Makes sense to me anyway.

I’ll be starting these on this coming Tuesday (Aug. 25th, 2009) and I’ll try to keep them coming every Tues/Thursday – at least until I get caught up to the current release. As always, I welcome your thoughts/comments!

We’ve started to have a gallery of artwork done for the website over at NevermetPress.com. It currently includes all the artwork done for the first three print cycles – The Desire, Immeril Lithose, and Brother Ptolemy.

I’ve always found the art of gaming to be a great source of inspiration. I can remember cracking open that famous red boxed basic set and pouring through the pages – the written words mean a lot, but the artwork… well – it was like a window into the world that the text spoke of. The difference between hearing a story about someones vacation and actually watching it happen. It was a large part of the impetus behind my career in art. Go and check it out – be inspired by the wonderful talents there and go in a new direction with your game.

The False Charity characters with my illustrations for Nevermet Press.