In honor of the 4th of July:

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…

I’ve uploaded a video of the process I used to create “The Masquerade” for Nevermet Press. Joe Trainor of the Joe Trainor Trio was kind enough to let me use their song Broken Circle as an audio track, and I think that it adds quite a bit to the video. Between the JT3 and the Industrial Jazz Group, I think that my videos are going to be at least as fun to listen to as they are to watch.

Speaking of which – what are you waiting for?

A while back, I showed you guys my fan art for the character Telepath of Uniques fame. Tonight I created a quick little video to show you how I drew her. Lemme know what you think!