d r a g o n b o n e s    

So the newest product from Nevermet Press is Brother Ptolemy and the Hidden Kingdom. It’s a product that I’m more than a little proud of. I contributed a series of different images for NPCs and villains, and this is the first time that I feel like I’ve contributed enough to help change the look and feel of a book. To have that first be within something of this caliber is enough to make me puff my chest just a little bigger.

There’s a plethora of storyline, npcs, critters, and items between the covers. I think that it’s exactly the sort of supplement that rides that line that so many try but fail: to be enough information without being setting dependent. Plug this information into any existing campaign easily. Don’t take my word for it though – check out Greg Schuster’s review over at The Dump Stat.

Speaking of reviews – they just seem to keep rolling in – and the bottom line? They all seem to be pretty happy with the content! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Dr. Jonathan Jacobs is a driven man and the creative minds at NMP just keep kicking up productivity, creativity, and the quality. It’s an adventure working with them, and one I’m quite happy to be on.

Want to see some of those reviews I just mentioned? Check them out:

• Game Knight Reviews says “Brother Ptolemy makes one heck of a scary villain in my book.“
• Reviews at RPGNow.com give it 5/5 stars!

I’m really looking forward to seeing what the next reviewer has to say!

In the meantime, if you like what you’ve read/heard so far, how would you like a copy for free? Nevermet is running a contest through the month of November. Check out the post related to the contest here. We thrive on feedback, and we want to know what you think. Share your thoughts, and win free stuff!

Ahhh, the joys of the net.

Yes, the book has been available for a while now. What can I say? I’m playing catch up.

Truth is, I couldn’t be more proud of this book if I had written it myself. Like its predecessor, the OGT v2 is a collection of the best articles to come out of role playing blogs over the past year.

Through an extremely impressive efforton behalf of Dr. Jonathan Jacobs, a collection of tremendously dedicated reviewers, writers, editors, and my fellow artists, we have managed to refine, tweak, add to, and re-tweak a collection of entries that could keep any group of gamers in new ideas for quite a while.

Inspiration? No problem. Rules / crunch? No sweat. Philosophy? You betcha.

Go. Check it out. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

As anyone who has been following along with my art can tell you – I’m a big fan of Open Canvas. Sure – there are much heavier hitting applications when you want to do some hard core photo editing, manipulation, and even just good ol’ fashioned painting. Here’s the thing though – OC is lightweight, it works, and it stores every brush stroke in an event file that you can play back as an animation.

If you’ve seen one of my illustration videos, you’ve seen this aspect of the software in action. I use OC to create the animation, and then CamStudio to record that animation in a file that YouTube can use. (I touch it up and add credits / soundtrack in Windows Movie Maker.) Yeah – I guess you could say I’m a fan of inexpensive – or better – free software. I’m a believer in the philosophy of KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. When things get complicated it’s just too easy for them to break down.

The problem with the newest version of Open Canvas (4.5) is simple enough. They’re a Japanese company and they’re struggling to get the English help files in place. The software is set up / designed in such a way that even a clueless gaijin like myself can muddle their way through it, but the help files really would be nice to have. If only for the hot key combinations.

What’s that? You’re looking for the keyboard shortcuts / hotkeys for Open Canvas 4.5 too? It’s you’re lucky day. I just went through and dug out all that I could the old fashioned way – I tried them and watched what happened. I’m sure to have missed some and/or managed to screw up the definitions for what some of them do, so feel free to correct me in the comments. I’ll edit the post to make the corrections and that way we’re all on the same page.

I’ll put these behind a cut to save your RSS feeds from getting bloated:

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a long time since I did a good ol’ fashioned character portrait commission. I posted that I was available to the LJ community artcommissions, and the lovely “Leash” took me up on it. This was the result. She sent me a reference for her werebat character, and I managed to get it wrapped up before I headed out on vacation. Overall I’m pretty happy with the work, though I had to keep myself in check. I want to do more of these (relatively) low cost character portraits, but the temptation to spend many hours working on the finer details is tremendous. Leash was great to work for (responsive to my emailed questions and a supah fast payer) and she was happy with the end result, so there is sure to be more of this sort of thing in my near future.

Then I went on a much needed vacation. I knew that I was going to get a lot of down time during my vacation, and I made sure that I didn’t bring any tech with me to browse the web. That left me with my newly modded sketch board, a couple of sketchbooks, and time. Just what I needed to do some old school sketching. I don’t do this nearly enough these days, and the vacation time was perfect. I would get myself an adult beverage, relax a bit, and just kinda let my pencil find its own way. On this occasion, that meant mostly Nevermet Press’ Loaerth & Feywyrd based stuff. It’s just kinda what I was feeling.

First up we’ve got a duo of characters from L&F. A Loaerthian troll and a random warrioress with a gun. You just gotta love girls with guns. I wanted to set up the troll from an odd angle, and I liked where this guy was heading, but my cat-like attention span took over before I got to deep into it, and I just moved onto the next piece. I may come back to this at some point though.

I’m really enjoying the steampunk nature of Loaerth. Designing new gear and costumes and the like is scratching an itch that I didn’t know I had.

Next up, I did a different angle on the same duo. I like this version a little better as the troll seems a little less awkward. Speaking of the big guy, I’m having fun with body types when it comes to the trolls. Making them a little thicker around the waist seems very natural – as if it’s how they want to be and they’re letting me know that on some subconscious level. It also makes them great for composition purposes. Need a big block of space filled? One troll and bang – you’re good to go.

I really should be doing more with some of the other settings being developed for Nevermet Press. Thus it was that I started this fine fellow. “The Sarge” was an idea that started gnawing at the back of my brain and wouldn’t let go. I’m not sure what his whole story will be, but I the basic idea was this: a man who’s fragile in some vital way – anemia, fragile bones (think Samuel Jackson’s character in Unbreakable), or something like that. Difference is that he doesn’t look fragile at all. He spends his whole life living a bluff. Fortunately for him, he’s a brilliant tactician, so he manages to work situations in such a way that it looks like he’s dying to get into the fray and get his hands dirty, all the while, he’s making sure that he can’t do that at all. I don’t know – it’s a work in progress. Yes, I’m aware that his proportions are completely wacked. I can live with that – for now.

Next is a very quick sketch of a cowboy. Nothing too terribly special, and I realize that this doesn’t fit the NMP settings as much (though I think that a ‘wild west’ element might actually work to some degree in Loaerth…) but it’s what I was feeling at the time.

Just a quick sketch to work through his posture and some basic costume elements. This may have to become a more finished image down the road – time permitting.

Lastly, I started creating a poster image. I was thinking of something along the lines that I used to see on the campaign modules from old D&D settings. With the exception of the feytroll’s posture, I like this layout. I didn’t have anything specific in mind when I was doing this, but I like the general feel, flow, and content of the sketch. Here’s to hoping we can find a use for it.

For the individual components: For the human male – I like some of his costume elements, but I need to push them further. For the girl? I’m digging the pop-fiction / almost sci-fi nature to her gun. I started thinking about “what would guns look like in a steampunk world” and this is what took shape. I’ve seen a number of different styles to cosplay steampunk guns, but they’re generally based on real world toy guns. Nerf guns are definitely getting the lerv here, but that didn’t make stylistic sense to me. Rounded chambers and flared barrels? Yes please. The troll – told you earlier that I had Loaerthian trolls on the brain, and that they work great for composition. The feytroll – *grumblebitchmoanIwastiredgrumblebitchmoan*.

So I’ve been woefully neglectful here. Sorry about that gang. No excuses – just on to the artwork!

Up first we have a sketch I did in my moleskine. I’ve been having fun playing around in the pocket sized sketchbook lately, and it’s quickly becoming a favorite tool (I’ve always loved moleskines) as its handy size makes it easy to keep on me even when I don’t want to carry my ‘murse’ around with me. Just the moleskine and my Space Pen (which is convenient because I can keep it in my pocket without poking myself in the leg) and I have everything that I need to get some sketching done.

The color is a highlighter. I’ve been really enjoying the hell out of CrazyRed’s D&D Doodle blog. Often, his scans look like they’re done on post it notes and rough tones are added with highlighters. I know they’re not, but the idea got stuck in my head and I haven’t been able to rid myself of the idea. So I started doing it occasionally. Highlighters are not nearly as nice as something like the prismacolor pigment markers I normally use, but they are fun and slightly liberating to play with. For random goofy sketches in the pocket sketchbook? They work just fine.

Speaking of this hilighter-as-art-tool technique, I did the same with the Black Canary costume redesign on the right. I love Project Rooftop and their costume redesign contests. Their most recent – Canary on the Catwalk - is accepting redesigns of the Black Canary until April 4th. Hopefully I’ll get a better version than what we see here in before the deadline. In the meantime there’s a lot of work to be done for Nevermet Press.

I’ve been really excited about a new direction that we’ve taken over at Nevermet Press. We’ve broken things down into 3 seperate campaign settings to build content within. One of these is Loaerth & Feywyrd. We’re building things from the ground up and that includes ‘who inhabit this world’? As an early foray into divinity, I created the sketchwork to the left as an example of the dwarven race native to L&F. We’ve since changed things up a bit and the species will be a bit more slender and even a bit taller.

It’s been really great riffing back and forth with the other content developers and watching as different races grow, change, and develop into fully playable species that are interesting enough for me to want to play myself. That really does seem like the surest sign that we’re doing something right.

The last two are more sketchwork for Nevermet Press. More details on them later as we bring them out into blog posts on the website, and or add them to downloadable products.