d r a g o n b o n e s    

In honor of the 4th of July:

Another quick warm-up sketch. This time of a steam-punk-y character in a top hat, and complete with goggles and wax tipped mustache.

Working with Nevermet Press has given me an appreciation for the steampunk genre that I never had before, and this character design seemed a great way to work the bugs out.

There’s likely to be more where this guy came from.

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.

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.