RPG Forum Series

As often happens, my personal work tends to be for games that I'm taking part of. These series of quick scenes were for a forum game I'm running of Ars Magica, a beautiful little game with a very intense ruleset. I had set up multiple forum threads to serve as "locations" on the magi's property and have these little illustrations to spur the roleplaying. I originally was wanting to keep them grayscale but at the very end I just couldn't avoid throwing on a quick gradient map for a bit of pop.

I apologize for the png-sized files but I had done them with a kind of stylized transparency to make it a bit more organic and help the images sort of seep through the forum page.

Council Chamber

Courtyard

Laboratory

Minotaur character

Forgot to update my blog with this new D&D character. A minotaur runepriest that I was playing in a campaign that failed after the first session. The character was fun to play while it lasted though. I would've done the ground sigils myself but sometimes I can be a bit lazy when I feel like I found the perfect element. I styled him as a buddhist auspicion who was on a quest to claim the eight symbols of auspiciousness.

Portrait and design resume layout

Forgot to upload this quick character portrait I did for an Ars Magica character I was playing. He's an italian magus who specializes in manipulating wood and plants. He has a necklace of talismans that are required to cast spells. 

For fun, I decided to make up a designed resume for myself, laying it out with some graphics to give it some pzazz. I'm worried that the whole fantasy theme is over-much but at least its consistent?

Goblin and some doodles

Another little D&D character sketch for a goblin witch, Thiess Uun. She is also a nanny to one of the other members, being usefully immortal. Who can ask for more than the comforting presence of an ageless caretaker?

Plus some bonus doodle-y-noodles, I rarely post these but I was in hangout with some creatives and some of it rubbed off on me. You can also see hints of another possible character I may be playing in a Starwars tabletop.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Portrait

So, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition just came out on Steam which I immediately grabbed for nostalgia's sake. Its still rather buggy and the networking isn't ideal currently (they plan on making it more netplay friendly). But nostalgia tends to be a powerful force when it comes to geekdom.

In any case, one of the things I loved about Baldur's Gate was that the resources in the game were fairly open, meaning I could drop in some files and I'd have some shnazzy custom portraits and voicesets to use. So of course, years later and a few professional gigs into my career I'm all about making my own portraits.

I probably could have used some stray model to do a portrait of but I was feeling egocentric at that moment and dug up a picture of myself instead; Which always causes its own problems as you have some sacred cows about your own appearance, at least I do anyway.

And of course I'm a mage.

Painting layout post

Maybe you'll recognize the face from the sketches I posted earlier. I was rather taken by the idea and I'm hoping to get a painting out of it in time for a gallery showing in a couple weeks. I'm nervous since its my first gallery show, even if its group. So many things that could change and struggling with what do change about it. But I like it so I'm putting it up for public perusal before I start on the physical piece.

It also doubles as a fun character portrait for my World of Darkness game, making a changeling... maybe a muse. 

National Self Portrait Day

A day late as I've been doing the last couple of years, but I like it! I'll have to speak to my plastic surgeon about some jaw alignments, but imagery is sometimes about beautification, right? Its also awkward doing a somewhat realistic treatment on top of a sloppy drawing because there's always going to be things like, "My eyes are too close. My lips should be bigger. My jaw isn't that chiseled." Laziness gives its just results. Two-hours in photoshop from a mirror sketch and cellphone picture.

New Character Art: Khurshel

I'm feeling pretty frustrated by the work I'm doing for SOE. I'm just struggling to find my mindset when doing some of the images; I can't find that one element in the image to drive me to finish it. I'm working with my main stay of finding repetitions of light and dark but I'm having a hard time finding suitable references for what I want to do.

Anyway, today, after a few hours of messing up one of the illustrations I decided to take a break and do an illustration for Khurshel, a D&D character I play. He's a beguiler/wizard/ultimate magus Illumian, but that's not he craziest thing about him! During character creation, the DM decides each character's magic items and he decided to give my character "The Suit". The suit is a magical tuxedo with a matching stovepipe hat...

Its very different from how I usually visualize my characters, but I ran with it (pictured right w/my bat familiar, Esma!). I'm very happy with the result... although... you could probably find the model reference by googling "tuxedo" within the first few pages. :S