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Next alien from Dan Repperger’s Epoch of Rysos © universe. These are the TiYessin, an exoskeletal race. They are bipedal, but can assume a quadrupedal gait at need. I did quite a bit of work on designing the individual segments, allowing for expansion joints and growth plates. This is one of the few that [...] Here’s a not-quite-new piece. I did this before Halloween, but by agreement, have refrained from posting it until the beginning of the year, since the client had a number of events planned for it. The client is Paradigm Concepts, the creators of Arcanis, and of course Witch Hunter, in which players take on the [...] This is another alien concept for Dan Repperger’s Epoch of Rysos role-playing game and fiction setting. This alien is called a Mordeth.
At the start of the project, I was given a description: Continue reading Featured Art, The Mordeth Here’s a commission I recently finished. This is the logo for a science fiction setting, Epoch of Rysos.The client had specified a “clean future” sort of a look, not the lived-in and tarnished Star Wars or Alien style world. He also specified a squarish design rather than a rectangular one, for ease of use [...]
This is an example of a common difficulty in historical fantasy game maps. There is a constant battle between accuracy and artistic authenticity. On the one hand, the customer wants a map that will look as much as possible like a map of teh time. They want a product which the player or gamemaster can hold and get that visceral feel of connection with the setting. In this case, Solomon Kane lived in the 16th century. The world was far from fully mapped. At the same time, much of the action is in the discovery and exploration of far-off lands, or strange hidden lands within places once mysterious and unknown, such as Deepest Africa. You will note that Australia is hinted at on this map, though it was not discovered by Europeans until the following centruy. This is a nod to Accuracy and Utility. Though we want a map that looks like something Kane himself might have held, the players and gamemaster want something that they can use to accurately gauge distances, or spacial relationships between land-masses. They want the arcane and the familiar in one product. In general, these aims are incompatible, and the problem gets worse as you “zoom in” to larger scale maps. In a future post, I will show a portion of a map of the Eastern seaboard of North America that also illustrates this point. The concession was arrived at in this map, that landmasses that had been discovered would be shown faithfully, even if they were not already fully mapped. The farthest north, the farthest south, and places like Australia would be faded and ghostly. Rezolution City Map – Click for full image. This map was created for Aberrant Games, for their Rezolution line. It was an emergency job, as the contracted artist had let them down in some manner. They needed a city sector map for a post apocalyptic, cyberpunk style world. I was given an existing [...] I have some private projects that I keep returning to. On of my favorites is the map of my campaign city. The City of Tallon was envisioned to be your basic Edgar Rice Burroughs-style Big-City-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Wilderness. This is an inherently insupportable fantasy, yet it occurs in much early fantasy and pulp sci fi. A great deal of my campaign world’s economy, ecology, and magic system was created specifically to make this type of city possible. But that’s the subject of another post. Today I would like to show how the city evolved graphically. Pretty pictures follow the cut. The concept of disagreeing authorities as described in the last entry is personified in the character of Arthur. This was intentional. It’s easier for players to compare and contrast facts when they come from a limited number of sources. Arthur was created to be a living conundrum, a walking contrast. At times, he displays god-like abilities, other times he seems to get what he wants with clever words and bluffing. He seems to be at once extremely knowledgeable and woefully ignorant. He speaks with a London-esque gutter accent, and is often crude. This makes him look ignorant or petty. This is a continuation of the Mystery theme. This time it deals a bit more into specifics, so I will make cross references to the appropriate adventure in question when possible. The central mystery in the Savage Earth is of course that of it’s genesis. Who were the Demon Kings? The Prometheans? What was the nature of their conflict? How was it resolved? Why does the world work the way it does now? I have noticed that the theme of mystery has grown in importance as my worldbuilding has progressed. My very earliest campaign worlds were dominated by fairly open, cards-on-the-table set-ups. Maybe the players would have to journey somewhere to retireve an artifact or elicit help, but rarely did their quests include solving a mystery. |
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With the advent of the upcoming movie, I thought I’d showcase a map I made for