February 2012
S M T W T F S
« Apr    
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
26272829  

Featured Art: The TiYessin

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 [...]

Featured Art: Wicked Harvest Logo

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 [...]

Featured Map: The World of Solomon Kane

With the advent of the upcoming movie, I thought I’d showcase a map I made for Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s RPG: The Savage World of Solomon Kane.

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.

CLICK FOR MAP

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.

Continue reading Featured Map: The World of Solomon Kane

Featured Map: Cyberpunk City Satellite View

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 [...]