Storn's art for swipin'!

Three super hero/villain concepts for ya peepers.

First up, Quagga, which I didn't know until I took this commission, is an extinct animal, somewhat similar to the zebra. The client had a very specific photo to work from and I gather she is a speedster.



Next is Carapace... big bruiser type.



Last is a teke of some sort. The patron wanted normal street clothes.



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Here is some fun feedback from the clients. A friend of the below shown couple commissioned from me a picture of their characters as a wedding present. They were so nice to send me a photo of them posing with the pic in question. check it out. gave me a wide smile when I got in the email.





And then the same patron got one done of his very own characters done.



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I pride myself on meeting patron's visual requests and often times, exceeding them. Yah, that sounds a bit boastful, but I would like to think I'm pretty good at this gig. But boy, the last couple of days, I've been hammered by not quite meeting the expectations of the patrons. On Tendril, seen above, the patron actually was quite clear on wanting the psi-tendrils to come from her hands... I just simply missed that in the reading of his write up of her. Duh. (I've since fixed it, it is why I try to save things on layers in a PSD format of my "in progess" art files). Then I made Snipe's hair too orange-red... supposed to be more brown.

Then there is doing art for friends and characters you know and love. Any picture that I do for my own table based on established characters take about twice as long. Because I'm fretting about getting that vibe JUST right. And god forbid, I have to do one of my own. Then it is 3x as long. As I know that character so much more intimately than others. Something about characters who I don't know, just working from their descriptions from patrons, is very freeing. Or if they are very new to the table and not a lot of expectations have been built up. For the record, I've tried about 6 versions of my main RDU Champions character, Vector, and have never been happy with the result.

So, when Neil and Geoff ask me to do Geoff's Hurricane for RDU, I said sure, because despite what I just said, I LOVE doing characters from our actual games. Love it. But this was a concept from, oh, say a couple years ago... and then I had both Geoff and Neil weighing in on the visuals. Which is cool. However, I went and emphasized all the wrong things. Geoff mentioned Hurricane being a bit cocky. But he also mentioned that he was immortal, born in 1588. Neil wanted some real gravitas to this character, as in the RDU, Hurricane is supposed to be a BIG GUN. Geoff really wanted the RAF symbol an the color scheme to draw from the WWII Hawker Hurricane fighter. There was some talk between the two of them about retro looks and jumpsuits and so on.

Which I did. And I did this. And they weren't happy.



So the word "regal" came up for the redux. Wanted more intimidating. Earth tones and no cape... tough to make regal, let me tell ya. But I tried again. We will see if this one passes muster. And oh, yeah, then by looking at the character sheet, I noticed a whole mess of wind powers... so I snuck that into the visual as well.



Now, I'm not complaining. I'm actually chuckling at my own hubris. I thought y'all might be amused as well. And once again realizing what a responsibility it is to give a visual to such powerful imaginary constructs that exist in an entire table's imaginations.

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Here is my version of Tuatha for a Champions superhero game I've been involved with. The character is a hybrid speedster-mentalist-mystic power armor conglomeration.

This is the first time I've "inked" and "pencilled" totally digitally. Usually I pencil and ink by hand. Some fantasy stuff, I skip the inking and color over pencils.. for a non-comic look. But with some new software, I wanted to see if I could do it.

It took me about 3x as long as a usual commission. I find especially the inking, new to Gimp, very difficult... took me a bit to get a solid thick to thin and vice versa solid black line. When I ink by hand, my hand doesn't shake, but the wacom -Gimp inking- I got some pretty shaky line as my tablet seems to be super sensitive... especially for long strokes along a horizontal plane. But overall, I'm happy with the outcome.



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AND HE IS BACK! No, I'm not talking about myself. But the THIRD rendition of Hurricane. ... and the last one I do. If this doesn't do it... I throw my hands up in the air and just say that I just can't get this character down on paper. Dunno why this one has been so hard, but it has.

I went more towards a Capt. Britain type helmet, but I was really thinking about the goggles of Kubert's Enemy Ace quite a bit, so the lenses of the mask are much more like that than Cap Britain's. I went for more "delta" shapes in the pattern, paying homage to the shape of a wing. I also brighten up both the green and tan/browns to make it a bit more superhero-y.



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Another challenge at ArtOrder.

This one was to include a female knight fighting a beholder in a forest clearing. But here is the rub. While maintaining a "fantasy" vibe, it had to target a demographic that we don't usually work for.

So, the target audiences was broken down into these categories:

Under 2 (infant)
2-4 (pre-school)
5-7 (early elementary)
8-12 (tween)
13-17 (teen)
18-24 (young adult)
25-34
35-44
45+

Now, usually I work between young adult and 35-44... the rpg market. So in order to go beyond my usual demographic targets, I had to go either to tween and younger or older.

Well, my first instinct was to go younger. But then the thread over at the ArtBlog showed me that everyone was doing that. So I went older, for the 45+ market. The retired folks. And that made me think of AARP. Then I knew I had a more editorial, political commentary idea to talk about. I never get even think of doing something political, so I was kinda excited to do something along these lines. So here is my entry.

By the way, I'm the only one who did 45+. I have some small sense of pride about that!

Here is the original link to the challenge: Segmentation and Art | The ArtOrder

Here is the link to the 32 submissions, mind included:
http://theartorder.com/2011/03/21/segmentation-line-up/comment-page-1/#comment-3195

And for those who don't want to click through all those submissions, here is my artwork:

Storn said:

AND HE IS BACK! No, I'm not talking about myself. But the THIRD rendition of Hurricane. ... and the last one I do. If this doesn't do it... I throw my hands up in the air and just say that I just can't get this character down on paper. Dunno why this one has been so hard, but it has.

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Click to expand...

Well, speaking myself, I think you achieved something really iconic-looking this third go.

Another commission for RDUNeil. This is Killenger, a Viper nest leader, but in recent years, somewhat of a sometimes ally to various superteams, including the Mavericks.



And another commission for Death Tribble, his idea was to combine a Bulette from D&D with a bullet train ala japanese rail.



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A duo of dynamic dames, thematically arranged around snake and spider. Boa is up first and is another commission by Death Tribble.



Next up is Aranea.



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Here is a blast from my past. One of the trends I notice about myself is much of my artwork is NDA (non disclosure agreement)... and by the time the art is published and I can share it, I've moved on and forgotten about it.

I don't think I ever shared these publicly. If I have, well, forgive my senior moment. And while they are several years old, it was the beginning of my style of coloring digital "watercolor" over my pencil, letting the pencil texture bleed through here and there.

I did these for Mongoose Conan supplements. And I've always had a soft spot for them. I really love the Conan books as a kiddo and it was really exciting to get to put my spin on these characters.










These are NOT creative commons, copyright Mongoose Games.