Hishgraphics H

My Interview at Epic Level Artistry

I gave an interview to Tristan Tarwater of Epic Level Artistry at the Troll in the Corner site. Here is an excerpt: Do you find yourself more drawn to drawing locations or people? Do you have them fleshed out before you bring pencil to paper (to use an old idiom) or do the ideas and the image kind of grow side by side? Thanks to a lot of practice, I’ve done a lot of characters, but I also do a lot of creatures, gear, vehicles, robots as well as scenes. Sometimes I plan it out. Sometimes it just comes to life on paper – or screen – naturally without a lot of thought. More so of the latter when there’s capybara blood mixed with kumquat juice. Click here to read the whole thing!

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Villa Argentate

Vicious Crucible of the Villa Argentate

Here is part of a large panoramic artwork I made for Kallisti Press’s The Vicious Crucible of the Villa Argentate RPG. A bunch of other stuff is occurring in this walled city where the river divides it into the unbelievably rich section, the working class section and the dirt poor section. Meanwhile, an army is camped outside its walls. You can download for free the first Vicious Crucible game entitled The Vicious Crucible of Verdigris Valley here! (A thumbnail link can be found in the left column under “Complete Tabletop Games”.)

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55 Months

And so Yaya is now 55 months old. Five more months before her first half decade! [[image:2013-yaya55month-05.jpg:Let’s make orange juice!:center:0]] * Mouse over the pictures for captions Food status: no change. Although I did catch her tasting one of her own boogers, and she almost tasted a strawberry ice lolly. I did not however, reward her with a new toy for the little booger stunt. A small win: she ate pizza by picking it up and biting into it like a regular person (like Peppa Pig, apparently). Normally we have to cut the slice up into little fork-sized pieces. God forbid that the child gets her hands dirty in order to eat! We felt that having her handle her food with her own hands was a big win though. Also, Yaya has been helping Papa squeeze oranges and tangerines into juice. Sadly she will not taste the fruits of her […]

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Together again for the firsttime

Paper Minis: Alien Fringers

It has been a while since I made Star Wars RPG paper minis. So, here is a PDF that features Wookiees, Aqualish, Rodians, Duros, Ithorians and Quarrens. You can use them as bounty hunters, mercenaries, smugglers, scouts, bodyguards, gunslingers or just a random guy on the street when the shooting starts. Print them out on cardstock, fold and glue them to toughen them… … then prop them up on a base. Also, switch off any table fans. Again, you can download and assemble the bases from the One Monk Miniatures website. Download the PDF for free here from Google Drive.

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Epic droid roleplaying going on

GOKL Escapes Mos Shuuta

Modesty Blazing 01 Escaping Mos Shuuta *** I’ve already run Star Wars Edge of the Empire RPG Beginner Game adventure for Irfan, so now I would see how it would fare with half a dozen experienced tabletop RPGers, namely the guys at GOKL. From the available pregenerated characters in the adventure Escape from Mos Shuuta, Ivan played 41-VEX as a manumitted medical droid, Razzman played the Twi’lek bounty hunter Oskara, Macx played the Wookiee hired gun Lowhhrick and Doug tweaked Pash the smuggler into Nora Romanova. Darren and Kai jury-rig a character generation using the Beta rule notes found online and became, respectively, Qillian Ryn the Triannii assassin and Darter Kel the Zeltron scout and bush pilot. I might have screwed up the chargen a bit because of lack of complete rules. The adventure’s encounters are designed so GMs and players get the hang of the system. For example, the […]

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Slugshark

Slugshark – With Stats!

When Irfan showed me this clay creature he created, I thought I’d take a photo of it and make up some stats for it. Star Wars D6 Slugshark, Amphibious reptilian predator Scale: Character Length: 150-200cm. DEXTERITY 2D Brawl 3D+2 Constrict 3D+1 PERCEPTION 2D+1 Sneak (only when swimming) 4D STRENGTH 2D Swimming 4D+2 Special: Bite attack damage: 3D Constrict damage: 1D increments per round (Round 1: 1D, round 2: 2D, etc) Horn attack damage: Strength+1 Move: 10 (swim) / 8 (slither) Star Wars Edge of the Empire Slugshark [Minion] Brawn 2 Agility 2 Cunning 1 Intellect 1 Presence 1 Willpower 1 Skill: Brawl 1, Coordination 1, Stealth 1 Talents: None Soak/Defense: 1/1 Threshold: Wound 12 Abilities: Difficulty to see swimming slugshark Hard (♦ ♦ ♦ ) Silhouette: 1 Equipment: Horns (Brawl, Damage 4, Crit 4, Range [Engaged]) Teeth (Brawl, Damage 5, Crit 4, Range [Engaged]) Constrict (Coordination, Damage 1 and +1 […]

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Badji Hida

Two More SWAG Pickups

Two more Star Wars Artists’ Guild player character art pickups. I love picking up these requests once in a while for a warm-up sketch before work begins in the morning. Badji Hida is a Devaronian scoundrel requested for oexto‘s Edge of the Empire game. He wields a DL-18 blaster pistol, presumably with aplomb. Mano Vector is a human Special Agent of the Senate Bureau of Intelligence (before it eventually evolves into Imperial Intelligence, shudder). He was requested by one Agent M.

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Concourse of Aeon Sri Manjung

Happenings at the Beginnings of the Year of the Snake

Meanwhile, the three-night balik kampung back to Sitiawan for Chinese New Year was somewhat enjoyable. The traffic was not too bad, and no one lost their sanity. We left the city early, during the time where no one is sure they’re awake or they’re dreaming, and often, you’d wish for the other. Fortunately there was no sign of Mi-Go shadowing us from above. Nor of any Shantak. Also, I prepared awesome tunes for the return trip. Well, awesome to me, that is. On the first night we ate out with Atok and Opah. We tried out a new restaurant which had some tasty Thai food. It was not made of Thai people. On Sunday morning, the Sitiawan contingent, made up of Atok, Opah, Ain, Irfan and I had a Skype chat with the Ohio contingent which consisted of Ayah Cik, Cik Dik, Yaya and Little Adik Rafe. Rafe, now foot […]

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Year Minus one group

Schoolmates From A Thousand Generations Ago

Nowadays when I return to Sitiawan for Chinese New Year, I rarely get to meet old ACS classmates. It’s because either they’re away at the in-laws, or their family has moved elsewhere, or I don’t communicate to anyone my balik kampung. This year I had two meet ups! The first was with Teck Chee and Cheong Lee at the new mall, Aeon Sri Manjung. They were a year younger than me at school. We had a great time talking about old friends and where they are now. Later that night I met my former classmate Sathya. I met him right at this white wall where I had some sort of coffee and Star Wars talk ensued, as they are wont to be when Sathya is around. Gnana was also present but also via Sathya’s iPhone. And initial plans were made for a class reunion in the near future. Who wants […]

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Sami Harkonen

Night’s Black Agents: The Little Prince Job Ends

The second part of Night’s Black Agents game run by Kai continued two weeks later with everyone present, namely Shiina “Misha” Mikado the Japanese grifter and heavy hitter, Jacob Novazembla the Dutch hacker, Sami Härkönen the Finnish grunt and Zlatan Kljujic the Bosnian driver! The spy stuff adventure in London continues from the last episode. I did not have the time to produce a play report in my own words, so here’s Kai’s diligently written report (with bonus GM’s Commentary in italics.) Following the confrontation at Waterloo Station, Emelia Sanderson’s team took the wounded thief Vin to a secret interrogation facility in a warehouse near London City Airport. This team consisted of a former mob surgeon named Dr Kana, a former mob accountant named Sachs, and a young driver named Peltier. All of them, like Misha, were off-the-books operatives working for Emelia of MI-6. These were additional NPCs I created […]

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Guest starring Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan

The Lawless

The Star Wars The Clone Wars episode “The Lawless”. Best Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back? Hyperbole? No spoilers here. At about minute 9, I was stunned at how the story went. The entire series and the tone it started with in the beginning was a feint. Despite some pretty juvenile episodes, most of the series has been an exercise in solid storytelling in the Star Wars universe. We expect the filmmakers to pull their punches because of several issues: this series is on Cartoon Network, and the prequel movies had Jar Jar Binks. However, it has shown us violence that provided emotional release at some parts, like when Commander Jet’s troops burned dozens of Geonosians alive… onscreen… and we see the Geonosian aflame and shrieking in agony; we’ve seen innocents shot with blaster burning right through their torsos; we’ve seen Ahsoka leap, spin and decapitate four Mandalorians. We’ve […]

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Awww

Cousin Zara Naps On Irfan

Baby Zara Arissa is back home in the Klang Valley for the first time in her life. We went to visit her to see how she was adapting to new environment. She seems to be doing pretty well. She had a fun time with her brother Aiman and her cousin Irfan. But she was unable to go out to the playground with the boys, what with her still not foot mobile yet. Irfan returned with a very soiled baju melayu (he had one on since Friday prayers at noon), so he had to borrow Ayah Long’s shirt and kain pelekat for the evening. Zara thought she’d hang out on Irfan’s lap. Oh yes. Her cousin has a very comfortable lap. In fact, don’t move, cousin, til I’m settled in on your lap. Very comfortabl… zzzzzz. Irfan was happy that his cousin liked her stay on his lap, though his butt […]

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