Heaven and Earth cover

A Writing Gig?

I wouldn’t have thought it possible a year ago. Heck, I would have scoffed at the idea 3 months ago, but upon browsing the RPG.Net Freelancing Forum recently, I decided to answer a call for freelance writers, instead of illustrators. I submitted the text for the Net.Guide to Spleens to the person in charge and hoped for the best. After a flurry of e-mails, I was tasked to write 2 articles for a book which will be released next spring. The tone of the short write-ups would be akin to that of the Twilight Zone or Twin Peaks, or like Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles (A great comic. Go out and read it if you haven’t.) The job isn’t a earth-shattering one, nor does it pay much but it would be my first professional writing gig, and as they say my foot at the door. The company I’m writing for is […]

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The Game Mechanics

Tomorrow’s Evolution Freebie

The Game Mechanics have a freebie pdf for Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Evolution role playing game supplement named Future Pharma, from the chapter on drugs and pharmaceuticals in a science-fiction setting. Four of my artwork are also featured in the free pdf. Download it at Free Samples section at the FPC page here. Additionally, Marc Schmaltz has added me to the contributors roster at The Game Mechanics. The spelling errors on the bio there are all my fault for typing too fast. I’ve sent an email to Marc with the corrections. Tee hee. (blush)

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Busted

Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrows’ Evolution

The last of the series of three Future Player’s Companion books is now released: Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Evolution. Written by Gary Astleford, Neil Spicer and Rodney “Moridin” Thompson and co-illustrated by Jacob Elijah Walker, the supplement to Wizards of the Coast’s d20 Modern and d20 Future has all you need for advanced sci-fi characters from cybernetic enhancement to new gadgets to effects of drugs and medicine in a science fiction setting. Here are all some of the artwork I contributed to the PDF supplement. For the previous two books, pencilling and inking were done with a regular pencil and pen, then the pencils are erased while the inks are scanned and greyscale shadow is added in the computer. For this book, only the pencils were done out of the computer. The line inking, lighting and shadow effects were all made digitally with the graphic tablet. Update: To view all […]

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Chronicles of the Wild Gundark

Chronicles of the Wild Gundark Part II

Continuing the saga of the Wild Gundark crew: Nisa pulled on her control yoke and told her passenger (and her wary crew), “Let’s get to work.” Similiv turned to the comm board as the ship’s nose turned the way Nisa directed it. And she discovered that a colossal object blocked her entire forward viewport. Something grey. Something wedged shaped. Something over a kilometre and a half in length. Something ominous. It seemed to them that the ship’s cabin temperature dropped several dozen degrees. “An Imperial Star Destroyer!” And now the continuation of the story based on the Star Wars RPG campaign: The Star Destroyer, Nisa Dyaton noticed, had deactivated running lights. And most of its hull viewport were dark. Tell Sabarin finally commented, “The ship is brand new, probably fresh off the manufacturing drydock, with minimal security and maintenance crew. It’s awaiting inspection before a crew is assigned to it.” […]

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Harloth Graf

Harloth Graf, Naboo Guard

Here’s a portrait of Harloth Graf the Naboo Guard in the Star Wars RPG Sabredart campaign I posted earlier, using Photoshop to pencil and paint the piece. I wish I had a better photo reference of player Stu Cunningham for it, though. Close enough, Stu? Or more work needed? 😉 Click on the image below to expand:

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Ramadhan Activity Updates

Time flew by quickly this Ramadhan. It’s already almost the last week of the month and it’s the longest time ever before I actually checked how many days were left before Aidilfitri. There’re only two more days before I’m out of town until after festival season. Tomorrow is the last exam of the mid-term season, and on Saturday it’s balik kampung time. The itinerary is such: Saturday (Oct 28th) we’ll be driving back to Pasir Mas, Kelantan. There we will stay until Deepavali on the following Tuesday (Nov 1st), when we head on down to Sitiawan to spend the last days of Ramadhan. It’s been a while since we did long distance travel (more so this year, since money is tight) and I’m very excited about it. [[image:train.jpg:Irfan’s Birthday Present:center:0]] Irfan really can’t wait to get to Sitiawan to play with a train set and a bus that his grandparents […]

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Chronicles of the Wild Gundark

Chronicles of the Wild Gundark Part I

A Star Wars fiction, based on the Chronicles of Wild Gundark RPG campaign. It all began when the crew of the Wild Gundark was commissioned to deliver twenty tons of bantha milk to the backwater town of Prosperity on the cold tundra of the planet Dellalt. The job went without a hitch, apart from the little tussle with the crew of an Imperial customs corvette (the two-pronged, sleek affair that many tramp freighter captains love to hate) in the Vaxal system. Unfortunately, the result of the little encounter was the spillage of approximately half of the delicious blue milk because of gravity plate failure. Things could have turned out real bad for them, but instead their contact, a imposing and tattooed Herglic named Dapp only paid them fairly in half and left peacefully. There was only one thing known to them as they left Dellalt: They had taken on a […]

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Nexus Point

Worlds of the Enteague Sector

In 1989, my father bought me two books that started me into Star Wars role playing game: West End Games’ Star Wars The Roleplaying Game rulebook and the Star Wars Sourcebook. My first campaign (and the longest I gamemastered) was my “Strikeforce Enteague” campaign. The players were characters of a Rebel Alliance strike team that consisted of mostly fringer types, and it took place in a sector of the galaxy I created I ultimately named the Enteague Sector (thought sometimes their adventures took them as far as Coruscant which at that time was only referred to as Imperial City.) Here I am 16 years later, and I’ve finally finished a project I started almost 2 years ago: a pdf mini-sourcebook formatted for the SWRPG called Worlds of the Enteague Sector. It’s not extensive as WEG‘s The Planets Collection or WOTC‘s Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds. There is a front […]

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Helpers

Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Hero

Apart from Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Hero, the second of three books released by The Game Mechanics, being released and on sale at RPGnow.com, I’ve also took my old gallery at Geocities, modified it, gave it a proper banner, updated some details and relocated it here at Hishgraphics.com. The Hishgraphics Gallery can be found at http://www.hishgraphics.com/gallery. In the meantime, here are three four of the artwork from Future Players’ Companion, Volume 2. Click on… to view them.

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Instinct on Atlantis

Once upon a time I read the premise of Stargate Atlantis before they aired its pilot episode “The Rising”. I never would have thought the simple premise of an international team of civilian and military explorers sent to the lost city of Atlantis that happened to be on an uninhabited planet in the Pegasus galaxy without the power to return to Earth can be so engrossing. It’s all thanks to its great writing, actors, character interaction and humour, and more than adequate visual effects; and it’s held its own as the spinoff from Stargate SG-1. Last week’s episode “Instinct” was notable for two reasons: The episode starts off like a classic D&D RPG session. And by classic I mean clichéd. A group of PCs walks into a village at night and find themselves at a tavern. Everyone eyes them suspiciouly and hints for them to leave town. But after two […]

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Netizen

Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Foundation

GenCon Indiana will be on later this week at the Indiana Convention Center, Indianapolis. That’s when The Game Mechanics will be launching Future Player’s Companion: Tomorrow’s Foundation, a game supplement for d20 Future. Where my professional artwork in the game industry will be published. The document will be an e-book for now, and will have two other volumes following it later in the year. To see five of my ten illustrations created for the book, click to read the rest of the article.

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Sabredart trailer

My Faux Star Wars TV Promo

A new Star Wars TV show? Sadly, no. Yesterday, as I was monkeying around with Painter, I remembered that once I thought of making a opening credits-type of video of my IRC Star Wars RPG gaming group, Sabredart. So I figured, why not just do a storyboard for the credits. Then it hit me, how about a storyboard for a promo using images like the old Justice League opening credits (before they became Justice League Unlimited). You can check out the storyboard on this SWAG thread, and as an added bonus, my good buddy Derek Jones has actually made it into a real quicktime video, which you can download from the page. (Note: Thread has since been nuked. Click here to view the video on Youtube.) Edited: 12th June 2013

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The Game Mechanics

The Game Mechanics Update

It was official last week, Stan! of The Games Mechanics has thrust upon me another 1.5 pages of illustrations to be done for the d20 Future Player’s Companion. I’m very excited about this, and like the previous batch of work I’ll do my best to give them their money’s worth. To clarify: TGM will be publishing short three e-books in a series in the middle of this year. Later this year, Green Ronin will be publishing a hard copy book consisting of the three e-books. Imagine that. My science fiction artwork on actual printed pages that people will have to buy to see. I can’t wait to add these illustrations to my gallery. Hopefully I’ll get consistent work from other publishers as well. Another thing I have to look out for is an efficient way to transfer funds from the publisher to me, that wouldn’t be difficult to manage for […]

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The Game Mechanics

My First Freelance Job With An RPG Company

Ever since I got this computer right here four years ago, the one I’m using to type in this entry, I have been developing a portfolio and sending them to companies for freelance work. An industry I have always wanted to work on is the role-playing game industry. There is a list of companies that I send my portfolio to every year, in a cycle. Most ignore my e-mails. Some like Chaosium wrote back with polite rejection letters. Very rarely, I get an e-mail asking for a quotation like the one from Final Sword Productions. But so far, I’ve not getting any hits from any of the gaming companies. Last week, it all changed. Thanks to my good friend Gary Astleford, Stan! from The Game Mechanics contacted me with work. As of today, I am officially working on 6 quarter-page black and white illustrations for Future Player’s Companion, written by […]

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Cover art

The Net.Guide to Spleens

About 2 years ago, I wrote an e-book on a whim along with lots of help from Ryan Lee and Gabriel Johnson. It was called the Net.Guide to Spleens and it can be used with both the D6 and the d20 versions of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. Download it here from Google Drive and have fun using it in your campaign, or just reading the stupid stuff I came up with. Artwork I drew for the supplement

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