Believe it or not, this is the first artwork I posted for 2021. I had been rejecting whatever meagre commission requests for a better part of the year. Because I am constantly swamped with work. Thankfully I love the job and my students are awesome, so the work is not unmanageable. The above artwork is a concept piece for Christopher Mennell’s Love and Heroics in Space game which is still under development. I used Krita to pencil and ink it, then GIMP to give it some effects. Sometimes I miss doing freelance artwork full time, even if I was not raking in the cash as I do now (Ha!). I think my mental health has taken a lot of beating this past 9 months. So I need to do more drawings, read more books, sleep earlier to recover. I really wish this was caused only by the pandemic.
Continue readingTag Archives: The Secret DM
Art Video: Skull Spacer
Here is a sped up video recording of my drawing a “Skull Spacer”, created for Chris Mennell. In actual fact, it took about 50 minutes to complete this. Additionally, I edited the video with both Flowblade on the desktop and InShot on mobile. The astronaut needs more skin lotion though. I will see about doing more art vids and posting them to YouTube in the future. What would such a character be in a sci-fi RPG campaign? The music is Gravelike composed by one Philip E Morris, found on InShot.
Continue reading
ART: Cyndril Critters
Here’s another round of artwork commissioned for The Secret DM, who is developing the setting known as Cyndril. Here follows two creatures from the milieux: a skywhale, with a bunch of whalers hanging on to it for dear life, as the the whale flies through a crimson storm; and a sapient caterpillar species that might have a connection to the Illadons of Issyka.
Continue reading
ART: Skip Junkies Meat Runners
Last couple of months I was commissioned to create several artwork for Chris Mennell’s science fiction role-playing game project Skip Junkies Meat Runners. Here are three of the illustrations I produced:
Continue reading
Otherworldly Creatures of Issyka
Christopher Mennell aka The Secret DM, commissioned me to create a host of otherworldly creatures for his fantasy setting of Issyka. It had been a while since I drew fantasy creatures. So I thought it would be a great for me to flex that cluster of creative muscle. Long after the ancient Shapers have gone extinct, their bio-factory are still creating new creatures that continue to roam the wilds of Issyka. Click on the images to expand them: An adult zegak-zoti grow anywhere from three to thirty feet tall. This type of creature has an armoured hide which could turn the best arrows. The largest of these beasts could be made into a mobile fortress if they could be tamed. However, the problem many find is that zegak-zotis adore the taste of human flesh. Sysakuunds are aquatic hunters that can grow up to fifty feet in length. They hunt prey […]
Continue reading
Across The Stars: Impereporter
Presenting the second Across the Stars commission of the year, made last night: an Impereporter for the Technopapacy. The caption as written by Christopher Mennell reads: An impereporter prepares to film a congressional sermon lead by the senators of the technopapacy. The illustration above began as a quick doodle I made during a meeting on Tuesday: Someone cosplay this!
Continue reading
Across The Stars: The Bureaucrat
Across the Stars RPG artwork commissions have begun again! Below is the first illustration I made this year for this science fiction project: According to the caption: A Garçon organizes appropriation documents for Hish, who is worried how much he’ll pay in fines for the robot, a crashed starship, and insta-evac from the jungles of newly discovered Xanth.
Continue reading
Issyka
Issyka is The Secret DM’s fantasy setting for a Play-by-Post game engine. Artwork commission for Issyka? Here you go: There is a hint of planetary romance with swapped gender tropes. Also, who is actually afraid of who in the drawing? The humans or the Illadon? Watch this space for more announcements on Issyka.
Continue reading
Across The Stars
A follow up post from the earlier D’Kathi alien concept design, here are the final artwork commissioned by Christopher Mennell for his Across The Stars science fiction game setting. While it starts out looking and feeling Star Trek with a lot of analogous signature elements, it diverges in many ways and has the potential for imaginative game masters to take it into high concept science fiction.
Continue reading
D’Kathi Concept Design
Christopher Mennell’s Across The Stars commission is presently being worked on. Here’s a delightful surprise that occurred over email / Google+ discussions of the project. One of the aliens I have to create an initial form for is the D’Kathi. The image below is my first sketch of the alien’s head. Suddenly, artist Eric Quigley came up with his own painting of my D’Kathi design using Painter and Photoshop. It looks spectacular as can be seen below. Click here to visit Eric’s website.
Continue reading