Monster Stock Art & Minis II

Inkwell Ideas' Monster Stock Art & Minis II is now on Kickstarter.  I produced this image of  Xill for the collection, and if it gets funded I'll be making some more.  If you'd like some affordable miniatures for you D&D play sessions, do send them some cash!

Hong Kong Sketches

Tian Tan Buddha

Aissa and I came back from Hong Kong yesterday, and while I was there I had the opportunity to make a few sketches.  I have to say I didn't really think very highly of Hong Kong before, but after a few days there I think it's a pretty cool place, and I've added it to my list of "places I wouldn't mind living for a while."  Above is the Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau island.  We'd arrived maybe 30 minutes before closing time so I actually didn't even get to go around the Buddha's pagoda.  I just picked a spot and started sketching until closing time.  A couple of German tourists noticed and asked if they could take a picture, which was nice.  More sketches below.

Amateur performer playing Zheng on Avenue of the Stars

Man eating breakfast with his dogs

A Bridge in Hong Kong Park

Old Tram/Tourist info Center

Couple on Subway

Sampan Display in HK Museum of History

Xill Borderlands style

This isn't finished, and this isn't what the final artwork will look like.  I've actually been contracted to make a colored and B/W version of the Xill, along with an accompanying background.  While playing around with the layers I thought it looked cool when the line art was superimposed over the colored version, making it look like something out of Borderlands.

Xill sketches

A few months ago I posted about the work I did for Inkwell Ideas' Monster Stand Ins (available now on RPGNow).  Looks like the project's done well enough for them that they now have another, similar project in the works.  They've contracted me for another monster, this time I'm working on the monster race called the Xill.  This is the description from Paizo:

Xills are the scourge of the Ethereal Plane, conquering everything in their paths with only one purpose: to perpetuate their race at the expense of others. All xills are female and capable of fertilizing their own eggs, but require living hosts to incubate these eggs, which they inject into paralyzed victims by means of a grotesque ovipositor normally kept retracted behind their mandibles. Evil and alien, the plane-shifting xills possess impressive intelligence and a totalitarian, militaristic culture all their own. Though they see most other life forms as incubators, they particularly prize phase spiders for this purpose.

Sketching out the Xill took a long longer than I thought it would, and I sketched stuff like insect heads as well as predator heads and tried to merge those into a really disgusting looking monster.  Inkwell's Joe Weztel chose sketch number 1 from the sketches above, and so you'll see me developing that image in the days to come.

I,Zombie Promotional Art

I talked a few weeks ago about entering the ebook cover business and doing the cover art for "To Save The Realm".  That thread garnered a lot of interest from aspiring authors, including one particular author named Hugh Howey.  Now I must admit I had no idea who Hugh was before this, but after doing a bit of research it turns out he's kind of a big deal in the self publishing world.  His scifi series "Wool" did tremendously well and was picked up by Ridley Scott and 20th century Fox. That doesn't mean it'll get made into a movie but is still pretty awesome.  Hugh saw some of my previous work and was apparently impressed enough to throw some of Ridley Scott's cash my way to make some artwork for his new book, "I,Zombie".  The book's actually already been released and has a proper cover, but he said he wanted some promotional art, and just wanted me to do whatever the hell I wanted basically.  Hard to argue with that, so I sad yes and thank you.

Without spoiling too much, the book's about what life is like as a zombie, about the human mind being aware inside a body it can no longer control. It draws many disturbing connections between the actions of the zombies and our everyday actions as regular human beings.  As such, it may not be to the taste of people looking for a rough and tumble zombie book, but I personally found it an intriguing (I originally used the word enjoyable, but there are sections that really cannot be described as enjoyable to read through because of the subject matter) enough to read through in about a week.