storn_cook

. My character is Anton Kilkenny and is basically Bret Maverick who is an ex-starship engineer.

The "VA" was my quickie logo for "Valiance Arms", a sorta proxy for the Dutch East Indian Company for this scifi world. We work for Valiance Arms as explorers, diplomats and traders in the game itself.


Next up is the spaceship, Libertine. Which is based on some concepts from Atomic Rocket. These ships are never atmospheric. It was my morning warm up sketch this morning.



Atomic Rocket: [url]atomic rocket/[/url]

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I thought I would share a couple of my favorite splash pages from Hero Games Book of the Machine





images are shown with permission by Hero Games

Here are couple of color interior pics that I did for Hero 6th edition and now that it is out, I can share...These were done primarily in Painter IX, a bit of Photoshop, over scanned pencils. I like the grittiness of the pencils bleeding through the digital paint here and there.

This first one was really Fred Hicks baby, he is the art director. He came up with the idea of a evil bard as the main antagonist for a intrepid band of adventurers. I really thought that was cool. I sorta went pied piper.



This one was the 2nd in a series about this heroic duo that I made up to represent the more sword and sorcery vibe that Hero 6th could do (as opposed to D&D vibe, the band of heroes thing). I knew Fred loved Apes and Gorillas...so I made one of the duo just that.



images are shown with permission by Hero Games

A couple more superhero commissions. Speedbump the "accidental speedster" is for Death Tribble and Bob G.



The other is Enermatrix... a power armor energy manipulator.



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Folks, I've been gone a long time from posting. I came back from Gencon with a ton of publisher deadlines to hit... then I went straight into a bout with H1N1. The last two weeks have been spent taking care of my 2 cousins (who are teenagers) as my Aunt was in Germany/Italy for her job and the Franklin book fair.

If I owe you a commission, I'm sorry. I am working on the pile in my queue in bits and pieces as I do still have deadlines for publishers.

But!!!! I've got some done and here they are:

oddly, bunch a female in a row, plus a couple of sketches just for funsies....

Here is a 50s sci-fi/horror movie victim....



Another period piece, first time I've done bomber art...



And Death Tribble's evil cheerleader...



This one is a sketch from a RPGnet thread about pulpy sword and planet Mars world building.



and here is the thread that spawned the sketch

Cavaliers of Mars

And lastly, my PC from the Burning Wheel solo game I'm in with Judd/Paka



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Getting back to work after Gencon has been slow going. I was very wiped out by the con. Thanks to all the folks who stopped by my booth and said hello. It was nice putting faces to some online handles!

I actually got these done before Gencon, but was too lazy to put them up. Here are a couple of characters from a B 50s horror type scenario... the Menace of the Manpillar!!!! (my title...)

The Manpillar himself:



And the bird watching sherrif



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Stab it in the eye!!!

A while back I did a sketch of Judd's pc taking on a green dragon. Well, I finally got off my duff and finished it. Here are some of the interim steps. This was done digitally, mostly in Painter IX, but with a bit of photoshop too.

Getting in the background, noodling a bit with the color of the dragon skin.



Got quite a bit of the dragon blocked in.



Finishing touches on the dragon..



working on the figure...



By the way, I will be at Gencon in this upcoming week. So my production will slow down on private commissions.

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I saw a video of a guy working digitally that he put up on you tube, actually, about 10 video segments. He does all of his drawing right in the software, unlike myself. I usually pencil, scan in, and then work from there.

So, this was an experiment... drawing directly on my wacom tablet and using a lot of layers, allowing for a separate paper surface, the summon critter was on a layer, the staff, etc.

I'm somewhat happy with the results, took about 3 and 1/2 hours. I found hands are really hard to draw digitally, at least with the brushes I was working with... I kept messing with them, still not happy, but other work calls.

For the record, this is loosely based on Judd's burning wheel character, Sammesh.



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It's been awhile since I've posted anything. Been really busy with finishing up a ton of fantasy artwork for the upcoming Hero 6th ed. I got the fantasy section, so I was pretty damn stoked.

Starting to work on some painting for Warlord, the CCG, won't be able to show those until they get published. In the meantime, I'm starting to tackle the huge list of commissions I need to get to. Here is a famous moment in an alternate history of WWII with the inclusion of golden age superheroes. You might recognize these guys. They are earlier in the thread when I did each one as a separate pic.

Folks who've been waiting for theirs... I'm getting to them.



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I did this as a gift for a friend of Millie's. Watercolor. If you have never been to Ithaca, this is a beautiful gorge that one can walk up through from downtown Ithaca to Cornell/ College Town. Great walk, we do it about twice or three times a week.

As a kiddo, I used to walk it all the time in order to get to my grandparents. I always thought it had a bit of a Lord of the Rings vibe to it... used to think about Orcs coming down the stone stairs (not depicted in the pic), fights on that bridge.... sigh... no wonder I ended up a fantasy artist.

My private commission production is going to slow down quite a bit for the next few weeks due to my workload for Hero 6th Edition. But I will continue to try and get a few here and there out.

This was a different, fun commission, asking for a Red Dragon coming out of Fog/Mist



And this was from Death Tribble's "what should storn draw next" thread over on Hero games. I've always had a soft spot for Adam Strange (who is such an ode to Buck Rogers)... and a chance to do Captain Gorilla of the Star Patrol was waay too much fun to do. Judd, its a cross between our Spirit of the Century Characters, your Son of Gorilla Kahn and my Hadrian Helm!



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It is nice to do something kinda sweet instead of all the sturm and drang, blood and violence that is part and parcel of rpg adventure illustration. I got a chance to do a druid with red pandas. Not sure if they are her "familiars" or just something she has come across.

I used to live right next to the National zoo in DC. Red Pandas were about 10 minutes walking distance from my apartment. They are awfully cute and heck of a lot more interesting than their bigger holstein cousins.

Anyway, enuff blather from me. Here ya go:



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..but wait, there's more. Actually not, not yet.

Continuing on with my painting via stages, here is the underpainting. I scanned in the pencils and did the underpainting in Painter and Photoshop.

Now I will print it out and in my copious spare time start the oil painting process. I will seal it on a masonite board. Seal it with acrylic medium. Start painting. If I can find my digital camera, I'll take a few shots of interim steps.



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A real mixed bag of stuff this time around.

First up, a map I did in a quick and dirty method. It is for a Burning Wheel solo game that I'm in with Judd aka Paka. Scanned pencils for most of the geographical features. Lettering done in Photoshop with the Dragonbones font from Blambot. The coloring done in Painter, primarily with a "wet oil" brush... which gives it a bit of funky texture which I like, then the wet blender tool to mush stuff around a bit, like in the hills, mtns. Hope you like.



Here is a link to a higher resolution:
higher resolution for 13 Cities map

Here is the link to Blambot. Has wonderful fonts. I've even bought a couple.

Blambot fonts

Then, here is Judd's b-day present. Pencils that I'm giving to him, but I'm gonna work this up as a sample. This is from an incident in our Saturday D&D game, with Melech the Red there backstabbing a green dragon to great effect. I'm told. I wasn't there, darn it. ([i]Actually, I was having a wonderful time visiting Millie's daughter Anaiis in PA with Millie[/i])

I am going to try and keep track of the interim steps and post them as I get them done on this project. Although, since it is a for-me project, it is not a higher priority.



And lastly, another superhero, this time another character from RDU, The Silencer. A PC that I don't *think* I ever played with. The player Geoff was in a different group than mine at that time. RDU Neil ran multiple groups and we all kinda mixed and matched as needed for logistics, schedules and campaign compatibility. Now, I am in an online game with Geoff's Speedball as part of the Mavericks.



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And here are the next three that I promised.

We've got Doc Rocket!



Guardian Angel with his "divine wings"



And Justice



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I don't often do an entire team together... but lately, I got a chance to do a villain team. The upcoming characters are all heroes of a Golden Age superhero team. Not only do I get to do them as their individual character shots... I get to do them in a group shop with a very strong theme (which I will not talk about).

The single figure shots have been done for a few days, but was waiting for the patron to game with his group to show them off. That happened... now I can show them.

Sometimes, you just get in a groove. And I think I did get into a groove with this group. I'm going to show you three today. Three tomorrow.

Here they are, Raven (I think this is about the 5th guy I've drawn called the Raven. Popular moniker that!)



I really liked this concept, the Crimson Palm. Just so 30s-40s pulpy comic adventurer sounding...



And Tarot, we worked in a few Tarot elements for this one...



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And this is from my saturday night 4th ed d&d game, being C's new elf wild chylde ranger archer. I really like this doodle.




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Another eclectic post today. We've got a goth girl, a somewhat alien powersuit, a super team and my newest incarnation of my d&D 4th ed character, Kendric.

Kendric was kinda fun. New technique (started to use "wet" oil brushes in Painter on a ground, been using oils in Painter before, but the wet ones really work differently (and awesomely)). Kendric was a warrior/fighter, but a recent appearance of an ancient, unknown god (the god of secrets), Kendric swore feality and became an invoker. (I was bored being a fighter... this made sense in the in-game fiction as well as providing new toys for me to play with.)

I really like Kendric as an invoker, but kept a lot of the look from the original pic. Kendric was a cop in The City (never was named in our fiction) and then went on the run. See here:



And now, here is the "transformed by divine fires and a year long search for arcane knowledge" pic... Now, he is kinda cross of a noir private investigator, the Shadow, and your typical fantasy ranger look (I think it is the hat). Also my take on the Sunleaf Armor (hide). Off beat, but fits the character I think really well....



And onto the other folks commissions... nuff talk about my character... Alien-guvyer inspired power armor...



The goth girl is for Death Tribble, not really sure of her power/skill set. The info given to me was ambiguous in that sense.

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And havent done a super villain team in a long time. The fun thing was this was a team of folks I've drawn in the past, so I got to revisit them. I think some where actually heroes, but the patron liked them as his premiere villain team and ta-da, here we are!!!



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A new Catspaw page went up yesterday. Here be the link:

latest Catspaw page

Also, starting on this huge pile of commissions to get through, today, we've got two powersuits and a female mage. So, enjoy. If you have a commission in with me, be patient, I'm working my way through the queue.







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