All Stars: Vice Squad

Cover art for the All Stars vice squad game supplement coming soon from Hex Games.

This is actually the second cover in the All Stars series, the first one was by the super talented Lindsay Hornsby. I didn't try to match her art style, but did use her color palette. It was strange seeing the color choices that another artist used and thinking about how I would have done it differently. The two biggest differences are that her skin tone is very yellow while mine leans more toward reddish orange. And the over all tone is purple, where I usually go with a dark blue or red.

Like I said, the differences are interesting to me. Hope you like it!

A Little Bit of Process

As promised, here's a little bit of my working process. This isn't everything, because I'm not including my initial thumbnail sketches or any of the work on the logo, and I'm terrible about actually documenting what I do during the painting process...but it'll have to do for now. ha-ha-ha!

First I get the brief, and (usually) a copy of the current version of the text. Depending on who I'm working for, the brief can be more or less specific. Ian is usually pretty specific about his ideas, but is also pretty cool about letting me choose from his list of things. The cover brief for Edison force looked like this:

In the grand tradition of Fratboys, I like the idea of a host of evil rising up. Some things that might be good

In the midground

Luther Burbank with his vegetable minions

Marie Curie with her radium gun

J. Pierpont Morgan and his accountant henchmen

An X-ray image of a man

Nicholas Roerich seated crossed-legged in midair using the power of Shambala to levitate

An early tank

In the air maybe an evil black dirigible, pterodacyls—small, far off

In the background,

an ominous black figure, backlit by a sparking Tesla coil

In the foreground,

a ca. 1908 Thomas Edison backed by a team. Maybe a Roosevelt look-alike, an Annie Oakley, a guy in a leather flying helmet, a kid working a crystal set.

So as you can see, he gave me a lot of ideas to work with.

The first thing I do is start gathering reference. Mostly I'm looking for photos to cover the specific references, as well as poses, attitudes and inspiration. My reference files can get pretty big.
Like I said, I didn't scan the initial thumbnail sketches I did, exploring composition and content, and now I don't know where they are. This is my initial pencil drawing. Nothing too special, I use a 2h pencil for the initial lay in, and then go back over part of it with a 1 or 2b, to darken and finalize things.
After scanning in the pencils, I went ahead and did a composite using the graphic elements that I knew would be going into it. Basically, I wanted to make sure everything fit before putting too much work into the project.
Next I ink the pencil drawing. This defines all the major areas, as well as adding some textures and details to objects.
Finally, I color everything. Here's a detail of what the colors look like both with and without the inked lines.

One of these days I'll get more of a tutorial post together. The problem is that I'm still learning a lot with each new cover, so I don't always do it the same way. Hmmmm... Maybe that's the way it is with everybody though. I hope you all got at least some peak into the way I work through this.

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

The Last of the Frat Boys Posts... Probably.

I've gotten into the (maybe terrible, but the jury is still out) habit of sitting and reading (and reading, and reading) blogs when I come down to the basement to work. I only say that it's (maybe) terrible, because it means that I end up staying up until three (or five) some mornings... My time management skills could use some managing, I think.

Okay, so here's one of the things that has kept me up this week... I'm sure you all are tired of hearing about the artwork for "Frat Boys: Versus" (Due out in November from Hex Games). Well, I finally got the cover all purdy and colored.

Here it is without all the title and copyright graphics. I'm overall happy with how it turned out. I think if I had it to do all over again, I'd probably color the background characters a little more graphically with flat colors and cell-style shading, but that's really neither here nor there.

Here it is with the title and copyright logos added. I wanted to keep it pretty simple and collegiate.

Until next time, take care and be good!

Oh yeah, and DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!

Your friend,
Jeffrey

Frat Boys Interior and cover inks

I know what you're probably saying... "More frat boys?! Geesh!" Almost done, I promise. This week, I got one last archetype, and finally the inks for the cover. Hope you like 'em!
The final archetype I have for you is the ring leader. This character archetype can vary wildly, but the constant is that he's charismatic, and perhaps a bit mischievous, but above all, he holds everything together. Examples include Anthony Edwards character in "Revenge of the Nerds", Val Kilmer in "Real Genius", and Ryan Reynolds in "Van Wilder". I based mine in part on Jeremy Piven in "PCU", and Bill Murray's unforgettable Peter Venkman in "Ghostbusters". Cast as Justin Bateman, I think he'd be charming, strong, and capable of being sardonic when the situation required it of him.
I have never liked "Scooby-Doo". There... I said it. I've always thought it was a cool idea, but ultimately, it was the same old show over and over again, and honestly it wasn't that entertaining the first time. I did like the intro, however... THAT was cool. Four kids and their dog on an adventure, being chased by monsters. Cool. So, that's what I had in mind when I was drawing the cover art for Frat Boys -Versus-. What would Scooby-Doo be like if it was cool. It's got everything from redneck truckers, to ostriches, to zombie girl-scouts, and even an astronaut with a sword!

Okay, so maybe my idea of cool and everybody elses is different. At any rate, I'm pretty excited about how it's coming along.

Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Frat Boys Interiors

So, I was going to post about something else tonight, but I really have too much other work on my desk, and didn't manage to get all the artwork for that post done. There's always next week though, right?

I figured that instead I would share with you a couple more of the character archetypes for the "Frat Boys -Versus-" supplement for the QAGS game system that is due out before the end of October.

First up is the Party Animal. Most often, when I think of the party animal archetype, I think of John Belushi in "Animal House". I thought it would be kind of funny to cast him as Seth Rogan, and strap a keg on his back as his zombie-killing weapon-of-choice.

When I think of the Outsider, honestly I think of the black running-back in "Varsity Blues". At any rate, I thought it would be cool to have the person who was different from all the other pledge brothers be... A girl. Not just any girl would do though, so I cast Rosario Dawson. Steve said something to the effect of "I don't know what she's going to do with the beer-bong, but I have a feeling it'll be awesome."

Finally, on a semi-related note... RPGnow is offering $700.00 worth of gaming PDFs for $25 dollars. All the proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders. So if you like games, and you like saving a lot of dollars, and you like helping others save lives, go check it out! One of the pdfs in the offer is American Artifacts, by Hex Games.

Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey