I have the honour of being Harper’s Forge Artist of the month as well as the Shadow World Player’s Guide being this month’s Inspiration of the Month (which I was both the illustrator and layout guy).

Harper’s Forge are a private site that allows artist, writers, editors and gamers to collaborate in their respective works and to produce fictional material for roleplaying. They try to inspire your imagination with various artist, books, movies and fiction. You can also download completed adventures from their site.

Well, it’s been quite some time since I last posted and a lot has happened!

The Shadow World Player’s Guide PDF is out and available for purchase at RPG NOW for the great price of $7 and is a must buy for veteran Shadow World players as well as those just starting out. The printed version will be coming out soon.

Here’s just a few of the spreads in this 54 page PDF.

I was responsible for practically all of the interior art as well as the layout of the book. Poser (a 3D character application), Vue (a 3D landscape application), Strata CX (a 3D modeller) and Photoshop (an image editing application for compositing all the different elements) were the apps of choice for the illustrations and InDesign was my best, and only friend when it came to the layout.

You can see some more of the images used as well as plenty that couldn’t fit into the publication in my 3D Gallery

Yet another gap since my last entry – but this time I’ve been productive …honest!

I’m very excited to be involved with the illustration and design of the Shadow World Player Guides.

This is the roleplaying campaign setting created by Terry Amthor for ICE‘s Rolemaster ruleset. And by Campaign Setting, I am of course talking about an entire world!!!! Basically, think of the realm of Middle Earth, with all the different cultures, lore and history and then cube it. The Shadow World is not a one continent land, it consists of 14 continents in the western hemisphere alone!

The Player Guides, as the name suggests, are to help the Players better understand the world without requiring the Game’s Master to waste playing time describing the different elements to them including the basics of time keeping (hours, days, months, seasons, years etc), climate, geography, inhabitants, magic and gods etc. It will also include a lot of location images of the various lands and places of interest.

The first one released will be the World Guide but then there’ll be a lot of more specific info dealt with in the more Regional Guides to follow including local customs, history and lore, inhabitants and any ‘local gods/spirits’ common to these places.

Here’s a taste of some of the location shots planned on being used in the Guides…

The Emerald Forest in Emer

The Quon Jungle in Emer

One of Eidolon’s Sky Ships

The Aalk Athimurl, the fortress of the Dragon Lord in Jaiman

A Navigator’s Obelisk used to summon a Navigator

These were all created using Vue Complete, a 3D landscape application. For larger versions of some of these images, take a look at the 3D Sketchpad Gallery.

It’s that time of the month again – it’s ICE’s map contest! This time it’s a lair for Kobolds (a lesser goblin type creature).

I was going to enter the old-school hand drawn map that I uploaded here – old-school map but after I added a little bit of texture to it, I just had to carry on!

Here is the opening spread describing the tactics the kobold’s would use to defend their lair and a larger map view is below that.

And here’s a close up of the textures so you can see it at it’s actual size

This is the cover illustration used for the PDF depicting the nasty trap the Kobold’s have in store for unsuspecting adventurers!

Click those images for a larger version!

Finally, I’ve added an image gallery of some of my work!

Check it out – Craig’s Sketchpad Gallery

…and ironically, this post has no pictures.

I’ll also be adding a gallery at Craig John (the Blog) which will include more of the ‘design’ projects covering both web and print work but I’ll let you know when that happens.

This is my final entry in ICE’s (Iron Crown Enterprises) Crypt Map Contest. Pictured is the cover and some interior spreads. This is the final Crypt Map PDF, click to download it. Information on the contest can be found in the ICE’s web site – ICE web site.

My final entry into the Temple Map Contest had a runners up prize and I’ve taken a different tack with this entry, I’ve made it a lot smaller in scale which meant it didn’t hit the 2GB max file size for 1 file and working on it was a whole lot quicker!

Click to see larger versions.

This in my final entry into the ICE (Iron Crown Enterprises) Temple Map Contest and a few of the interior illustrations. Click on the cover image on the left to download the PDF. The file is 19MB.

Here’s the rough digital painting I did for the cover as well as the intro spread to the PDF where I’d dropped in some of my biro sketches.

My entry was a runner-up. The PDF map included a ‘Master the Map©’ feature which allowed you to select one of the three options – the ground floor, the first floor or the secret locations – and the pages would update within the PDF overlaying the base image of the Temple which allows you to show a lot or a little leaving the choices up to you.

ICE are going to be doing more Map contests and I’ll include my future entries on this site – the next one is a Crypt Map.

In the meantime, they’re running a different contest concurrently; it’s a Chimera Creature creation. I’ll add some of my early versions next.

Iron Crown Enterprises are the creator of the Rolemaster, Spacemaster and Harp roleplay rule sets.