There’s images from the Shadow World Player’s Guide…

There’s images from the HARP SciFi book…

And then there’s a Viking inspired by the film ‘How to Train your Dragon’ which I was watching the other night with my children.

These images shown above are just a few of the items that have been added to the Gallery. For a larger view, jump into my Gallery.

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.

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

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.

I’m working on a Shadow World Players Guide which will have a lot of Vue landscape renders as well as some drawings. As it’s still in progress, I can’t add any images here so I have a couple of other things to show.

A Vue render trying out a technique for ‘hyperterrains’ – the name given to the creation of the unusual shaped terrains which aren’t possible in the traditional terrain creation process.

An old-school Vector in Adobe Illustrator. Some subtle object blends but mostly a line work. Michelle is the woman featured and she has a gallery here.

That’s it for now.

(Software – Vue Pro Studio 7)

As always, click that image for a larger version.

Why am I seeing this banner?

I’ve included this banner on all blog posts that have used a Vue product. Primarily Vue Complete.

There’s a reason for that – and it’s a simple reason: It’s because it IS a large pillar towering above the clouds.

(Software – Vue Pro Studio 7)

This a location in the Shadow World which is a campaign setting produced by ICE for their Rolemaster rule-set (for both Rolemaster Classic [RMC] and Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying [RMFRP] which is my favourite) that’s known as The Pillar of the Gods.

Millions of years ago, a singularity passed through the core of the planet; the pillar standing here was the molten core sucked out as the singularity exited the planet and cooling in the atmosphere.

I just liked the idea of that and needed to create an image of the pillar disappearing through the clouds. I’m trying out variations of this as we speak and I’ll upload these as well once I’m happy.

The Shadow World was the idea of Terry Kevin Amthor who must be an amazing genius to come up with a whole planet, weaving intricate and detailed backgrounds for all the peoples. I thoroughly recommend the Shadow World setting to anyone who loves to roleplay. There’s plenty of information provided so you can create adventures and fortunately for me, who’s not so good in the story creation, there’s a large amount of pre-made adventures.

I have no doubt that my inspiration in the future will be owed to the Shadow World series which means more images from me.

As always, click that image for a larger version.

Why am I seeing this banner?

I’ve included this banner on all blog posts that have used a Vue product. Primarily Vue Complete.

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!

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.

I’ve been looking through some of the b/w drawn maps and I like them. So much so that I thought my first entry would be in that style (and it meant I could draw it while watching TV).

I need to stick it in a PDF with separate pages tiling the map, but here it is in it’s full size form.

As usual, click the image for a larger version.