lategaming

Picked up this link to amazing starship concept art over on theRPGSite forums.

Last night I commissioned two art pieces from Storn Cook for the upcoming War of the Worlds book. I really like Storn’s art (massive thread on RPG.net here) and he was very nice when I enquired about the commission and explained what I wanted, even going so far as to suggest additional things.

The ‘look’ of the Martian fighting machine is very important. We’ve seen the interpretations from the 1953 Paramount film and the 2005 Spielberg film as well as the very recognisable version from the front cover of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds ‘opera’. We need to take a different direction to all of these and start from first principles. We need something that looks in place in the start of the 20th Century but also Storn suggested we do an updated model which I find encouraging. I am now beside myself with impatience at what the result will be.

Some of the interior art from editions of the novel are striking. The theme of it being like a round hut on legs is peculiar as my impressions from reading is that the machines appear ‘cowled’. More on this later.

Things are moving along and we have a great vision for the book.

(Minor edit - fixed the link)
(Minor edit 2 - added in the RPG.net link)

I’m arrogant to believe that I can write and, to be honest, most of the time the feedback has been pretty good. I like writing, it’d be nice to do it for a living (and not the stressful but boring job at $BIG_COMPANY) but them’s the breaks. In my spare time I write a lot and only a small fraction of it makes it to the blog here.

I have noticed, however, that my layout and design skills need some exercise and possibly even some help. I can appreciate good design, I just have issues doing it myself. Part of this is inspiration and part of it is time (which I have less and less of) and skill (my photoshop skills are not legendary).

Looking at the character sheets I left for download earlier this week, they belie their age. They were done in 2000 or so and were definitely more ‘tell’ than ’show’. That’s the first thing. They look like Civil Service Sickness Benefit forms. I was sent a character sheet recently that was 7 pages long and full colour. I’ve seen the pre-gen character sheets for Everway. I think I need to raise the bar considerably.

I also need an artist in general as PJ is now going to be too busy and I don’t know anyone else who knows how to hold a pen.

I got this from the blog of reknowned comic artist PJ Holden

So you want to be a writer? Or do you want to make a living as a writer?

northerain is the blog of the artist behind Bloodsong Media. I like his stuff which he describes as:

My style is more or less based on existing photographs. I use those to paint over them in photoshop. Since they’re not sketches, it’s impossible to do it in black and white.

Sounds perfect for both The 23rd Letter and what I also envisaged for Qabal. And I am interested in finding out what this image is about.

I hate the fact that I’m crap at drawing. I can describe stuff but I’m finding more and more that I want to find a concept artist. I want to have some images to post with the content I’m writing.

I’m nto quite at the stage where I’ll post something onto RPGnet and I’m not sure how it would work out with that most dreaded of things “payment”. I’d like to talk to someone about it and see what we can do….