Topexx Dominions

Lately I finished working with Space Monkeys Down on their new tabletop card game called Topexx Dominions.“Topexx Dominions is a tactical combat card game where you, as the General of your army, are pitted against other armies in a battle for supremacy.” 

Sounds like fun, right? There’s steampunk and crystals and all sorts of interesting material in this game. I would assume it’ll take a ton of strategy to play… which sounds hard to me because strategy games are possibly the thing I’m worst at. What, you want me to THINK and PLAN? I spend all that energy on my freelance career, kthxbye.

The kicker is that the cards are in a hexagon shape, which sort of blew my mind. Planning a composition for a half hexagon (with symbols on top of it) is a particular challenge, especially when you’ve got to create art that can be reused for things like banners and promos.

Check out the rest of the illustrations in the collection below (click to enlarge):

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The Making of Minuet

I just finished a piece for a new client, Space Monkeys Down. They're working on a card game named Topexx Dominion. “Topexx Dominions is a tactical combat card game where you, as the General of your army, are pitted against other armies in a battle for supremacy.” 

An illustration project like this begins with thumbnails. As you can see, these two drawings are super sketchy and undetailed– why? Because I hate thumbnails. Almost everyone does. But they’re an extremely necessary part of art creation to figure out composition and image placement. I had to be sure my clients liked the pose, and that it worked within the half-hexagon shape required for the card. 

Once the thumbnails were approved, I took some reference images and moved onto the drawing. I drew this picture in blue for absolutely no reason other than that’s what color my pencil happened to be. There’s no magic trick there or anything.

Once the AD and I figured out some details in the clothing and tweaks in the layout, I moved onto inks. The client wanted a comic book-esque feel, but with a fully rendered painting underneath. Wooooof, inking all of that lace, the flowers, the stripes, and jewels? I think my hand was going to fall off. And it’s my own fault! I chose lace! I chose it.

Then I moved onto color comps (above) and the color rough (below). I gave the client two different lighting choices for this project, and once they picked what they thought worked best for the character, I roughed in the colors and shadows. Then I rendered and rendered and rendered and rendered and rendered until we got to the finished image! 

Battle Cattle: New Tabletop Game Coming Soon

 

Recently I began working on a very exciting and hilarious product that really… MOO-ved me. Battle Cattle™ is a miniatures game that originally released in 1996, and Phalanx Consortium, a tabletop gaming company, is going to handle the newest edition/reboot of the old cult classic.

When Phalanx approached me for the project I could hardly believe my ears. “Cows? With guns? Say no more, I am IN!” Included here is a sketch and color comp of the illustration itself.

Here is the press release for the product:

Feb 12, 2015: BATTLE CATTLE ™ – Reborn!

Some of you may remember the original versions of Battle Cattle™, which was first printed back in 1996, and others may be seeing this game title for the first time. The Phalanx Consortium is pleased to announce that we are the licensed production house for the rebirth of this cult gaming classic. We have begun work on producing an updated and expanded version of the rules which will be set in a timeline that sees our brave bovine warriors answering the patriotic call of their respective countries in a great global struggle of nations. Their fights will move beyond the simple pastures to battlefields that stretch from one corner of the globe to the other.

As a part of this re-envisioning our talented artists are designing a line of whimsical miniatures so you can fight these epic struggles, in all their three dimensional glory, on your table top. Coming in the next few weeks we will start showing off some of the renders and prototypes of these battle hardened soldiers, so you can begin imagining the clashes to come. Stay tuned for these and other updates as we work toward the launch of an Indiegogo campaign set to begin mid to late spring of this year.

“THE COWS ARE BACK AND THEY’RE STILL PACKING!”