Insignia for 15mm Scifi Factions

A while back I had written a couple of posts on a proposed faction for my 15mm gaming universe.  This was the Galactic Trade Authority or GTA. Not being a master of graphics, even simple stuff, I threw together a very basic insignia for them which is shown below. 

A buddy of mine from the Clear Horizon blog started doing insignia for various scifi gamers and I asked him to do a few for me. The first he did was a revision of the GTA symbol with a more alien look to it. The end result makes for a much more difficult to paint symbol, but a simplified version can be used on troopers with the complex version used on flags.

         

I also had him do some for my mercenary unit the Manheim Friekompanie. This unit symbol is decidedly Prussian as the unit's commander claim German ancestry (as if it matters far in the future). I had him do a full and simplified version.

The last of them I had him do was a symbol for a Japanese mega corporation that I had created back in my cyberpunk days.

       

How Do Aliens Live?

"Winding Down" by Alex Ries

Artists like Alex Ries often look into the lives of aliens they create. I find this very useful when designing an alien race for gaming or even sculpting. It's easy enough to use the rules of cool and just make something that looks neat, but when you start looking into the how and why of your aliens (or fantasy races) then you really start to make them breath. 

The images I have included with this post were done by artist Alex Ries and show glimpses into the lives of the alien races he created, the Birrin. Aside from being one of my absolute favorite alien species out there, I love how Alex paints more than just alien warriors or combat machines. His artwork shows his aliens at play, relaxing, dealing with life, even discovering their past.

"Kaybor Gate" by Alex Ries

When I am creating an alien race, I cannot help but think about where they come from. Why are they the way they are? Simply saying they are blood-thirsty warriors that rampage across the universe is seldom good enough for me and I feel the need to justify their motivations, even if they are the villains. How do they live their lives? Do they have families? Why is it that they are the unspeakable evil they are.

"Seafarers" by Alex Ries

While the true nature of Alex's Birrin is yet to be determined, he is cool enough to accompany his Deviant Art postings with explanations of the scenes he portrays. From these we have learned that the birrin are much like us. They have their pastimes and their strife. They are curious about us and they fight for their beliefs. While their bodies are much different, and their tools are shaped with a different alien aesthetic than ours, we can still see some familiar forms.

"Protest" by Alex Ries

Much of this may not seem all that relevant to miniatures design, but it can be. Culture determines everything from clothing to affectation, even strategy, weapon choice and military organization are determined by cultural elements. While charging into battle with little care for one's own safety with a blade flailing over your head may seem crazy to us, to an alien species that valued the personal experience of combat or lusted for the blood of its enemies this might be perfectly normal. This then translates into miniatures with energetic poses with melee weapons.

A diminutive alien race with little physical stature might need to adopt heavy use of technology when facing enemies other than itself. While fighting each other might prove doable with simple guns and body armor, keeping up with the "Alien Joneses" might require power armor, cybernetic, or fighting from light vehicles in a way that makes them alien to us who are used to tromping around on our feet. Make the race equipped with natural body armor and they may not even bother with flak vests.

When I get down to creating an race, I tend to doodle them. While I start with their anatomy and then their battle gear, I often find myself doodling scenes of their personal lives. Families, mates, young, dealing with death, holy men and symbols. These are all things that pop up on my sketch pad and eventually make it into their final design someplace. It can also work in reverse. Sometimes, you have the final alien in mind and then you just fill in the blanks.

Give it a try some time and for more of Alex's work check out his page at AlexRies.com.

Thanks,

-Eli

So cool I had to show it off here too!

Jared Blando did the above rendition of the Chuhuac attack bikes for the range of 15mm miniatures I'm developing for my company Loud Ninja Games. I think it is dead sexy and with the Kickstarter campaign for this project over the halfway mark, it seemed the perfect piece of spice to jazz up the stream of announcements and updates.

Hope you like it,

-Eli

...By Their Cover

Darned right I'll judge them. Judge them to be AWESOME!

My buddy Chuck at Portobello Road just keeps getting better and better with the craftsmanship on his handmade journals. What he can do with a hand full of paper, some leather and a burning tool is amazing. Each time I check them out I just see him getting better and better and with so much variety.

I've taken the liberty of posting a crap ton of images of the various finished and WIP books he's been doing. Many of these are custom work while others are simply the artistic expression of a talented craftsman and good friend.

 

They May Take Our Thighs!!!

Turkeys Standing Up For Themselves

This year I ended up having to work on Thanksgiving. This is kind of a bummer as I won't get to be with my family. At least the company feeds us a really good meal and we get some serious holiday pay for it all, so there are worse things.

The general humbug of it all has not dulled my usual good spirits however and I have taken to drawing some fun pictures of turkeys standing up for themselves. Poor sods, they don't know how doomed they are.

We few, we happy few, we band of gobblers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be a gobbler; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And other birds on The Farm now in their nest

shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their giblets cheap (about $0.50/pound) while any speaks

That fought with us upon Thanksgiving Day.

End of the Road for The Velocihamster

A week ago, my oldest daughter, Anna's, cherished hamster passed away after on a long fight against a respiratory illness. I'll spare the graphic details and shocking way that Anna found her perished pet and continue on to something special I did for her.

As some of you may recall, Anna had used her hamster as the inspiration for her Mutant Future sometime back. Though we never got to play the character, she had a lot of fun envisioning her post-apocalyptic mutant animal character and I had a lot of fun illustrating her vision. Over time we had mentally transformed our other pets into additional denizens of the fallen Earth establishing them as friends and comrades of the mighty Velocihamster.

The illustration below is a quick drawing I did depicting our dog (Serene), our iguana (Bastion), and two cats (Oscar and Yeti) at Cheeks' graveside.

We all hope that cheeks has one heck of a time racing along on the eternal highway.

Ride on Cheeks.

Amazing Tomes!



So my buddy Chuck had taken the dive into craft commerce. In addition to being a great friend, fellow gamer, and all around good guy, he's also a talented book binder and makes custom, leather bound, journal-sized books. He's recently started up a blog, called Portobello Road,  to chronicle his efforts to make a business out of his craft.

I cannot say enough just how lovely his books are. All the work is done by hand, including the graphics on the covers. The papers are imported from abroad where they are also made by hand. Check him out and drop him a line if you are interested in seeing more or perhaps contracting a tome of your own. Perhaps you need a snazzy campaign journal or a spell book for your LARP. Maybe you need a prop for your latest campaign? I'm sure Chuck can make it happen.

Take care,

-Eli

Monster-Blood Tattoo: Well, cheers, dear friends.

If you recall, I had mentioned the wonderful fantasy series known originally as the "Monster Blood Tattoo" and now the "Foundling" trilogy.

The author, who is also the artist, creator, cook, chief political officer, etc etc on this series (he really doe a lot) posted some pictures of his concepts for some of the vessels and uniforms of his work in a post on his blog Monster-Blood Tattoo: Well, cheers, dear friends.

I am sorry, I cannot help but think that his designs would make a killer miniatures game. Due to the scope of his battles and such, I'd love to see it in 16mm, but regardless I think his blend of 18th century chic and alchemical magic and fantasy would make one hell of a game to play. I even said so on a comment on his blog.

Check it out,

-Eli

New Artwork by Alex Ries

Alex Ries came to my attention a year or so again when I was ranting about the lack of truly alien aliens in miniatures. I used his artwork to demonstrate that aliens of a distinctly non-humanoid or terrestrial body plan were doable. In addition, his artwork illustrates that such aliens can be given technology that is recognizable an functional in its form without having to be entirely crazy, weird, and non-organic (an over-used trope in alien design).

I hadn't seen much from Ries in a while but a recent search found that just this year he had released the above picture entitled "Protest". The image depicts an angry protest gone violent between members of the Birrin (a name only recently discovered) race. The Birrin have changed a bit since his last portrayal of them and he openly acknowledges that he's still in the process of figuring out their final design. Even still, they are still familiar and have not changed much.

Trooper Thursday

Today, I decided that to help keep the blog alive until I can start posting more regularly that I would introduce a regular feature where I post various images of scifi troopers. There are so many cool designs for troopers out there. From video games, to concept art, to movie characters, the artists and designers routinely come up with some really kickass stuff.

Rather than simply do an art dump, however, I will also post commentary on the images that I post, including my own thoughts on what they represent and how I might use them in games. I'd also love to have folks submit their own finds and ideas. Email them to me and I'll post them.

So, here goes!

This trooper is from a series called "Space Vagabonds" by artist `Ukitakumuki. He has quite an extensive Deviantart page and I could practically do this whole series with his art alone. He does a lot of different types of troopers and even does some cool treatments of Star Wars, Terminator, even a Macross-inspired piece.

This trooper really sings to me. Not only is it a nice heavy-armored trooper, it has that air of realism that makes it believable. Though it's obviously some sort of powered armor, it is not a full armor suit. leaving the wearer flexible and free for mobility. I imagine that there are servos or artificial muscles under that fabric which is likely some sort of advanced anti-ballistic weave.

In fact, the artist hasn't left us guessing all that much. If you read the illustration, this is a fully enclosed G-suit with a powered exoskeleton. It has an onboard AI and uses layers of flexible anti-ballistic materials for protection. The illustration also indicates several helmet variants and special manipulator gloves that return some of the fine manipulation to the wearer after putting his hands into the armored gauntlets.

This is really the sort of armor I expect to see in cyberpunk games as well as hard scifi settings like 2300 AD/Traveller 2300. I would love to see mins of these guys in 15mm.

Well, there we go, the first installment of Trooper Thursday.

Enjoy!

-Eli

Too Crazy For Minis? - Part Two

So, in part one, I presented the basic concept, the history behind my attempts to make this idea turn into lead and even discussed the rationale and specifics of what I am looking for. Interestingly enough, the couple of comments I received seemed to repeat the general confusion over the specifics of what I am looking for that have always come up when this idea is discussed.

What I am looking for is not a humanoid lizard/dino but an alien that has the shape of one of the raptoroid dinosaurs and has evolved in that same shape. They haven't gone upright, and they haven't changed to have more human faces. About the only changes might be minor and mostly inperceptible differences in hands, postue, limb length etc.

To aid in the understanding of the project, I present the following concept drawings that I came up with on my own -

Gads! I've Been Minionized!

Biscuit, resident artist over at the Minions of the Monster Master podcast, has been kind enough to render an image of me as a guest minion after airing my audio report on GameStorm. His style is incredible and not only is it me wearing one of my favorite t-shirts, signature camo shorts and sandals, but, he has also placed the Adventure Emu in the background.

This is just too much cool. If you haven't checked out their podcast before, you really must. From insights on the hobby, to gamer chatter, to real play sessions of games, it's all there. I only know of a few cool games because I heard about them on their podcast.

Thanks to Biscuit and all the minions!

-Eli

A Bit More Art

I came across a few more scans of artwork that I did a bit back. This stuff is more just conceptish sketchy stuff that I then inked over, but it's still got some cool ideas there. I had a bit of fun designing monsters that were either variants on existing D&D monsters or that worked off the theme of dungeon vermin and specifically dungeon-dwelling monsters.

Enjoy!

Gratuitous Fantasy Art Dump

Hello all,

I have bene in a doodling and drawing mood the last few days and as such have come up with a mess of this and that that I cannot really find a specific use for. I am posting them here with the hopes that somebody will find them inspiring, useful or just plain neat. Some of them may need a bit of cleaning up as they are raw scans of the stuff right off the page. If you should want to or decide to use them, feel free. All I ask is that you give me credit for the art and share with me a link, email, or other heads-up on what you do with them.

Thanks and enjoy,

-Eli