Dragonsfoot Magazine Adventures--Call Out

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
This one was a morning hack...I wasn't terribly careful with the figures and was going to stop after about 5 minutes...but once I started getting the dynamic lighting on the Giant's face---I just couldn't stop shading. I also couldn't resist boosting contrast in GIMP after the photo/scan for a B&W horror movie effect.

FWIW
giant1.jpg
 
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Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
Poor guy's looking straight at the giant's hammer, and doesn't seem to see the giant's hammer.
 

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Just noticed that too! A minor adjustment has been made...for a slightly more vertical glaze.

Honestly, I never decided if this was just your stereo-typical eunuch Stone Golem...

...or a Cloud Giant, who has decided to embrace his inner hippy-nudist (surprises on 5 in 6?).
 
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squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Thank you Two orcs! I sincerely appreciate the vote of confidence. Sometimes I think I'm just spinning my wheels with the art.

I know there are many flaws and not a lot of detail in it, but I feel it's the illustration of happiest with to date because it evokes (to me) a mythic environment---wandering inside a giant's castle, stumbling into one room-of-horrors after another until...you round a corner...and a flash of lightning reveals the Mad Titan himself---looming above you, about to swat you like a bug....oh no! :)

I used to love reading the Greek myths even before D&D existed...and this image serendipitously reconnects me to that. I even gave it a whole page in my campaign-book---one of only a handful of full-page illustrations...since it only seemed to work for me when it was BIG.

It also did the job of motivating me to get back to work on a Giant's Cloud Castle in the home campaign (before the players head back that way!). It's a classic trope, to be sure, but I don't think there's any harm in that.

Ideally, I think it's good if your players should get to touch all those myriad cliches in the course of a long campaign: play pirates on the high sea, be a Greek hero in the giant's castle-in-the-sky, dog-fight in the flying apparatus of mad K'walish in underground skies, slay the dragon who sleeps in the dwarven city, lead the forces of good against the armies of a wicked witch, be overrun by crawling aliens on islands in the ethereal plane, travel astrally to Mars and rescue a princess, negotiate with the automaton caretakers of a vanished wizard, swim through an underwater temple and meet the degenerate Deep Ones, get lost in the trippy halls of the Fairy King's Folded Palace, dream-walk in the shadow-world inside a crystal ball, grapple with the Fenris Wolf, explore the passages of a crashed spaceship, discover the realm behind a mirror, travel through time, fight Moon-beasts, quest for a magic sword, have tea with the Mad Hatter at the bottom of a Rabbit Hole, and (of course) ultimately confront a Dark Lord in his black citadel for All the Marbles.

I believe all these things can be spokes off of a central wheel of an ordinary (humancentric) world. Like every wonderful little story you've ever read, our hero starts from his or her own backyard (one that is not so different from our own) and travels to wondrous places before (hopefully) coming back again to tell the tale. Trying to maintain a single, consistent exo-world-tone and sustain interest in it for years seems too hard---and would cause your players to miss out on all the exotic riches of the human imagination.

Amazingly, little old Plain-Jane D&D makes that all possible if we, as DMs, can rise to that challenge and deliver the goods for our players. When I read about all the clever and wonderful magic items you are inventing over in The Vault thread, Two Orcs, I'm confident you're "getting it done" for yours.
 
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squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
This iteration of the Giant's Cloud Castle is actually a mash-up of two separate sketches. The original foreground figure was much more carefully rendered, but awkwardly positioned. I did a gestural sketch of the hero on the back of the page that I preferred, so I pasted him in using GIMP but I left it all in a very abstract state.

His stance is one of the few things I'd like to propagate to the next iteration...but this one's going nowhere.---detritus of the learning process. If I didn't post it, it would be sentenced to die a quiet death on my hard-drive. This way it's hopefully a crude match that ignites someone's game imagination.

 
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Osrnoob

Should be playing D&D instead
This iteration of the Giant's Cloud Castle is actually a mash-up of two separate sketches. The original foreground figure was much more carefully rendered, but awkwardly positioned. I did a gestural sketch of the hero on the back of the page that I preferred, so I pasted him in using GIMP but I left it all in a very abstract state.

His stance is one of the few things I'd like to propagate to the next iteration...but this one's going nowhere.---detritus of the learning process. If I didn't post it, it would be sentenced to die a quiet death on my hard-drive. This way it's hopefully a crude match that ignites someone's game imagination.

These are awesome. Updoot
 

Doombunny

A FreshHell to Contend With
Awesome, thanks for the info. Always look forward to concentrated community content but it seems less available than ever lately.
 

Doombunny

A FreshHell to Contend With
I would have liked to contribute was mainly why I asked; I’m sure Malrex has what he needs at this point, however.
 

Malrex

So ... slow work day? Every day?
Unfortunately, I think we got the content covered so you may need to wait for #26 (and hopefully someone takes the lead because I'm retiring from Footprints after this one).

Currently we got about 160+ pages of written material not including maps and art. Still waiting on a few pieces to be edited. It's the 25th issue so its going to be very big. Hoping to finish layout and publish it on Dragonsfoot in June.
 

Osrnoob

Should be playing D&D instead
OHH NO WHYYY AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
 

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
An unintentional Kyle McLaughlin by quick-sketch dumb luck?



Or does your brain say Tony Curtis?
 
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