As the week ends, I find myself back at the beginning of my work for the role-playing game, Planescape. The first color illustration you see in the Player’s Guide, found in the original campaign setting, is of a halfling showing his adventuring companion how to make the portal to another plane open.

So I thought it would be fitting to redraw this one from 1994. It was one of the first finished images that I created for the line.

Ang and I went to see Sting in concert down in Florida during the time that I was working on Planescape, and I remember that I really liked how he had reinterpreted his old Police songs. It showed that the music was original and could be played in many variations but still be the same tune. I have felt that in redrawing and sharing some of this early work of mine has been like that - there were obvious technical advances on my part as an artist over the years, but the design ideas and imagination that went into the imagery for this game still held up over a decade later…and I am proud to have been a part of it.

Planescape’s underworld was, of course, modeled after Inferno in Dante’s Divine Comedy. I haven’t read that book since college, but a good pal of mine sent me a newly translated version last year – and I am finally starting to read it. Written a little more…”cleaner”, this version still retains the poetic verse and I’ve enjoyed it so far.

Anyways, here’s Dante out on a solo adventure speaking with a pit fiend…I think he’s asking where a good restaurant might be.

I’ve been doing some characters from the various Planescape factions over the last few days, and I thought I’d post what I’ve done so far. Most are just a little more simplified and lively than their predecessors. I realized I added lots of clothing, armor, belts and tassels, to hide my cursory figure drawing back then. I guess after 10+ years I was bound to get a little better.

Yugoloths, baatezu, tanar’ri, devils, or Screwtape’s peeps…whatever you’d like to call’em, Planescape had A LOT of them. To be completely honest, I really enjoyed rendering those creepies – but again, I think I lacked the maturity as an illustrator to push their designs to the fullest potential.

The most obvious flaw in the PS illus. is that they are all perfect specimens. After eons of fighting off adventurers, good guys from Mt. Celestia, and each other - well, they would show the effects of such a battered existence, and I think these wounds would add greatly to their grotesqueness.

Of course, I looked at 15th century painter of all things nightmarish, Hieronymus Bosch for inspiration. But I think the best devils I have seen rendered are by alien painter/genius Wayne Barlowe. His work is great - his imagination is AMAZING!

Okay, enough reminiscing, I am off to bed. Hopefully no succubi will invade my dreams

Ah, the nefarious, notorious githyanki. For us older gamers, we first saw these Astral killers on the cover to 1981’s Fiend Folio – and fell in love with their rich backstory and bizarre appearance. They always reminded me of some alien race on Star Trek, like the klingons.

Anyways, I got the opportunity to render them, and their githzerai cousins, quite a few times for Planescape starting with the first Monstrous Compendium. In fact, I still remember one game reviewer saying that my Planescape art reminded him a bit of Dr. Seuss (*see my postscript). I wonder if he was looking at my Grinch-like githyanki design?

Actually one of the key Planescape game designers, Zeb Cook, showed me some books he had recently purchased from Japan on an artist named Yoshitaka Amano. Of course, the artwork totally blew me away. Back in ‘94, I don’t think many knew of his work here in the states, but now his work (rightfully) is much more known thanks to the availability of his lavishly illustrated books. His costume design and patterning were certainly an influence on my githyanki images.

This morning, I played around with the original Fiend Folio cover pose while incorporating bits of the original and my Planescape design. In my attempt of maturing as an illustrator, I veered away from the “look I am evil. See my evil face?”, and created a more alien, otherwordly look. Besides, the actions of these villainous rogues certainly define their alignment.

PS – Speaking of nonsense children’s book authors, did you know that the githyanki’s main weapon, their vorpal sword, was originally created by none other than Lewis Carroll for his poem “Jabberwocky” in Through the Looking Glass? That’s so cool…

No, my dear old gaming fans, your eyes do not deceive you. This is a tiefling which was sketched yesterday and inked today.

I am not working for TSR/WotC/Hasbro, in fact; I am drawing and inking away on the upcoming Spiderwick book, A Giant Problem. Part of my routine, when I am on such an intense deadline (and this is one), is “warming up” with some sketching to get my brain-eye-hand-coordination up to speed before I begin the final illustrations.

And I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic. This year marks the 10-year anniversary of my farewell to the Planescape role-playing-game (my last book was the third Monstrous Compendium in 1998). As I have said before, I really enjoyed working on that game - despite the insane deadlines. Children’s stories were always my big career goal, but my involvement with Planescape helped me understand how to visualize and build a fantastic world for characters to dwell.

So, over the next week or so, as the urge hits me, I’ll revisit some of the old people and monsters that I drew all those years ago…and I hope you’ll enjoy them.

This gal was actually transfered from the original 1996 sketch. I made some obvious changes as I inked her with a Hunt 102 nib and FW ink – the same medium that I used back then.

First off, I actually have her doing something. In the original she was just posing, as I likely copied the pose from a fashion catalog - which I used often in those days. Here, she is holding out her necklace and casting some no-good-spell. Also, I hinted at the shadiness of the area she is hanging out in by scribbling in some “Wanted” posters. Her look and attire, as it was then, was inspired by Pris, Daryl Hannah’s character in the 1982 film Blade Runner.

PS–Let’s see if anyone can remember what book this gal is from…I’ll send a set of my d20 character sheets to whomever posts it first:)

With the final art and text in production for Kenny and the Dragon, I focused on helping the marketing team at Simon and Schuster come up with some nice visuals to help create awareness for the new title.

Though it is extra work on my end, I like having unique images to sell a book without reusing the cover art. I’ve done this for most all of the Spiderwick books, and it really helps get folks excited when they see a specially designed poster and/or original designed cardboard floor display which we so often see scattered about our favorite bookstore. Here is a comp for the display top for Kenny, which you may see in a store near you this August.

I had hardly a minute to myself after all of this was done before I jumped onto the next Spiderwick book, A Giant Problem. Since most of the characters have already been created, I have found myself back in the world of sketching scenes of curious kids, rampaging giants and troublesome fairies…

…and for my older fans who have been following these posts, here is a AD&D character sheet for a mouse thief whom I’ve named “Sam Wisewhiskers”. Enjoy!

Like I said before, both the original AD&D Monster Manual and the 1994’s Monstrous Manual had a tremendous impact on me both as an artist and a creator of books.

After binging out on D&D, at 13 I spent an entire summer making my own Monster Manual, which was more a field guide full of fantastical creatures from a strange island called “Gondwanaland” (after the ancient super-continent). But instead of giving statistics and game points, I wrote about natural habits, habitats, and even created scientific names for my menagerie.

I never forgot about that idea of a fantastical field guide from a naturalist’s point-of-view and that passion went into every image that I did for Spiderwick’s Field Guide - which was full of goblins, trolls, ogres and faeries - very much like the Monster Manuals.

I still love the Tolkien-inspired world of Dungeons & Dragons. And, even though I don’t do any illustrative work for the game anymore, I still doodle out some of my favorite monsters just like I did back in 1981.

The AD&D Monstrous Manual (MM) was my second monstrous assignment for TSR. I had just handed in the artwork for my first job, Dragon Mountain, and received a call from the MM editor Tim Beach.

It was 1992, I had just graduated from college, and was living with my parents. My younger brother, Adam, and my good friend Mike, had encouraged me to submit stuff to TSR and the Monstrous Manual was a dream-come-true project for me.

Adam and Mike had encouraged me because they had seen the drawings I had been doing in my sketchbook for the past year of Beholders, Shambling Mounds and Mind Flayers - some of which had been in my initial submission to TSR. So when Tim called me to see my interpretation on their classic creatures I simply just sent him my sketchbook.

At that point, he wanted me to illustrate the WHOLE book - over 300 illustrations! But the deadline was so tight there was no way I could do it, so we decided on half (which was still over 100 drawings!)

I had no money (I was still waiting for my payment from Dragon Mountain). So I used leftover school supplies consisting of pencils, Berol Prismacolor markers, and pastel pencils all rendered on laser paper. You read that right. Crappy, crummy, thin-n-flimsy laser bond paper. Of course, it works well for blending the alcohol ink for the markers, but it hardly will stand the test of time.

You can see some of my favorite finished images in the ART/GAMING section of the site. In the meantime, here are some snapshots of the sketchbook that I sent to Tim.

I realized that many readers may no longer have the aforementioned AD&D Monster Manual, don’t remember the art, or simply have never seen it. So, just to give an idea of how groovy it was, here are a few scans of some of my fav images from this book by artist David A. Trampier.

…of course, these images are © TSR/WotC/Hasbro.

It was a surreal moment for me to be able to get the opportunity to render some of these classic monsters for 1994’s Monstrous Manual, but I’ll yammer about that in the next post.