Storn

Here is where I turn some GM authorship over to the players. For a couple of reasons. 1) Their buy in will be greater because they hand in it's creation. 2) You don't have to do all the heavy lifting. So, how do you do this? By asking leading questions. Turn to a player and say; "Your PC knows of an unsavory character that hangs around the docks..who is it? What is their gig? What is your relationship with them?" You might get everything from "its my brother" to "its my sworn enemy". For the Mayor, turn to a player and say: "You've heard a nasty rumor about the mayor, what is it? You strongly feel that this is a false accusation. Why do you feel that way? Who would benefit by spreading such a rumor?" Now, even if the PC and the Mayor have never met, there is this connection and the table is off and running and constructing this city right in front of y'all. Ask the most magical oriented character; "You've met the head of the magic university. How did you meet? What are they like? Was your meeting a positive or negative one? What project is the University desperate to get off the ground and why?" Maybe the player will say; "I was a student and got kicked out for forbidden rituals." Maybe they will say; "Met hapstance at an Inn outside of town, we had a lovely dinner over shared interests of the arcane and are on our way to becoming fast friends." To a player who's PC does not know the city, first time here, ask; "Hey, you had a really nice encounter with the City Guard. You thought they would be hard asses, but one of them was welcoming and open. Why do you think the guard was so open and genuniely interested in you? Now, this is a question is much more narrow than the others. As the GM, I want to build a ready made ally for the newcomer PC. So, I've pre-empted any kind of negative relationship between the PC and the Guard and turned it into a positive one. Also, this is a great way to turn a trope or cliche slightly. You don't know what the players are going to toss out. But what they do toss out will be juicy and provide all kinds of hooks. And I've noticed, players love screwing over their own characters from time to time and this when you get a whole plethora of Disadvantages opportunities as well as adventure hooks. I have a video about using Leading Questions, expanding a bit on what I suggested here:

More doodles from my Wednesday night game. Well, Mongoose was done for the Name That Guy contest.... but she is a super agent, so I thought she could go here. Btw, I do have another contest going and only 4 entries. Called What's Her Story. If you subscribe to my channel and put your idea of what her backstory is in the comments section, I'm picking 2 "winners" and will do a character concept drawing for them, for FREE! Winners will be picked this Thursday, 10/6.

I saw that! Hey guys, I've let this thread really stagnate over the last few years. But I am back to full time art after 8 years of being at a 9-5 energy company doing marketing and forklift duties (wore a lot of hats). I have been playing supers. It has been our own system...but I've done a lot of art for our playtest and I thought I would drop some on y'all. And that is just scratching the surface... I've got a lot more.. But let's see if folks enjoy this before completely saturating the thread.

Yup.

I think her personality & appearance is well depicted in her pic. And as for power/tactics, I let anyone who wants to play her to come up with their own. She is a light, flying brick. But she is spread out, jack of all trades, master of none.

Oh, sorry, the pdf is exported from the Hero Designer file.

Hope is her real name. Hope St. Clair. Vector's name is Max St. Clair. I'm not sure what more character info I can provide, I mean, I provided the Hero Designer file.

Here is Hope. She is the daughter of my longest running hero, Vector and her mom is Oracle, from Champions of the North. Her grandfather, Ultraman is a superman clone and her grandmother, Lady White, is a light based character. Her dad disappeared after a massive alien invasion and Hope grew up on Mars which was being terraformed by Vector leading up to the invasion. It was really, really cool to play this optimistic, legacy kid... very different than her intense, weight of worlds on his shoulders, father. Her powers grab a bit from all of her relatives, except for her father's telekinesis ability... just because I played Vector for 25 years and I didn't want to play a teke again. Hope is part of the New Pioneers, a group that has come together in the efforts to rebuild the home planet. The blue sleeve represents her birth planet, her red, Mars and the white is an ode to her grandmother, Lady White. Hope.pdf

Wow, seeing the 3d version of her is really cool.

I don't know, didn't play in that game. I just got a description. Brick, mini-brick? That would be my best guess, especially with the code name Achilles.

No. It was really something that just came off the character sheet. He was a speedster with mystic armor. I was trying to make that work somehow.

Thanks Trencher! We are on holiday hiatus, but hopefully, I will get to draw a couple more when we start up in January.

Here are a few of mine, the first one is my actual Player Character.

Here is the full team of the Victors.

RDUNeil's RDU is now so far removed from Champions Universe, as the Earth has been impacted by 30 years of gameplay. We are now in the realm of social science fiction after an apocalyptic war with an alien invasion as irrevocably changed the planet. Talking about 80% casualties. Mars is terraformed. LA is gone. England is Fey realm. Atlantis has re-emerged. Nation states are in total disarray. I could go on.

Holy Thread resurrection! Yah... I'm back. Last night, RDU Neil and other sundry gamers such as I, started our Session Zero for Champions Now playtest. Despite being hundreds of miles from Neil, the miracle of the intrawebs, discord, web camera and a head phone with a mike, allowed me to join my former gaming group. Of course, I was doodling as we hashed out stuff, as is my wont. Really, it is a compulsion. I can't help myself. Luckily I am pretty good at paying attention while doodling so Neil doesn't want to drown me in a tub of jello while holding 2 Hero 6 system books. Today, I colorized "Flanker", my new PC in the Champs Zero game. We had a really great session and I'm looking forward to the game. Flanker is a *slow* speedster (his top is around 175 mph, which is pretty slow for comics speedsters... but still ungodly fast) and a mini brick. We are the U of M's very first super team, sponsored by the University to keep us from being kidnapped in the middle of the night by Federal shadow agencies that want supers. My character was on the MIchigan football team as a wide receiver, (set up in the flank hint, hint), but can't play football anymore. His running sometimes goes out of control and he would be in Ohio by accident. I hint at maize and blue in the uniform, without aping the look completely. Maybe RDU Neil will post the 6 sentences that was contributed by all of us that is the foundation of the campaign. So looking forward to this. Have I mentioned that I'm looking forward to this game?

Spotify: Bring it on home to me. Otis Redding.

Thanks for looking out for us artists.

Across 110th Street Ten Ton Studios has their new weekly challenge up. http://www.tentonstudios.com/forum/index.php?topic=10784.0 This week it is Misty Knight. Now, I'm not a huge Iron Fist/Power Man comic book aficionado, but the very first thing I thought of when I read the challenge was Bobby Womack's amazing soul tune, "Across 110th street" (I've yet to see the movie, although I payed homage to the movie poster too. Tunage here: https://youtu.be/UOg_8hCC4u4). I met my wife and lived in Spanish Harlem at the ages of 19-21. I lived on E119th street, Harlem was close by. Watching Luke Cage on Netflix was like going home for me. Luke Cage is my favorite Netflix Marvel show so far and I LOVED Jessica Jones and Daredevil. I was a bike messenger and would often cut through Harlem from Spanish Harlem to pick up packages at Columbia University (and then bike downtown). One time, I even delivered to the Apollo Theater! That was a thrill. So I am paying homage to stomping grounds of my youth. Now, I wish I could get some of those empanadas from 116th street. pencil and inked on marker paper, scanned, digital colors

Across 110th Street Ten Ton Studios has their new weekly challenge up. http://www.tentonstudios.com/forum/index.php?topic=10784.0 This week it is Misty Knight. Now, I'm not a huge Iron Fist/Power Man comic book aficionado, but the very first thing I thought of when I read the challenge was Bobby Womack's amazing soul tune, "Across 110th street" (I've yet to see the movie, although I payed homage to the movie poster too. Tunage here: https://youtu.be/UOg_8hCC4u4). I met my wife and lived in Spanish Harlem at the ages of 19-21. I lived on E119th street, Harlem was close by. Watching Luke Cage on Netflix was like going home for me. Luke Cage is my favorite Netflix Marvel show so far and I LOVED Jessica Jones and Daredevil. I was a bike messenger and would often cut through Harlem from Spanish Harlem to pick up packages at Columbia University (and then bike downtown). One time, I even delivered to the Apollo Theater! That was a thrill. So I am paying homage to stomping grounds of my youth. Now, I wish I could get some of those empanadas from 116th street. pencil and inked on marker paper, scanned, digital colors

Mos likely, I love gouache.... but I wanted to play with acrylic. I often mix gouache and acrylic anyway... but this was about playing with my new heavy body acrylics.

Thursday night is my game night. One of the other players is the amazing artist, Steve Ellis, http://steveellisart.com/. We often talk art, share tips, what we are working on and the like. This last Thursday, I came with a 1/2 sheaf of this thin yellow toned paper I had found at Hobby Lobby, because we both like working on toned paper. To give to Steve so he could play with it too. He, totally coincidentally, brought me a 1/2 sheaf of gray toned paper which had some tooth to it and some real thickness, like 80 lb or something. The yellow that i gave him is really thin, only good for sketching, although the piece below that I doodled, was not inked, it did seem to hold up to some inking I did in the corner. I really like that yellow paper is not so dark that my prelim pencil lines are tough to see, which happens in anything nearing midtone paper. But it is still dark enough that white pencil or white ink still is a viable way to work in the lights. I did two sketches (see below) Thursday night, one was of our actual player character, Xian Xiang, our diplomat turned spy turned ship captain in our Uncharted Worlds game. And the hatchet guy. I gave Xian to our player Mike and so the snap is with my iphone, the color of the background with this paper is much more french gray than the tan that the iphone picked up. The hatchet guy was scanned this weekend and so it shows a bit closer what Steve's gray paper is like... but still came out a bit lighter and warmer than in real life, but it is off by only 5%. But Steve's paper has quite a bit of texture. Which I don't love when I go with toned sketches to some kind of digital finish, because I tend to work with multiply and that texture can sometimes look crappy. But because the paper was fairly thick, how would it stand up to acrylic paint? Quite well, I think. The paper did buckle just a small amount due to me using thin washes at time. Steve Prescott (another fabulous artist: http://prescottartblog.blogspot.com/ who I happened to go to school with) turned me onto some heavy body acrylics of late and I'm enjoying them. Can't wait to use them as an underpainting for an actual oil painting sometime soon. I love when art is play, because that is when some cool learning happens.

Here is a doodle, I was experimenting with a very loosed pencil sketch. I wanted to see if I could work with that when I went to the paint. I tend, especially with fantasy, to be a "bit" tighter with the pencil work. But I was quite happy that it came out the way that it did. The face changed a bit, now looking at it, I like the angle of the pencil a little better than the finished. Although I like the paint application in the face. Ah, I'm picky. This piece, plus 4 others, are my latest Fantasy Clip Art portfolio from LPJ Design, available here: http://lpjdesign.rpgnow.com/product/207458/Image-Portfolio-Platinum-Edition-39-Storn-Cook The preview of the Portfolio wasn't working for a bit, but it is working now.

I thought I answered this, but it did not show up. Absolutely use the artwork on your own site(s). AFter all , it is more advertising for me. Also, I've let folks publish the commissions as long as I can still use them in my own clip art portfolios, so I can continue to make a little bit of lunch money on them down the pike.

Scimitar and Buckler, variant on Sword -n- Board. Here is another lunch time doodle. Going for some rich colors while trying to make it readable. Hope I succeeded. I like working in vignettes like this, with the negative space allowed to exist almost abstractly.