Earlier this year I got an assignment from Chaosium to illustrate a new scenario in their reissue of the gamebook Mansions of Madness. I’ll be showing the preliminary sketches for those illustrations over the next few days.
Author Archives: skook
Stepping Lightly
This was to be an illustration for the Mandate of Heaven RPG. There’s a scene in one of Jet Li’s movies (Fist of Legen, I think) in which one of his martial arts battles amps up to the point where he and his opponent are walking on the heads of the crowd while fighting. That seemed like a handy skill to have, especially in modern crowded cities. This illustration features a character escaping his pursuers by running atop the masses.
This is also the last page scanned from my 2003 sketchbook. Tomorrow I’ll start show more recent work. Work that actually evolved into finished projects 🙂
Invasion of the Saucer Men
I’m not sure if I’ve seen Invasion of the Saucer Men. I don’t think I actually have. I have seen The Eye Creatures, a made for television remake with an even smaller budget than Saucer Men. I saw Eye Creatures as a kid and you can tell that it didn’t make much of an impression on me because I’ve never felt the need to sketch an Eye Creature.
Sketchisketch
I usually don’t scan pages that have this big a ratio of unfinished to finished sketches on them but I think that young lady is so full of life that it would be a shame not to share her with the world. The troll next to her is pretty cute too.
Random Sketches
Just random practice sketches. I see Mara and a half hearted attempt at H.R. Pufnstuf. The rest is randomness.
Great Cthulhu
Because everybody’s got to draw Cthulhu once or twice.
The Female Master
This was the design I settled on for the female master for the Mandate of Heaven kung fu dictionary. Originally I’d been leaning toward a female version of the other master – older, sort of beaten up, but Derek expressed a preference for someone more conventionally attractive. I don’t know that I do conventionally attractive very well but I gave it a go.
More Mara
Under the weather today. And it’s such a sunny day.
The Gardeners
In the movie The Thing from Another World the alien invader turns out to be a mobile plant that feeds on blood. While playing with a redesign of the creature I started to wonder what sort of civilization a mobile plant would come up with. Frankly, I was stumped. A plant civilization is going to have a whole different set of wants from an animal one.
After a bit of thinking it occurred to me that just because the Thing was a plant didn’t necessarily mean that it came from a civilization of plants. It could have been the equivalent of a guard dog or a helper monkey. The ship it arrived in is destroyed. The Thing can’t (or won’t) communicate. The men who find it only assume it is the ship’s pilot.
So then I started thinking about what sort of culture would create plants to act as soldiers and servants. And I wondered what other sorts of plant creatures might they create? (And which b-movie monsters could I reimagine as plant monsters?.)
Human
The world that this version of Mara lives in is one with multiple human species. None of the species represent humanity at its best. Neither is one species an avatar of human evil. Even angels and demons are more complicated than that.
