Coloring Oz – Nick 4

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I quite like how this turned out. As an individual illustration I think the color and the composition work well. I like the tin Nick in the foreground and Rebecca, Amy and meat Nick acting out their destinies in the background.

Unfortunately I’d intended this portrait (and those of Dorothy, Scarecrow and Lion) to be part of a composition on the back cover of a book and this illustration doesn’t work with the rest of the art at all. The portraits of the other characters work okay but this one is just too darned busy. There’s too much action and the red in it clashes with the reds in the rest of the cover.

It looks like I’ll need to do new versions of these portraits. Keeping them simple this time. And working with the colors already established. Sigh.

Coloring Oz – Nick 3

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It’s not that I don’t have anything to say about Nick and the process of coloring this illustration. It’s that I’ve got a lot of paperwork to fill out in order to make sure I get into the spring classes at Seattle Central Community College. The paperwork from the college itself is minor – it’s the financial aid forms that eat time and kill the brain.

Coloring Oz – Nick 1

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Nick Chopper could be considered a tragic figure. He’s a man who, piece by piece, had all his human parts replaced with tin substitutes. A witch enchanted his axe and it chopped off his parts. A tinsmith fashioned replacements for the missing limbs. Eventually all of Nick got excised and he became a completely tin man.

In the original Oz novels Nick is pretty satisfied with that. He felt the lack of a heart for a while but the Wizard gave him a suitable substitute. There’s no tragedy to that version of Nick. He and the Scarecrow hang out, often congratulating themselves that they aren’t subject to the need to eat or sleep or breathe like ordinary meat people.

The Nick in Oz Squad? He’s had a few more bumps than the Nick in the original novels. He doesn’t seem to miss being human much more than the earlier Nick did. At least not most of the time.

Coloring Oz – Lion 4

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And here is the final colored version of the Lion for the secret Oz Squad project. With the other character portraits I’ve done in this series I’ve put some scene in the background that refers to that character’s past. Except for a little bit of green, suggesting the forest, I didn’t do that for the Lion. Partly that’s because the Lion’s past isn’t described in any detail. (I could have draw him pouncing on Toto but I honestly didn’t think of that until just now.) Partly I wanted him to fill up the illustration space to demonstrate his size. The Lion isn’t some little Earth lion. He’s huge, the size of a horse. Not a creature you want to mess with.

Coloring Oz – Lion 3

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After the various past posts I’ve done on my Photoshop coloring process I’m not sure what I could say today that would be new. I’m continuing to post different stages in the process because I find it fun when other artists do the same thing with their work. If you happen to have any questions about my process feel free to ask.

Coloring Oz – Lion 2

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In a land of intelligent, talking animals what do the predators eat? In more than one of the Oz books, Baum, the author, suggests that they eat each other. But he only suggests, vaguely implies, it. None of the main character predators: the Hungry Tiger, the Cowardly Lion, Toto the dog or Eureka the pink kitten, are ever show actually eating. A few bad animals, dragons, Kalidahs, the Skoodlers and other BAD folks threaten to eat our heroes but they never succeed.

In Gregory Macguire’s Wicked Years series there are both animals (the dumb sorts we’re used to) and Animals (who can think and talk). Animals eat animals.

In Skipp and Levinthal’s The Emerald Burrito of Oz there’s a brainless animal called a goomer that serves as the food source for all Oz predators.

I’m not sure what the predators eat in Steve Ahlquist’s version of Oz.

Coloring Oz – Lion 1

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Of Dorothy’s three companions in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the Cowardly Lion is my favorite. I suspect that this has more to do with my affinity for underdogs and neglected characters than because he’s necessarily more interesting than the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. It seems like Baum, the author of the Oz books, didn’t know what to do with the Lion. After Wizard the Lion gets very little page time. I don’t think he’s even mentioned in Land of Oz, the first Oz sequel. He shows up again, along with the Hungry Tiger, in Ozma of Oz, the third Oz book, but mostly he’s around to pull Ozma’s chariot. In most of the subsequent novels that his primary function. The only Baum written book that I remember him having a significant part in, post-Wizard, is The Lost Princess of Oz. And in Princess he’s one of many characters searching for the kidnapped Ozma.

I have to admit that the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman are more unusual than the Lion. One is a living scarecrow. The other is a tin simulacrum of a man named Nick Chopper. The two are good friends and hang out together. Baum obviously enjoyed writing about them. Once they fulfilled their quests for brains and a heart they were still unique characters. Once the Lion got his courage? Then he was basically just a talking lion. You’d think that would make him interesting enough, wouldn’t you?

Detour Sketch – Trunk Monkey

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This is the last of the prep sketches I did for Detour, a scenario for the Dark Conspiracy RPG. I’ve also done the cover and some interior illustrations for a new, third edition of the main rulebook and, if all goes well, I’ll be providing illustrations for future supplements and scenarios. I’m certainly looking forward to it. The Dark Conspiracy environment is just the sort of place I love to illustrate. It has vast, decaying urban environments; monsters and aliens; human heroes and villains; forbidding wastelands and alien worlds.

Stay tuned!

Detour Sketch – Rock Gargoyle

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Detour, and the Dark Conspiracy game that this scenario is a part of, takes place in an alternate future America. Most of the population lives in sprawling metroplex cities. The countryside has mostly become the Out-Law and and in the worst places it has become Demonground; places where the Dark Races reign.

The Dark Races are mostly nothing new. They’ve been with us for all of human history. They are the monsters of our myths and legends. Some of those legends describe the creatures accurately. Many times the old stories are no more than half-truths, glimpses of that partially describe beings in the way the blind men in the old story could only partially describe an elephant. There are a wide variety of creatures in the game but plenty of room to either invent new ones or depict interesting variations on familiar types. This rock gargoyle sits at the edge of the events of the Detour scenario. If the players aren’t careful they might get its attention.