The Mandate of Heaven RPG was inspired by Hong Kong action movies – heroic bloodshed movies, kung fu movies, wuxia movies and horror movies. The inclusion of the horror angle is part of what sold me on working on the project. Asian horror movies can be just plain insane. Maybe if you grew up in Chinese culture it all seems matter-of-course but to my fairly ignorant eyes some of those movies (and some of those monsters) were mind boggling. I really had to kick my imagination to have it go down some of the unfamiliar paths that would necessary to design things as strange as some of the creatures I saw in those movies.

And that’s a good thing. One should never let one’s imagination stick too close to the same paths.

The final version of this illustration intended for the (unfinished) RPG Mandate of Heaven.

A sketch for another Mandate of Heaven illustration. The final illustration will be posted tomorrow.

Yesterday I posted the pencils of this illustration. Here’s the finished version. A lot of the inspiration for Mandate of Heaven came from Hong Kong action movies, in particular the films of John Woo. Those movies feature a lot – a LOT – of gun play.

These are the pencils for one of the illustrations I did in 2004 for the unfinished RPG Mandate of Heaven. I didn’t do that many. Or rather, I did quite a few illustrations for the kung fu dictionary but not a lot of scene setting illustrations.

I think this fellow might be the Tiger Style Master. Maybe.

A portrait of the Master of Crane Style Kung Fu for the unfinished Mandate of HeavenRPG.

This is the Drunk Boxing Master for Mandate of Heaven. It’s also one of my favorite MoH illustrations. If I had time I’d love to do a comic featuring this guy.

Part of game play for Mandate of Heaven involved choosing a style of Kung Fu to use. Derek wrote out basic descriptions of each fighting style and I came up with a Master to illustrate it. This is the Master for Wing Chun.