Torchbearer RPG Chapter Illo

Luke Crane, who designed and wrote the Mouse Guard RPG wrote a new RPG called Torchbearer described by Luke as "Dungeon crawl roleplaying game and love letter to Basic D&D". He asked me to contribute a spot illustration for him for the chapter called "Winter". Here is the process for creating that piece for him.

The rough started with the description "Exterior of a walled town. Creatures of all sorts lurk in the tree line, leering.  A lone wanderer, bundled against the cold, trudges through the snowy waste, casting an ever weakening spell to protect him. The traveler could be Varg, Taika or Ulrik". For the monsters I decided to go with a group of Owlbears. I sketched the owlbears seprately, scanned them and composited them with a reference photo of myself and a stock symbol given to me by Luke as part of Varg's model sheet.

Once I had a digital composite mocked up, I printed it out at 5" x 16". I taped that printout to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series Bristol. On the lightbox I was able to see the printout as a guide as I inked.

Lastly I scanned the inked artwork and digitally "colored" the piece (all in greyscale for the book's printing specs). To add more depth & effects, I used colorholds on the linework for the snow, castle, and magic spell.

Torchbearer was Kickstarted as a project, but Luke will be offering copies for sale on his Burning Wheel Webstore starting Thursday: http://www.burningwheel.com/store/index.php/torchbearer.html

Upcoming Appearances:

North Carolina Comic Con: November 9-10