Miniatures!

My first batch of miniatures designs for fouraminiatures are at the sculptors! I'll be able to post the designs and the finished products soon!
Watch this space.

Heroes of Hellas: set sail for adventure!

Well this one is the final piece for the Hellas RPG so it was a bit of a sad time.
I set myself the task of painting everything on this one: all the layers and lensflares etc. No shortcuts allowed. I'm quite pleased with the results: I like the clouds and the sea came out the way I wanted: it's kept the loose style which I like. The lensflare and glare also came out pretty well. All just painted on a seperate layer and fidled with.

I designed a heroic captain with a heavy heart to lean over the prow: is he on his way somewhere or his way back? And why so pensive? At his side is his faithful friend; a savage beast of a warrior who leads his troops. You can't really see them so well on the finished piece as I shrank them down, bit they helped to invest a sense of story and feeling into the piece for me as I worked. I alway like to get some sort of emotional anchor in everything I do, even if in the end I'm the only one who knows it's there. It helps me to connect with it as I work.

The ship itself was a bit of a chore. I don't really enjoy vehicle design as much. I drew one, painted it. And then Sketchbook crashed on me and lost it all.
I came back to it the next day and thought: I didn't like that ship. It wasn't cool and was a bit generic. So I tried to kick it up a notch.
I added the spikes, the skull, the shields, the snarling duckbill ram, the bolted on plates on the prow. I got rid of the square sail and put on a more dynamic shape.

And lo and behold, there was a ship I could imagine adventuring on. One I'd be proud to sail to war in.

Good things come out of accidents sometimes.