Bolt Thundersmite- Dwarf Cleric- My Illustration Process in 5 Steps

Art and words by David Finley

 

 Today we're going to take a look at how to construct a drawing of Bolt Thundersmite, Dwarf Cleric of T'oerr. Bolt is a character from a fantasy adventure called, The Adventures of the Sudsy Fist Expedition Company.

Step 1: The Sketch

So, It's usually a good idea to start out with a loose sketch to get a feel of the character, work out line flow, and give the picture as much energy as you can before it goes to the computer. You'll notice we angled the sketch here so the action flows diagonally. 

 I like the loose and powerful energy of the sketch, so we should really try to retain that as we move to the next step.

Step 2: Line Weight, Inking, and Spotting of Blacks

 Next, we'll take the piece into Adobe Illustrator and begin our "inking" process. This is a meticulous combination of using the pen tool to get precise curves, and working with a combination of Illustrator's brush tool and your stylus to get a less perfect line. A word of advice: Too much precision zaps the energy away.

 If you don't have a digital stylus, no worries. Your mouse will be fine, but it might take a few more passes to get the lines you want.

 The heavy areas of black on the mountain, and in Bolt's mouth serve to anchor the composition or give "weight" to the drawing. In other words, you'll give the eye a resting point as it moves around the piece, (this process is known as spotting blacks)

 As we digitally ink our hero, it's also important to vary the line weight, or thickness of line to give our character more dimension. If all of the lines are the same size, the viewer's eye can more easily pass over our image. We want to lock them in with some variation.

Step 3: Flat Area Coloring

 Now we'll need to make some color choices for our character. For our colors, we'll take the image into Adobe Photoshop. Bolt wears plate metal armor, but we don't want to just color it with a simple, boring desaturated grey. Instead we'll use tones of purple. Purple just feels a little stormy.

 We'll vary the light and darkness of the purple to give his armor a pieced together look. And for his cape, boots, and leather straps, we'll also use purple, but make it more saturated, dark, and rich to differentiate it from his armor.

 Since we're using purple for the main character, we'll contrast that in the background with purple's opposite color, yellow. A yellow sky also makes a nice choice for a storm because it's not the color sky we'd necessarily expect.

 In this stage, we'll also go ahead and crackle up our lightening and give it a glow so we can see how our color choices will look with it. This glow effect can be achieved by duplicating the lightening in another layer in Photoshop, and blurring the lower layer a little.

Step 4: Coloring Your Lines

 This step is optional and really comes down to personal preference. Colored lines do tend to look a bit more dimensional since they don't weigh the eye as much, but if you want to keep your lines black, just skip this step.

Step 5: Highlights and Shadows

 This is where it gets really exciting. The shadows and highlights are really going to give dimension to our hero.

 It's important to remember that the lightning is striking overhead and behind Bolt so he will be mostly back and top lit. As you ad shadow, you'll want to saturate your colors a little more, but be careful not to overdo it.

Bonus Step: Background Contrast

 This is technically still part of step five, but here we'll add a few more shadowy areas to give our storm a little more muscle. You could add some highlights here, too if you'd like, but be careful not to draw focus from bolt.

And there you have it. Oh, and just for fun, here's another version of the colors that adds even more drama with a darker background.

 Just remember to have fun out there and most of all, happy drawing!

-Dave

D&D Next- Loads of Old Fashioned Fun

Art and Writing by David Finley

 In my last few posts, I talked about why I started playing games like Dungeons and Dragons (spoiler: cause I was cool in high school) and how to use novel writing techniques to enhance your campaigns.

 Today, I'll discuss the newest version of the game (still in its playtest stage): D&D Next. I won't bore you with a complete review here, but would like to say that my group's experience has been very positive with it so far.

 Personally, I find it to be the first version of D&D in a long time that feels like the old AD&D days. Combat is simplified, character builds are focused more on the character's story and background, and the game encourages thinking outside of your stats and powers. This feels like I found the D&D I fell in love with in my teens, who, despite some added years, is still hot.

 My group agreed to playtest the game with an adventuring party of dwarves, in an adventure of my own called, "The Caverns of Murder". Since the game feels a lot like the classic D&D, I wanted to play things on the nose a bit, and write a similar feeling adventure. Those treacherous caverns are filled with spiked pits, acid pools, demons, giant boulder traps, gelatinous cubes, and gobs of treasure.

 The barbarian in the group, Braun Bloodstone, has been particularly successful, even jumping from a mountain cliff and seizing his own griffin mount. A miss would have meant certain death, but he went for it. (pictured above)

 So, all in all, consider me really excited about where Wizards of the Coast is taking the venerable franchise. While no version is perfect, I haven't had this easy of a time playing it in a long time, and that has made for some really fun sessions.

David

Dungeons & Dragons is owned by Wizards of the Coast.

Dungeon Mastering- The Novel Approach

Art and Writing by David Finley

 Recently, I began a campaign set in my own fantasy world, called Highwater. It's a rich and multi-layered story ala the "Song of Ice and Fire" novels, or the "Wheel of Time" series, brimming with political negotiations, betrayal, murder investigations, and large scale warfare.

 As a DM, or Dungeon Master, it takes a lot of concentration and mental energy to not only keep building on an already intricate plot, but to also maintain consistency while operating a huge cast of non player characters that regularly interact with the party. When you run a campaign like that, you gamble with the possibility of burning out pretty quickly.

 Burn out is a horrible problem for a DM, and will poison even a great campaign quickly. To avoid that, one tool I like to use to combat burnout is switching chapters, or acts. I think I'll call it, "the Novel Approach".

 Much like a novel, which often uses rotating characters and chapters to share different points of view or location, I like to switch to a different set of player characters having a different adventure altogether, with just enough of the events of the other campaign bleeding over to make it relevant.

 Using alternating stories can give you a break from the tedium of trying to top yourself, a creative boost, and a chance to make your campaign world richer and deeper in the process. As a DM, you also have the freedom to explore different adventure styles, without having to start a whole new campaign.

 Some chapters could be combat free. Maybe the pcs are all senators locked in rigorous debate, making political deals that will alter the course of history. Or, maybe you want to explore an old school Gygax style dungeon crawl with booby traps, treasure, and exotic monsters. Your campaign world is your creative oyster.

 Don't forget, you can also run some chapters where the characters are all villains. Then, your heroes aren't just knocking down faceless enemies anymore. Plus, the badder they are, and the more trouble they cause, the more the heroes have to deal with later.

 It's also a good idea to leave at least a small cliffhanger or two between chapters. This will make your players eager to see what happens next, while providing a spring board for ideas.

 So, if you've been running a long term campaign, and you feel the threat of Dungeon Master burnout, consider the "Novel Approach". At the very least, it's a nice diversion.

 Dungeons and Dragons is © and owned by the nice folks at Wizards of the Coast. 

My First Time- Confessions of a Dungeons and Dragons Nerd

Art and Writing by David Finley

 The first time I played Dungeons and Dragons, President Clinton was in his first term of office. I was fifteen.

 A friend of mine from band class invited me to play, and since I loved comic books, Star Wars, and fantasy novels so much, it seemed like the perfect game. Now I know what you're thinking: band class? Dungeons and Dragons? Comic books?

 That made me the coolest kid in school, right?

 Yep. Sitting in the basement game-room at my best-friend John's house, armed with a warm, flat, generic Mountain Dew knock-off and some really weird blue dice, I eagerly embarked down the rabbit hole of nerdom. For my first character, I decided on a dwarf fighter. I didn't know much about dwarves, but they looked really cool in the pictures inside the 2nd edition Player's Handbook.

 Plus, they had awesome beards.

 As the session began, the odor of cheap microwave burritos and stale farts hung heavy in the air. That's what I like to imagine a real dungeon would smell like so it made for good atmosphere. However, I later learned a real dungeon probably doesn't have anything as pleasant smelling in it as cheap microwave burritos.

 The dungeon master, John's younger brother, Mark, wove a tale about a mad wizard named, Hallister, who was unleashing chaos upon the Realms from somewhere deep in the Undermountain, a subterranean dungeon nestled snuggley beneath a rich and thriving town called, Waterdeep.

 Needless to say, our adventuring group vowed to mess his shit up. No need to thank us. It was all in a day's work.

  As we braved the terrain, our scout came running back with dire news, not about an insane spellcaster, but instead a band of orcs, who had heard our clattering and were coming to kill us.

 With weapons in hand and dick jokes at the ready, we prepared for battle.

 My friend, David, played a wizard character, and once the orcs started pouring in, cast a wall of fire spell in the middle of the invading group. Unable to stop their momentum several of the orcs plunged into the flame, dying quickly in its terrible heat. I marveled at David's magical might.

 David just took it in stride. He was a veteran.

 The orcs who had made it past the flame wall fared no better as the fighters, including my dwarf, halted their charge with shields and swords, as our scouts emerged from the shadows, stabbing the orcs from behind.

 I think one orc got stabbed in the kidney, which hurts really bad, but he deserved it.

 We celebrated our victory with raised fists, feeling truly happy and triumphant. That night I, a rugged and impressively bearded dwarf braved the tunnels of a lost dungeon, and I had dealt evil a heavy blow right in the you-know-where.

 I was hooked.

 Dungeons & Dragons was a reprieve from the confusion of adolescence, and as my friends and I journeyed through imaginary lands playing made up people with exotic names, the bonds of friendship, companionship, and brotherhood grew stronger and deeper in a very real way. To this day, I consider those guys to be among the best of my friends.

 We never did find Hallister, though.




Dungeons and Dragons is © and property of the really nice people over at Wizards of the Coast. Maybe some day they will offer me a sweet job.