Cor Blok

Third and final of my three 'Share the Love' posts today is for Cor Blok and his amazing illustrations for Lord of the Rings.

Fifty years ago, shortly after The Lord of the Rings was first published, Dutch artist Cor Blok read the work and was completely captivated by its invention and epic storytelling. The breadth of imagination and powerful imagery inspired the young Dutch artist, and this spark of enthusiasm, coupled with his desire to create art that resembled a historical artefact in its own right, led to the creation of more than 100 paintings. Following an exhibition at the Hague in 1961, JRR Tolkien's publisher, Rayner Unwin, sent him five pictures. Tolkien was so taken with them that he met and corresponded with the artist and even bought some paintings for himself. The series bears comparison with the Bayeux Tapestry, in which each tells an epic and complex story in deceptively simple style, but beneath this simplicity lies a compelling and powerful language of form that becomes more effective as the sequence of paintings unfolds.

These are a really refreshing take on Tolkien's work, and much closer in style to Tolkien's own illustrations for the Hobbit. I love the current Peter Jackson movies, and the artwork of John Howe and Alan Lee but their more realistic depictions have come to dominate the genre lately. These are a nice step back in time, and retro is what we love here in Tower of Ur. Kind of reminds me a bit of Tove Jansen's Moomins illuutrations.

http://www.corblok.com

Steve Cox

Another british-based illustrator whose work I have recently discovered is Steve Cox. He's coming a little more from the children's book illustration arena, which I seem to be moving more into these days, so I was admiring his work from that perspective, but then I found he's done quite a bit in the fantasy arena too, which I thought was well worth sharing here.

Official Website: Steve Cox Illustration
Blog: Steve Cox Blog

From a trading card game called Lords of War:

Also check out this crazy Pop-up book project he did -- so much fun. I'd love to work on something like this!: Pop-Up Spooky Castle

   

Matt Dixon

So while I'm here, there's a few 'Share the Love' type posts I've been meaning to make. The first is for fantasy illustrator Matt Dixon, who's work I recently discovered. As you may already have guessed, it was a bit of an influence on my work for Battle Maerchants. I love Matt's comical tone and the fun subjects he chooses. I also love his color palette and his use of lost and found edges, and the general looseness of his style. Does the fact that he is British have anything to do with it. No, but I was pleasantly delighted when I found out that he is!

His Official Site: http://www.mattdixon.co.uk
His Deviant Art Page: MattDixon on deviantART

This was the first image of his that I found while I was researching orcs for Battle Merchants. The more I looked at it, the more I loved it:

Here are some others that are sure to appeals to the denizens of Ur. Although my guess is that you would probably enjoy most all of his work:

Ahh well, I could go on all day. He also does some very cool things with halloween-type characters such as witches and zombies and Frankensteins etc. Also cyberpunks and sci-fi. :)

Battle Merchants

It has been another age since life last stirred within the dusty halls of the Tower of Ur. But once more, those great doors with their intricate carvings creak open, and a lone wizard returns from his wanderings throughout the wastes of the universe. How much time has passed? Months... Years... Centuries... Eons? He cannot tell. But the rituals and rites of the Wizards of Ur remain steadfast and unchanging, the passage of time means nothing here....

So, I've got a bit of new Ur-worthy work to share. I've been off doing a lot of children's book illustration and suchlike of late, which you can always take a look at over on my website: http://www.whelon.com

But I've been doing some stuff for a new board game called BattleMerchants for Minion Games, and here's some of what I've done so far.

Next I need to tackle the cover art, but here are the actually characters that grace the board. In the game you play a medieval arms-dealer selling weapons to the the local tribes of Orcs, Hobgoblins, Elves and Dwarves who are always doing battle with one another. Your job is not to care who wins, but to make as much profit as possible from their activities!

Here are the four merchants:

And here are the four races:

As you can see, I went with a bit of a more painterly style than I usually do. I've been doing a lot of cartoony stuff for children's books, which has been really fun, but I thought this project would be a good excuse to try my hand at something a little meatier.

Here's the current version of the board. The more astute wizards among you will not that I have made ample use of Wizard Nate's premium font 'Dwarvern Axe' from his Blambot.com site. I feel like this is the job that that font was born to do! It's absolutely perfect for it anyway ;) I still need to tweak the Logo quite a bit, haven't really done much to that yet, but you get the general idea.

Doomslakers

Here are the first couple of pages of Doomslakers, which is the most recent comic I'm actively working on. These are still WIPs, to some degree. I will probably change a little of the dialog and maybe tweak some of the art.

The Barbaribunny

Following up the previous post, here's a preview of "The Carrots of Gorr", a black and white yarn featuring Sheegra the Barbaribunny. More funny animal fantasy fun!

What I'm going for with both Hoofnar and Sheegra (they inhabit the same world) is old school funny animal humor. When I was working on Zyn Dweomer, I was reluctant to go full tilt with this idea. I avoided puns and tried to keep a semi-serious tone. But with this project, set in the savage realms of Yukaria, I am basically indulging my Captain Carrot and Conan fixations as I see fit.

This story is scripted at about 24 pages. But I generally edit mercilessly as I go, so it will probably end up around half that length.

Hoofnar the Barbullian

Sunlight burns my skin glistens on my sinew as I climb from the cavernous cave and post on ye olde Wizards of Ur blog! First, I hope all my WoU friends are rocking out and kicking a lot of ass. From what I've noticed, they are. And it makes me smile.

I'm going to post some unfinished comics. These are stories I've worked on here-and-there but never actually finished up. Not that they're dead, I'm just taking a long time to do them by not working on them for months at a stretch.

Here's page one of Hoofnar the Barbullian. The status on this is work-in-progress with pages 2-4 pencilled and lettered. This particular story, called "The Problem of Weasels", will probably run about 8 pages. I would like to publish it as a print comic, with a few other short tales, either as a Hoofner title or bundled with The Barbaribunny as a funny animal fantasy spectacular. Fun.

DCC RPG

No posts for months & months, then all of a sudden two come along at once...

The Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG is here. Well, I just got my copy of it anyway. It's still listed as a pre-order at the Goodman Games site:

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

This MASSIVE, hard-backed tome clocks in at over 470 pages and is a brand new set of role-playing game rules, that hark back to the early days of D&D. It's not a clone, though, it's a whole new set of rules, inspired by where the game might have gone if it has stayed true to its original roots.

Goodman Games have been publishing their 'Dungeon Crawl Classics' d20 supplements for a number of years (some of which I contributed art to), and in the past have put out other luminous works such as original D&D co-creator Dave Arenson's "Blackmoor" campaign setting. Now they've taken the logical next step and come up with the ruleset you always wished you had. Yes, these are the rules to kick your imagination into high gear and re-ignite your love of fantasy RPGs!

The icing on the cake, for me, is that it's chock-full of gorgeous old-school black & white RPG art, much of it new works by artist whose pieces appeared in the first edition TSR D&D books such as Jeff Easley, Jim Holloway, Diesel LaForce, Russ Nicholson, Jim Roslof, Jeff Dee, Erol Otus, Doug Kovacs, Stefan Poag & Peter Mullen. Seriously, it's worth buying just for this amazing art... oh and it also includes a dozen or-so cartoons by yours-truly (previously posted here). Man, I am so honored to be included in this illustrious company.

Check it out

My first Kickstarter campaign!

Tahiti is a boardgame created by a guy called David Whitcher being published by Minion Games - I did the art for it. It's an excellent game, very easy to learn and play, great for friends and family, what we call a 'gateway game'. It has a strong 'Euro'-mechanic and will please both casual and serious gamers. The Kickstarter page just went live and run through June 19th, so please spread the word far and wide!

Click to see more...

Pewfell #1 is now availabel on Graphicly

Perfect for your web or mobile device...

Grave Business Review

Dark Mischief

Halloween is coming...and so is Dark Mischief!

Dark Mischief is a 200+ page anthology of great spooky, whimsical, and mischievous comics stories

Dark Mischief Volume One will feature stories by Mitch Byrd (Starman, Predator, Starship Troopers), AP. Furtado (Heavy Metal), Dirk Manning (Nightmare World), Thomas Hall (Robot 13), Dani Jones (My Sister the Freak), Dave Flora (Ghost Zero), Sara Turner (Ghosts of Pineville), Kim Holm, Mark Rudolph, Cayetano Garza, Sam Kirkman, Pam Harrison, Wayne Spencer, Kenny Durkin, Thomas Florimonte Jr, and more.

The collection will be edited by, Jenni Gregory with an assist by Barry Gregory, design by me, and a cover by Mitch Byrd.

The Kickstarter Campaign:

We're fortunate in that we don't need to generate funds for printing.

So what's the purpose of this campaign? Simple ... We're hoping to raise some funds to pay advances to the artists and writers who have contributed to this project. That's it. 100% of all proceeds from this campaign (after paying for the rewards themselves) go directly to the creators who contributed stories as advances on their royalties.

We're offering some great rewards -- including a limited edition of the book available ONLY as a Kickstarter reward! Take a look and see for yourself!

You can find more information and story previews at the Dark Mischief blog!

That's it!
Play Nice. :)

Pewfell in "Drain of Chaos" is done!!!

The world's most irresponsible wizard, is about to face his greatest challenge yet... fatherhood!

His wife pregnant and his home collapsing, Pewfell takes a job with the city sewer patrol. But with a zombie-mad dictator running the government and a bloodthirsty army of chaos outside the gates, this may not be the best time to start a family.

Join our hero as he deals with dirty diapers, unreliable contractors, idiotic co-workers, and a diminutive blue lodger hell-bent on a career in musical theater...

Order now!

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10 years in the making, this is the fourth volume of Pewfell's adventures, complete and in print for the very first time. The story features over 500 individual strips, revised and expanded from it's original appearance as a webcomic on ModernTales.com. Presented in a large-format, deluxe hard-cover edition with160 full-color pages.

http://comics.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=92451