Yep, like I said, twice a month should be manageable. Okay, what have I actually been up to?
Well, let’s see. I did another study from an old issue of Afar magazine. I’ve had some rough artist’s block the last couple of days. Maybe another one of these would be in order.
After that, my timeline gets a little hazy— Point two in favor of not making a blog post cover several months of work, especially at a time where no longer having any remotely identifiable schedule is a pretty popular meme— but I’m pretty sure the next big project that I started was the Siren, one of the two main monsters from a Call of Cthulhu campaign I’ve been jotting down ideas for with no concrete plans to ever actually run. These vaguely mermaid-esque creatures dwell on a massive living island that retreated beneath the sea and was probably the inspiration for stories like that of Atlantis. They have powerful psychic abilities, and a cult has gotten a hold of the mummified remains of one and are using it to try and summon the Island so that they can become gods.
I think next came the skull-deer thingy. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going with this guy, but “a hooved animal like a deer or a horse, but with a human-like skull floating where its head should be” popped into my head one night, and I started exploring to see where the idea went from there. Eventually, it settled out into something with a strong arcane vibe, and now I’m picturing lore like… did anyone else read the Shades of Magic trilogy by V. E. Schwab? So, in the later books in the series, they introduce the concept of a magic spell that somehow outgrew its caster’s control and gained sentience and massive power. I kinda started to picture this guy as that concept, but applied to a spell like Find Familiar.
Once the Skull Deer Thingy was finished, I started sketching out what I thought was going to be another NPC for that Edge of the Empire campaign, but then a funny thing happened, and our previous campaign ended, and I decided that I really wanted to play this merchant-turned-Jedi in the new campaign that we were starting up. Much of this design pays homage to K’kruhk, a Jedi from the old canon who showed up in the Republic and Dark Times comics and Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars animated shorts (I think they somehow managed to make both of the times that General Grievous killed him and it didn’t stick canon) and then stuck around for another century to teach Jedi in my favorite series, Legacy. There are thumbnails for his master’s ghost, but she didn’t make the final cut.
Also, it wouldn’t be Star Wars without a Droid, and since no one was playing one (and we started with bonus money so I could actually afford one), I decided to provide the droid action. I figured he’d provide me with some bonuses to my skill checks, but I didn’t realize he would become the star of the campaign and spend more time whistling and beeping at my fellow players than I would talking to them in character.
Once these were done and we started up the new campaign, a couple of the other players approached me about illustrating their characters. Working on both together over the next couple weeks, I illustrated Jedha, the lightsaber-and-shield-wielding, Gila Monster-patterned Trandoshan, and Vellit Bo, the Togruta duelist. Vellit’s player suggested there would be some feedback and changes to be made to the art, but hasn’t supplied that so she’s temporarily finished until further notice.
