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Here she is: Piper the elf from jacket art for Escape from Netherworld—about a group of role-playing gamers who are somehow transformed into their characters and transported into an alternate realm: Netherworld.

My pal, the extraordinarily talented Gina Datres, is the book’s designer and she called me in to illustrate the jacket. After some discussion and rough sketches back & forth we hit on the idea of 3 individual images of the gamers going through their transformation. For the 2 guys, Twiggy and Borhai, I drew the gamers in pencil but fully rendered their characters in paint. I work with watercolor (gouache), so I traced some of the drawing with a wax candle. Since watercolor won’t stick to wax, you can see the drawing of the gamer ‘through’ the painting of the character. Piper, the elf-girl, doesn’t change in size enough to make that idea work so I made her hair a magical element that swirls around her as it grows.

If you’d like to buy a copy of Escape from Netherworld just click here.

Author: David Kuklis
Designer: Gina Datres
Illustrator: John Manders
Editor: Nan Newell
Published and Printed by:
Word Association Publishers
Tarentum, PA 15084
ISBN: 978 1 59571 994 2
Available for purchase:
wordassociation.com   —   1 800 827 7903
barnesandnoble.com
amazon.com

As usual, here are the rough sketches, tight sketches, color study and final painting.

More jacket art for Escape from Netherworld—it’s about a group of role-playing gamers who are somehow transformed into their characters and transported into an alternate realm: Netherworld. Yesterday I showed you Twiggy the dwarf. Here’s Borhai the warrior who starts out as a regular gaming guy named Dave.

My pal, the extraordinarily talented Gina Datres, is the book’s designer and she called me in to illustrate the jacket. After some discussion and rough sketches back & forth we hit on the idea of 3 individual images of the gamers going through their transformation. For the 2 guys, I drew the gamers in pencil but fully rendered their characters in paint. I work with watercolor (gouache), so I traced some of the drawing with a wax candle. Since watercolor won’t stick to wax, you can see the drawing of the gamer ‘through’ the painting of the character. Piper, the elf-girl, doesn’t change in size enough to make that idea work so I made her hair a magical element that swirls around her as it grows.

If you’d like to buy a copy of Escape from Netherworld just click here.

Author: David Kuklis
Designer: Gina Datres
Illustrator: John Manders
Editor: Nan Newell
Published and Printed by:
Word Association Publishers
Tarentum, PA 15084
ISBN: 978 1 59571 994 2
Available for purchase:
wordassociation.com   —   1 800 827 7903
barnesandnoble.com
amazon.com

As usual, here are the rough sketch, tight sketch, color study and final painting.

Escape From Netherworld jacket

Hey, gang! Sorry for the interruption in posts—I spent most of last week in New York City visiting art directors, editors and creative directors. Now I’m back and I want to show you something I worked on this summer.

Here is jacket art for Escape from Netherworld—it’s about a group of role-playing gamers who are somehow transformed into their characters and transported into an alternate realm: Netherworld.

My pal, the extraordinarily talented Gina Datres, is the book’s designer and she called me in to illustrate the jacket. After some discussion and rough sketches back & forth we hit on the idea of 3 individual images of the gamers going through their transformation. For the 2 guys, I drew the gamers in pencil but fully rendered their characters in paint. I work with watercolor (gouache), so I traced some of the drawing with a wax candle. Since watercolor won’t stick to wax, you can see the drawing of the gamer ‘through’ the painting of the character. Piper, the elf-girl, doesn’t change in size enough to make that idea work so I made her hair a magical element that swirls around her as it grows.

If you’d like to buy a copy of Escape from Netherworld just click here.

Author: David Kuklis
Designer: Gina Datres
Illustrator: John Manders
Editor: Nan Newell
Published and Printed by:
Word Association Publishers, Tarentum, PA 15084
ISBN: 978 1 59571 994 2
Available for purchase:
wordassociation.com   —   1 800 827 7903
barnesandnoble.com
amazon.com

Let’s start with Twiggy the dwarf. As usual, here are the rough sketches, tight sketches, color studies and final paintings.

On Wednesday, August 14, the world of the Dungeons & Dragons invaded the Columbus Museum of Art for our special event, The Sundering: Re-imagining the Forgotten Realms of Dungeons & Dragons.  Wizards of the Coast has brought together six bestselling fantasy authors to independently write a book that together will complete The Sundering, a series that re-imagines The Forgotten Realms. Three of the authors, R.A. Salvatore, Erin Evans, and Ed Greenwood, joined us for a panel discussion on this special evening to discuss the collaboration process as well as their past and future writing careers.

R.A. Salvatore kicked off the series with his recent release of The Companions. Erin Evans, one of the youngest authors on this project, will release the third book in the series on December 3, 2013. In contrast, Ed Greenwood the most seasoned writer and the creator of the Forgotten Realms setting has the task of ending the series.

The collaboration process was the hot topic of the evening. Having six authors write within the same world and using some of the same characters seems like it would be complicated, right? Not according to the authors themselves. If anything, they find it a fascinating process and an adventure to have to alter their original story a little because someone else had an amazing idea. Sitting in the audience and listening to them discuss their processes of storytelling was an inspiring experience. While all three authors had different processes, they all shared on commonality: they like to let their characters write the stories. R.A. Salvatore explained that when he sits down to write, he typically has an outline in the form of a fairly straight line. However, as he moves forward looking through the characters’ eyes, the line quickly develops branches and continues to grow until he has something that resembles a large tree. Both he and Erin Evans admitted that while they’re writing they get so caught up in the story that sometimes at the end, they realize one of their characters has actually been acting out of character. Rather than go back and fix it, they just think “what’s wrong with them?!” Salvatore told the audience that it took him a few novels once to figure out exactly what was wrong with one of his most beloved characters.

The evenings’ moderater and Creative Manager of Dungeons & Dragons, James Wyatt, kept conversation moving and allowed the audience to feel as if they were part of one of a group brainstorming session. It was extremely apparent that this amazing group of authors has a strong and loyal following of fans, as most fans couldn’t have been happier to wait over 2 hours to meet their favorite authors.

Thanks to everyone who attended this very special event! We hope to see you again!

For more information about future events at Thurber House, click here.

Inspired by his 12-year-old son’s advice, University of British Columbia psychologist Alan Kingstone used the beloved Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual in an experiment.

According to Discover’s Not Exactly Rocket Science blog, the psychologist was studying why people “automatically look where other people are looking,” trying to figure out if we automatically follow other people’s eyes or if we orient on the middle of people’s faces. The D & D monster manual offered a variety of images to test how we see. Check it out:

He thought it would be easy to discriminate between the two ideas: just use the Monster Manual. This book will be delightfully familiar to a certain brand of geek. It’s the Bible of fictional beasties that accompanied the popular dice-rolling role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. Regularly updated, it bursts with great visuals and bizarrely detailed accounts of unnatural history. It has differently coloured dragons, undead, beholders … Levy knew that the Manual contained many nightmarish monsters whose eyes are not on their faces. If people still looked at the eyes of these creatures, it would answer the question.

continued…

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