Page 1 of 1

Monster Gallery

PostPosted: Tue Nov 30, 2010 9:57 pm
by Chris Johnstone
Just some images for Spellwoven. I'm not in any way a professional illustrator but one of my goals for Spellwoven was to try and add enough illustrations for the game to feel a bit more 'solid' in terms of world and imagry.

Some of the scans need some tidying up, looking at them now. That will have to wait for another day though I'm afraid.

Cold-drake
Image

Fire-drake
Image

Winged dragon
Image

Sea Worm
Image

Hill troll
Image

Crag troll
Image

Cave troll
Image

Snow troll
Image

Mountain giant
Image

Boggle
Image

Bodach
Image

Bugbear
Image

High Guard of Skorn
Image

Warlock of Goragath
Image

Svart
Image


Gark
Image

Mountain orc
Image

Forest orc
Image

Shale orc
Image

Grey orc
Image

Hole orc
Image

Great orc
Image

Lyblac
Image

Shadow-wraith
Image

Witch-wight
Image

Barrow-wight
Image

Vampire
Image

Wraith-lord
Image

Re: Monster Gallery

PostPosted: Fri Dec 03, 2010 8:13 am
by Rob Lang
A veritable cornucopia! Keep it coming Chris!

Re: Monster Gallery

PostPosted: Fri Dec 03, 2010 9:38 am
by Groffa
I like them! They look far more professional than some of the other things I've seen, actually.

The barrow-wight gives me nice old-school vibes, just like the old covers.

I also like the shading on the shadow-wraith.

The monster called "Svart" caught my eye; did you name it at random, or was there a some other thought behind it?

Re: Monster Gallery

PostPosted: Mon Dec 06, 2010 5:32 pm
by Chris Johnstone
Thanks. I have an odd personal theory that illustrations (even bad ones) make a big difference to whether a free game ever gets played as opposed to just being read for ideas.

The Svart is an attempt to capture the Svart Alfar (literally, swart elf) in Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Garner of course based his notion of Svart Alfar on the svartalfr/dockalfr of Norse Myth (dark elves = dwarves) though he twisted the concept a bit to make the svart (black) and the dock (dark) separate races of dwarfish things (evil and good respectively).

The Lyblac are from Garner as well. The word means 'witchcraft, poisoning, crafts using potions' in Anglo Saxon. The idea (though it isn't clear from the illustration) is that Lyblac are half-way between something undead and something golem, they have elements of bone, scraps, armour, sticks and iron hung together and animated with witchcraft.

The Shadow-wraith is my own vague recollection of the shadow-wraith in the (now ancient) MacAdventure game Shadowgate. Ah, those were the days--when graphics were black and white, stationary, 2D and sometimes both inspired and inspiring.

I put a bit more effort into the player race illustrations () and think they worked a bit better. I'll add images as I produce them and will get into some landscape illos too eventually.

Chris