Really Old Old-school Artist: Austin Molloy (aka Austin Ó Maolaoid, AóM)

Many of you may notice that the art of today's featured artist Austin Molloy (1886–1961) bears a striking resemblance to illustration legend Harry Clarke. So it may come as no surprise that Molloy was friends with Clarke; they met at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (now named the National College of Art and Design) as students, then Molloy went on to teach there. Tell me the last image below doesn't reek of Harry Clarke.

Molloy (aka Austin Ó Maolaoid, AóM) had a pretty prolific career, serving An Gúm (The Scheme), a government initiative in Ireland started in 1925 to publish books in Irish, as his main client for many years. All the images below pre-date 1925, but many of them could have been done in the last 40 years by someone like Russ Nicholson (specifically the boy fighting the hound, or the Grummsh-looking mother-effer below it).

I can't remember exactly how I stumbled across his work, but I do know it was during a recent "Archive.org expedition" (what I call those times I sit front of the TV with my feet up, my laptop in my lap, and I just keep poking around Archive.org until I find something relevant-but-previously-undiscovered-by-me).

SO DIG THIS STUFF!!!

Really Old Old-School Artist: Dora Curtis

It's been a while since I've done one of these "Really Old Old-School Artist" posts, but it's also been a while since I stumbled across someone with whom I was unfamiliar. Like a few of the other artists I've featured here before, there is little on the Web about her (and her Wikipedia entry mentions only her participation in an anthropological/naturalist expedition, with no mention of her art at all, or even her dates of birth or death).

Luckily for us in the OSR community, the things we do have of Dora are here illustrations from the books The Lances of Lynnwood (by Charlotte M. Yonge), Stories of King Arthur and His Round Table (by Beatrice Clay), and Granny's Wonderful Chair (by Frances Brown). There is a version of Fairy Tales of the Arabian Nights (by T.H. Robinson) that includes Ms. Curtis's illustrations. While an illustrated version is available as an ebook, and the book itself is in the public domain, there is unfortunately no copy at Archive.org with the illustrations included (though there is a version with the illustrations stripped out). There is, however, an online version with low resolution versions of the images at kellscraft.com. I've found a physical copy for sale that's not terribly pricey, so I hope to be ordering that later today, and possibly posting images when I receive it in the post.

Okay, so let's get on with it. Here you go...

Fifty Fiends

One of the things I've been doing over the last couple of months, as I've had a spare few minutes here and there (between working on Kickstarter stuff, dealing with work stuff, and living up to family commitments), is draw some fiends.

Originally, the drawings were just things I had planned on piling up into the material that may (or may not) eventually become the Creature Compendium II. But having 50 lower planes natives in CC2 seemed a bit to weighted toward one type of creature (since my CC goal has always been a good mix of stuff that fits all types of adventures/campaigns), so my objective shifted a bit.

My new goal was to come up with 50. That's enough drawings to do that alliterative thing that I (and Stan Lee) seem to love so much, allowing me to name them as the "Fifty Fiends," with a potential (but-as-yet unconfirmed book... Fifty Fiends). Some are based on demons from historical sources (like Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal), and a couple are based on PD comic book images, but most are just of result of my placing pencil to paper and drawing until I was done.

I was originally planning on dual-statting them (as with the Creature Compendium. However, I realized how textually cumbersome that would become with the need to add resistances, immunities, psionics, etc. Instead, I'm planning on going with the basic B/X stat block, an additional stat block for immunities/resistances (e.g., damage from fire, ice, etc.), and a B/X psionics stat block. This does a couple of things that I like. First, it makes things pretty easy for Oe and 1e players to convert (e.g., I'm planning on including some info so Oe/1e players using first gen psionics can convert the psionic stats). Second, it helps keep things in line with any information that might be included in the Basic Atlas of the Planes (which itself may take years to finish).

So a week or two ago, I finished the drawings. Then, in those spare few minutes here and there over the last week or two, I've been naming them, assigning them a native plane (and planar layer, where appropriate), and noting who (or what) they serve (or their place in an existing planar hierarchy).

So to whet your appetite, here are all 50 illustrations compiled into a handy-dandy visual overview (that is roughly alphabetically by fiend name!

As a side note, if the book does publish, I am considering auctioning off all 50 original illustrations as a single folio.

Really Old Old-School Artist: René Bull

It's been quite a while since I've done one of these posts. But it's also been quite a while since I stumbled across a new artist that I felt like I wanted to cover. I'm not sure what had me looking through copies of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (well, actually I do, but I'd rather not say... yet), but I found an edition with which I was unfamiliar. This one features the art of British illustrator and photographer René Bull. I'll let you go to the Wikipedia link (just there) if you want the skinny on this Dublin-born son of a French mother and British father.

Bull's color work reminds of Edmund Dulac and Howard Pyle, in terms of tone and painting style. On the other hand, Bull's B&W work is, in a lot of ways, the overall "look" I had in my mind for the higher level mystics when I wrote the Basic Psionics Handbook. Particularly the image below that looks like the guy is floating on pillows.

Without further ado, here you go...

Expanding the Psionic Monster Mythos

In developing the monster section of the Basic Psionics Handbook, Welbo and I spent a lot of time thinking through which creatures would and would not be including in the monster section. There were a few factors that drove us in this regard:

1. All of the classic "iconic" psionic creatures must be included (and those that aren't OGL'ed must have the serial numbers filed off).

2. The opportunity should be seized to expand the influences of the area spanning the Middle to Far East.

3. Anything new that was added should feel consistent with Moldvay/Cook/Marsh.

ICONIC PSIONIC CREATURES
Though we have settled on the names "astral gith" and "limbo gith" for... well, the gith-you-know-whats, Welbo and I are still reworking a couple of the other names (e.g., last night it occurred to me it would be cool to nickname the tentacle-mouth thing we all know and love as the "thid", but no group editorial decision has approved this yet). Many others are already OGL (aboleth, brain mole, intellect devourer, neothelid, et al.), so it was just a matter of converting it while making sure it fell in line with the new system and the overall vibe of BX.

EXPANDING THE EASTERN INFLUENCE
We've done this both with iconic creatures and the addition of new ones. For example, the baku was re-imagined less as the elephantine creature with mixed psionic abilities, and made more like a wooly tapir that devours dreams (owing to its Chinese roots). There's also the addition of the aqlghoul, a Persian inspired ghul, that not only possesses the undead immunities, but is psionically immune as well (even though it can use psionic abilities).

MOLVAY/COOK/MARSH CONSISTENCY
If you've been following the development of this project for a while, then you're likely familiar with the story of the psionic rhino. This is likely the most BX of the creatures in the book (and why shouldn't it be, I worked directly with Steve Marsh develop the final entry). The section also sees the addition of a few more low level psionic creatures as well (including the albino toadstool and the hive-mite, as well as a conversion of the dromite—a humanoid race that feels very BX to me, even though it wasn't introduced until 3.5e). I've also created a psionic human-headed spider, the nightspinner. How has there been no iconic psionic spider before now? (BTW, this creature is going to be one of several bridges to the material I am developing for a tentative Basic Atlas of the Planes, which likely won't be finished until late next year).

Okay, to wrap this up, the illustrations are progressing, and I have only 5 spot illustrations left for the monster section, then about a dozen or so more to finish out the book. We could see the release of this by mid-October (fingers crossed).

More art you've probably already seen for the Basic Psionics Handbook...

This is stuff I've been posting to Google+, but I know some folks don't get around those parts much. Also, it's nice to see this as a collection like this; it starts to help you get a vibe for how the interior of the book will feel, and what it will contain.

Art you've already seen for the Basic Psionics Handbook

I've been too busy the past week to deal with a proper new blog post, and I'm tired of looking at the illustration from the last post, so I'm just posting a collection of the art I've been working on for the Basic Psionics Handbook. It's stuff that's all been posted previously (mostly to Google+), but I thought looking at it as a group would be nice (considering that I think front-to-back, the BSH will be one of my favorite NBD books to have illustrated so far).

Creature Compendium Now Available!!!

I was actually going to launch this on Monday. But since Lulu.com is having a 30% OFF sale through the weekend (through April 12 with code APRIL30), I decided to launch early so everyone could get in on the savings and not say on Monday they'd wished I'd release this on Friday.

Since I'm going to be deeply discounting the price of both the print and PDF versions of the book (plus the headache of trying to track Lulu orders), PDFs and print copies will need to be purchased separately. I will not be offering sales through the New Big Dragon storefront until after the NTRPGCon (mid-June).

The "retail" price for the print copy through Lulu.com is $10.65, but that's marked down by 25%, bringing the price to $7.99. On top of that, Lulu is giving 30% OFF with the code APRIL30.

The "retail" price of the PDF at RPGNow is $5.95, but is discounted 65% off bringing the price to $2!!!

PLEASE NOTE!!! Because I'm releasing this early, the PDF copy will not have digital bookmarks or internal hotlinks yet!!! I will provide an updated version on Monday with those features added.

That means you can get the print and PDF copies for less than 10 bucks total.
Seems like a helluva deal to me.

Buy the print copy at Lulu.com >>>

Buy the PDF copy at RPGNow.com >>>

1 more illustration down, 8 to go!

This is one of those illustrations for the Creature Compendium that I've putting putting off for a while. It's a re-do of a re-do. I think that's why I've been pushing this one off for so long. Then yesterday, while hanging at Starbucks and sipping my grandé nonfat 2 Splenda latte, I decided to abandon my original intention for the illustration and just sketch from scratch. Seems to have worked out pretty well. This leaves only 8 illustrations to finish before I feel like the book is pretty-close-to-complete. 7 of those will be easy/no-brainers. The eighth, well, it's actually a full page illustration that will feature 7 different monsters on the same page (the animal mummies).

BTW, if you want the stats for the creature in the illustration below(the carriage worm), or if you just want to see the original illustration (before the first re-do), you can find them here.

That leaves only 8 illustrations to finish before I feel like the book is pretty-close-to-complete. 7 of those will be easy/no-brainers. The eighth, well, it's actually a full page illustration that will feature 7 different monsters on the same page (the animal mummies).

New Illustration: Linnorm (for Creature Compendium)

I usually don't have the patience for full-page illustrations. But in working on pagination for the Creature Compendium, I knew I really needed a full-page illustration for the linnorm.

The stats for my version of the linnorm (and its variations) will actually appear first in Dragon Horde Zine #2, but will be accompanied by a vintage public domain illustration (which is the vibe I like to give the DHZ when I can).

Since I'm trying to do all the illustrations for the Creature Compendium myself, I knew I'd have to undertake this at some point. The other day, I made myself a list of the illustrations that had yet to be done, and this begged for me to do it first. So...
here 'tis.