Mystical Space Typhoon Alters

Play set of Mystical Space Typhoons I was have been asked to extend. They are almost done they will be left to dry for a bit now before I do the finishing touches. The most important thing for the person who asked for them was that they colour matched the image, luckily the blue is quite easy to make, as opposed to some purples I have had to deal with in the past.

Using the new Games Workshop Black on this project I like the way it needs minimal thinning to get a nice smooth result, this does mean you will need several layers, but thats generally a good thing when altering cards.

Also tempted to use washes to add a bit more colour variation, it is space after all, some red and green might  just be whats needed to make them pop.

Tempered Steel Deck Alter

A short time ago I was asked if I could alter someones entire deck, well 40 cards from It anyway (everything except basic lands), I have always intended to have a go at this but didn't expect it to be for someone else as the first attempt. 

It was an interesting experiment thats for sure and I am glad I got the opportunity to do it because now I have a much better idea of how long it takes to extend the art on an entire deck! The whole process became something of a production line with play-sets and cards that share similar colour pallets being worked on in groups.

I intend to gradually post the contents of the deck, maybe talk a little about each card, and at some point hopefully get to show the process of adding to the deck with any new alters that will be required as the decks owner adds new cards in. Maybe at some point he will want all the land extended as well :)

Tempered steel itself is quite strait forward as the boarders are relatively abstract, the hardest part being matching the green gradient background

Ogre Broadside Leadbelchers

The races in Warhammer fantasy never really held much appeal for me compared to 40K, sure there were elements of certain armies that I quite liked but never enough to start the game. 

Escalation leagues are excellent ways of getting into new games so when we started one for Fantasy I was stuck for a battalion to choose for quite some time. In the end I went for Ogres mainly because they seemed to be the easiest race in Fantasy to convert. 

One thing about the Ogres is that you can never have enough leadbelchers  and drawing on inspiration from my Tau army and parts from a Dwarf cannon kit these guys were born.

Relatively straightforward conversion aside from the arms which don't tend to have that much in the way of range in the standard kits. I also tend to extend the stomachs of my more important characters, standard bulls are a little on the thin side.

Blackwing GameMat

The most problematic thing about playmats is their size, at just over 2 sheets of A4 in width it makes it somewhat difficult to scan them. Usually I edit out the overlaps as best as possible but thought it would be interesting to mention them in this instance.

Also of interest is the fact that you can go a very long time with Yugioh cards without actually noticing all the details things like Honest being male and more relevant to this example the fact that a number of the BlackWings are guys in bird costumes.

As happens so often the design on the mat reflects the favourite monsters at that time of the person that asked for it to be done, which explains the Marshmelon, as it turned out he proved to be a quite good way of breaking the background up into four main segments.

The main element of the mat was the Black Rose Dragon and it was also the part that took the most design time, for quite some time I couldn't get the head to look quite as dragon like as I would have liked and it took a number of major redraws before i settled on the final version. I do like the way the final piece came out though especially the shading around the petals.

Transformers Game Mat

When the local hobby store started buying blank platmats, I figured hey why not give mat design a go?

Minimalist since I didn't really know what I was getting myself into and yet using far to much red its still probably one of my favourites and the one that started the whole thing.

While I haven't really had the chance to create a transformers mat since, I do have a digital one of Grimlock that I will probably show at some point, I've always felt this piece needs a companion to the left with Megatron on it, plus they would look sweet in two player games next to each other.

Yugioh Alters, 9 Card Mural

Created as a birthday present, the main thing I learned from this project was don't undercoat yugioh cards with spray acrylic paint, it's time consuming to mask up and the paint will crack under the weight of a pencil. It was also before I found a reliable way of transferring details onto cards so the time I had spent sketching out the design was somewhat wasted when I found I would have to redraw everything onto the cards freehand. I also didn't have any fine liners at this point with is a bit of a shame and it probably could do with more background details still as far as extensions go It's probably one of the largest your going to see :)

Anime Yugioh Alters