Good vs Evil Star Wars Playmat

c'est ne pas une lune...

Ah puns within puns, art puns, Star Wars puns and even references to how many moons seem to appear in my mats, still as the first sentence points out its not a moon so clearly its time to look at another Star Wars mat!

Lets start by mentioning that I have gone with a photo of the mat rather than the usual scan this time for two reasons, firstly that it means I can have higher res images on the site so you can see more detail, the jaunty angle somewhat preventing the image from being reused plus just generally looking more professional. Secondly it allows me to talk about some of the special effects scanning tends to hide which I will talk about a bit more later.

This being the third Star Wars mat I have done means I am getting quite used to drawing Mr Vader and stormtroopers the rest of the cast were more tricky especially at such a small size but I let the shading and lighting effects do most of the work and am quite pleased with the results. Darth's outfit especially had to take into account the various light sources in play and I like the effects on his helmet both because of how it turned out and as it is somewhat of a callback to the first Star Wars mat. I think that maybe the small characters could have been a little bigger in hindsight, theres a bit of space in the triangle they inhabit that could have got a bit more use though increasing the size would have started to infringe on the fight scene so its tough to call.

I always like to try and get some sort of narrative into the design of the mats, when you only have one character to work with it tends to be a bit more difficult but thats not really an issue here where we have the main fight scene, the ships preparing for battle in the background, the trooper making an arrest and so on I wont describe them all here its always best to let the viewer create their own storys.

Finally lets talk about special effects, this image will be the first one where they are apparent but a number of the other mats I have already talked about use the this particular effect to some small degree and a number of them that I will talk about in coming weeks use them more heavily and take them further. I discovered due to the interaction between the mat material and the various products I was using to draw on it that I could create a sort of simple holographic/lithographic effect. From certain angles and under certain lighting conditions I could get details to appear and disappear, luckily one of the angles things are most visible is when you are sitting down with the mat in front of you on a table so most of the detail should be visible while your playing (though lights do effect the overall strength of the effect)

Here the effect it used on the stars in the background and to pick out hi-lights on the ships and that thing that isn't a moon but more importantly on the lightsabers to make them really pop. Its also used to a lesser extent on the characters eyes and Lela's gun has a really feint smoke effect, the question being who did she shoot?

An amusing story has us talking about the mat part way through production and realising it should have been lego Star Wars, a dramatically different layout probably, just because of arm length and body shape more than anything else but the moment it was said we all knew it would have been epic, everything should be logo'ised.

Perhaps for Star Wars mat four...

Boba Fet Game-Mat

I mentioned last time that a number of mats of late have tended towards the orange and this is where it started. 

After completing the first Star Wars mat I got asked if I could do something similar, except they only wanted Boba Fet on it. Initially I couldn't help thinking three Fets on one mat was a little overkill but with some discussion and a number of sketches we manage to figure out this three panel layout, all I had to do next was figure out what to do with the two side panels 

Ok, so the one on the left is not exactly historically accurate but the cool factor always trumps historical accuracy (it is written by the victors after all) and I guess thats what the expanded universe is for.  I would have quite liked to add more atmospheric effects but theres generally not much cloud cover on this particular desert planet.

We make up for it though on the right side where I get to go to town, well drawing a town. I do like drawing buildings and such like though I may have over done the level of detail, but then I wanted to try and tell a story with Fet overlooking the parked Falcon and its occupants heading into the city proper, even if they are stick figures at that size.

As it was the middle section appeared fully formed as the first piece of the puzzle before I had even thought about the other two images, having spent so much time looking at references for the first mat I could get most of the outline done from memory which was helpful as it meant I could start the design on the spot and the person who wanted the design could supply feedback.

I seem to have had to draw quite a lot of guns lately as well, hands are tricky things but with the amount I have had to draw lately I have definitely been improving, something I will probably talk about when we get to the Walking Dead mat.

Star Wars Game-Mat

We are jumping ahead a bit here to some things I have just completed, starting with my latest playmat.

This was definitely one of the trickier ones I have had to do for two main reasons firstly that the person who asked for it is a major Star Wars fan, to a point where he even had his own shop selling Star Wars stuff at one point. This meant I knew that things had to look right, attention to detail was going to be a major point in the design.

Secondly he wanted it dark, like really dark, thats actually more of a problem. The issue here is that while the black ink looks black on paper the material used to make the mats tends to absorb a lot of pigment meaning even the extra black pen i bought with something like this in mind tends to dry a bit grey. There was clearly no option then, i would have to cheat.

By which I mean try and fool the eye, which is why the background is two layers of blue with a layer of black sandwiched in between and a sprinkling of other hues to add depth here and there. Also why lord Vader is lit up as he is (we assume his lightsaber or other dark side force powers are just off screen)

All the messing around with lighting effects did give me the opportunity to avoid using outlines for the most part which was a nice change from the usual cartoon style art I tend to work with. The most difficult choice however was what colour to do the stormtrooper? From a purely lighting based standpoint he should have a much greater amount of green on him, on the other hand the white helmet is both iconic and something people expect. Sometimes when you are doing these projects you have to ask yourself what other people will say when they see the piece for the first time and I would prefer it to be wow thats cool rather than why is that trooper green?

These mats do use quite a lot of colour and rather unsurprisingly this particular one went through a vast quantity of black, also noteworthy is that while doing reserch the majority of images i found of Fet had him standing rigid looking forward or casually to the right, hardly very dynamic or fitting for someone who's ment to be this amazing bounty hunter.