Pathfinder Kaiju

Last summer, I was asked to design 3 kaiju for the game Pathfinder. Kaiju is a Japanese word for "strange creature" but has come to be known in english as "monster", usually of the gigantic variety. Godzilla is probably the best-known example of a kaiju, but he's far from the only one.

I was asked to illustrate 3 fairly archetypal kaiju for the Pathfinder Bestiary 4 book: a large, reptilian kaiju, a flying, dinosaur-like kaiju and an "insect" monster. The well-known Japanese film equivalents to these archetypes will probably be familiar to just about anyone reading this blog. Because these kaiju were somewhat archetypal, I couldn't go crazy and create really wild, exotic monsters. Nevertheless, I had some freedom to play and I had a good time with these illustrations, especially the insect/crustacean kaiju, which ended up being my favorite.

The illustrations were to be text-wrapped so they don't have backgrounds. At some point, I'd love to revisit this subject and paint a full-fledged scene of a kaiju wreaking havoc and causing destruction!

I've included both the final art and the preliminary drawings. In some ways, I prefer the clean simplicity of the latter.

The Kaiju images are copyright © Paizo Publishing. 

Establish a Temple

I painted this scene for a card in the D&D game expansion Lords of Waterdeep: Scoundrels of Skullport. It's a subterranean temple. If you look closely, you'll see a few workers who are still building it, hence the title "Establish a Temple".

This piece presented some lighting challenges since it's a subterranean scene. It needed to read well but still look like it was underground. I ended up backlighting the temple and using a muted ambient light from an unclear source, punctuated by some torchlights. 

I had a good time designing the temple and overall, I was very pleased with the final painting.

Eye of Thkaalujin

I did these 3 illustrations for Dragon magazine #428 last Fall. The first is titled Eye of Thkaalujin and, as an experiment, was painted almost entirely using square-shaped brushes. I wanted to loosen up a little and that helped me do it. The composition was a bit of a challenge too as I needed to show the titular eye in both the book the wizard character is holding and also on his forehead. The eye is actually a curse. Once the wizard opened the book, the curse/spell was activated and the eye manifested on his forehead!

The two spot illustrations were great fun. The Krylanthian Cloak is a cloak made of exotic frog skins and the Bone Scepter of Zceryll is a magical item that, as you can see, appears to be made of a vast, cosmic realms of space.

Keepers of Grimoire logo

Last summer, I had the opportunity to do some illustration and design work for Keepers of Grimoire, a new fantasy game currently being created by Orca Bear Studios. Perhaps the most important aspect of the assignment was to create the logo for the game. It was a challenge I relished since I did that sort of design work all the time earlier in my career.

I was very pleased with the results (as were the folks at Orca Bear, which is what really counts) and I may put together a "process" post about the logo in the near future. Meanwhile, here it is and I hope you like it!

You can learn more about Keepers of Grimoire at: http://www.keepersofgrimoire.com/

Elf in Doorway (Dragon #426)

This piece for Dragon Magazine #426 was a challenge! The art description called for the character to be "strongly backlit, but we can still pick out the details of his angular elf features, sheathed sword, leather armor". I may have made the whole thing more difficult by going with yellow backlighting, which is about as strong as it gets. However, it was an interesting challenge. In the first version I completed, the character was darker, more of a silhouette with some features visible. Art director Kate Irwin really helped me find a balance between that silhouette and the backlighting that worked to bring out the character but still met the original goals for the piece.

I've included a detail image so you can see some of work that went into this illustration a little better.

Artwork copyright © Wizards of the Coast. 

Art for Hex: Shards of Fate

Last year, I painted some cards for Cryptozoic Entertainment's new game Hex: Shards of Fate. I've already posted my favorite of the pieces I created for the game. You can see it here: http://www.jimnelsonart.blogspot.com/2013/09/rocket-ranger.html

For several reasons, I needed to keep my approach a little simpler and less detailed on these cards but Hopefully, I was still able to capture a little magic. The dwarves in the game lean toward the cartoony side (which I liked) and toward gray in color. Consequently, I used muted colors and punctuated them with stronger hues where possible. The images went through some color revisions at the end so the large fellow in green is actually wearing a muted red in the final art. I've posted two versions of one of the cards below so you can see how purples and greens were also shifted to red for the final art.

It's a fun challenge to try and simplify what you're doing while still coming up with something that is (hopefully) an effective image!

You can learn more about Hex at: http://hextcg.com/

The Robot Spot

This is just a reminder to visit The Robot Spot, my robot design page on Tumblr: http://robotspot.tumblr.com/

I update it regularly!