Luschek Illustration Blog

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Xerle Chapterhouse

The next HarnQuest will be printed this Tuesday with shipping beginning shortly after. This release has a nice variety of articles including Arathel Castle, Onden Keep, Ruins on the Silver Way, and Xerle Chapterhouse of the Checkered Shield (an expansion to the Dyrisa article).

I thought I would post about some of the work from Xerle.

"Xerle is a chapterhouse of the Order of the Checkered Shield. The order holds the manor from the Serekela (archbishop) of Kanday. Xerle is home to a commandery, or half-chapter, of five melana (knights) and 10 meken (common men-at-arms). The Xerle chapter is charged with patrolling the King’s Way."

First thing I do, after skimming the article of course, is to load the map into Google Sketchup and rough out a model of the complex. I do tend to get carried away on these models since it is kind of blast to do, but I am getting pretty fast and have a collection of components stored I can reuse. Sketchup has a cool animation feature which makes it very easy to do a quick fly around of the model.

The idea for the cover page image was to have the Larani soldiers gathering for the morning patrol. Of course "Chivalry, honor, and duty are characteristics of the Order of the Checkered Shield, a fighting order dedicated to the goddess Larani, the Shieldmaiden of the Worthy Cause", but that doesn't mean they are above stringing up some poor bastard in the woods to coax out some answers.
I did an image of the patrol questioning a suspect. At first drew him being strung up by the neck. I figured it was confusing and looks too much like they are administering frontier justice.

I changed it to the having him being painfully hoisted with his arms behind his back. Also, it's probably easier to answer questions this way than with a rope around your neck.
As the process is sometimes in flux, writing and art happening together. That with my desire to cram art into every orifice of the article resulted in me drawing an image that would not fit into the latest article. So, I had to squeeze that tree down a bit to fit the space.

Here is the final image with some color. Pretty sure this guy will talk.

I also did a fly around of the image of Onden Castle for your enjoyment.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Ilvir's Crib

A new reprint of Araka Kalai is about to be shipped to customers. It has been expanded and updated.
"Araka-Kalai is, according to legend and the doctrine of the Ilviran church, the dwelling of the god Ilvir. Located in the isolated Misyn region, the site’s dominant feature is a huge limestone sinkhole known as the Pit of Araka-Kalai. An ancient tower stands on a rocky island in the Pit, surrounded by a liquefied, fermenting sludge with a stench that puts to shame all other offensive smells."

Hopefully the above image looks like it is a stinky place. The plan was to use much of the old art, but this is such a cool site on Hârn I could not help myself- I ended up redoing most of the art. I did a sketch of the tower with a guide presenting the tower, but it looked a bit goofy and touristy. I decided for a view in the pit of some pilgrims carrying a ladder to the tower so they can enter the holy site. I did do a SketchUp model since the old article had some scale issues if you compared the art to the maps. The stout scaling would make the tower look too stubby. Here is a video walk-thru I did of the model.

We did an updated version of the cross section Eric Hotz did for the original article in 1987, but it ended up getting cut due to it not being "useful or accurate". Showing the cave complex in any realistic way would be very tough to do. I like the image anyway and was sad to see it go, so I thought I would post it here.

The other illustration that I was glad to tackle was a old one I had done for the Tave, an unique Ivashu. I did it over 12 years ago and was never very happy with it. A few obvious issues are that it is not long enough as per the description and the scene is more comical than frightening. It also needed to be colored and shown in a cave setting.

As this creature is an Ilvirian priest that turns into a snake (spoiler alert!) I wanted the face to have a bit more personality. I made the soldier look terrified and added a bit more action to the image.

Here is the final version colored.

Friday, December 19, 2014

KickStarting a Victory


Victory in Europe, Box Cover,oil on paper, Copyright © 2014, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

The new Columbia Games block game is coming out soon. After two years work and a very successful KickStarter run the game is finally at the printers. Having completed the art for almost 60 card and game pieces, the final thing was to paint a cover. It was originally going to be a weary solder after a battle. I had sketched a few out, one idea being a soldier after the D-Day invasion.

Instead Columbia wanted to go with a portrait of Churchill. The game had gone though multiple name changes through its development- Guts and Glory, K.I.S.S and finally Victory in Europe. As Churchill was famous for his V for Victory sign, I thought it would be cool to incorporate his fingers into the title of the game. Of course there are a lot of great photos of Churchill to reference. I used a few different photos to do the final drawing and then did inked up a final image.

I printed this out on 11x14 paper and coated the paper with amber shellack. I mounted it on a board and then did the painting in oil.
I wanted it to have a strong graphic, postery look, so I left the strong lines and occasionally had to paint them back to make a strong image. I wanted the image to look like a painting, so I used a lot of thick paint and loose application on most of the image. Of course there are not a lot of color images of Churchill so I used both a mirror and other portraits to get the colors I wanted.

The game will be shipped in a plan black box with a sleeve to fit over it. Taking cues from the the design I did for the back of the cards I thought the game box should look like a war machine with bolts and rivets.

Here is the final layout of the box showing the back and sides of the box. This also shows a few of the cards I did, many based on old photos and posters from the time, laid out on the back of the box.

Friday, November 28, 2014

Totally Green HârnQuest

Everyone has certain moments in their career that stand out as special: the first paying job, your first cover, and the chance to illustrate a gangrenous leg.

I recently got to cross that dream off my list. To top it all off I got to draw that leg being sawn off. The research I did for this was not something I did whilst snacking. Some nasty stuff. In this image are some medicines used, bandages, Hârnic healing herbs and a pot for cauterizing the stump. As much as I love this time period, I am so glad I was not born in the medieval times.
The last HârnQuest had a lot of fun images. I got to come up some cool new images and revisit a few old images for updating.
Sometimes my ideas get rejected and I have to rework or even redo. Not very often, but this one was a definite redo. A religious symbol for the Balm of Joy order which specializes in birthing babies suggested some sort of fertility symbol. My first attempt maybe was a bit "too literal". Enough said.
I thought I could do the same think in a more rustic and natural way with a simple twig bound into a fertility symbol. It gets the point across, is subtle and has a nice handmade look. So the one on the right made it into the article.

Daughters of St. Eaclid, Silver necklace

Daughters of St. Eaclid, Twig
Copyright © 2014, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

For the Misyn article I got to illustrate some of Hârns more freaky landscapes, specifically karst landscapes, or areas where the soluble stone are eroded and washed away.
There were some cool real-world places to use for inspiration.

This images show the beauty and the dangers of the area. Misyn is frequented by pilgrims on their way to visit holy sites. I added the arrow to point out a third and possibly unseen pilgrim who was not so lucky. His deadness is subtly illustrated by me via use of a skeleton.
I did a pen and ink, scanned the drawing in to Photoshop, I added some photo textures to get the thing started. I then selected the spires of stone, filled that with a fade of tones that I could then paint across to give a misty look. I erased the pen lines on the distant areas to help the front stand out (though I wish I had done a better job as some lines still show and flatten the image out too much).
The nice thing about working in photoshop is I can leave all the various objects on separate layers that can be reworked, colored, resized and moved around. I can select the individual layers and paint without affecting the other areas.

One of the original images from the old article was illustrated close to 30 years ago. The article was much smaller so the image was pretty generic. I always loved this image as it gave a realistic portrayal of the areas geology. I basically redrew the same shape and mood, but made it more specific and left room for color. I also did a lot of research into this type of landscape. Some very cool stuff.

I decided to introduce specific sites from the article, like the needles of Nyr, the pilgrims rock, and Hoag's Gullet.
Next I drew a pilgrims map. I decided it would be something sold at town to pilgrims for the trip. Medieval knowledge of geography, throw in less than trustworthy individuals looking to profit off the eager travelers. I figure these maps are going to be close to useless. It does seem useful, with indications of religious sites and possible dangers, even representing gargun attack areas.Nice looking map, though you may likely end up looking like the dead pilgrim in the image above.

Again, I do a pen and ink of the image, color the line work and lay it over a scan of real parchment. With a bit of push and pull, it looks like the lines were drawn right on the old leather sheet. I left off any text as I figure most are illiterate anyway. Kind of wished I had put this map in the hand of the skeleton, but I ran out of time.

I also illustrated the updated Jarin article.

Again, thoughts or questions on the art in the recent articles are welcome. If you don't yet own these articles, well, you should be ashamed of yourself!

Friday, September 5, 2014

Everything's Illuminated

Finally getting caught up after my time in Indianapolis at Gen Con- the largest gaming convention in the world. It is something to behold really- 60,000 or so folks descend upon the city for gaming, imagination and full-on nerd action- sometimes in outrageous costumes.

My goals for this convention, were to have an impressive booth for the Columbia Games and to have some nice looking, new products for sale. I feel it was a successful convention for us. Of those new products, (Orbaal and HârnWorld) we completely sold out. We definitely wanted to get a good intro product for introducing the 30 year old product to some a new crowd.
We also met a lot of Hârn fans and we are gathering a good list of people willing to help run games next year and at other Cons.

As we were publishing the new HârnWorld and HârnDex, I wanted to do some medieval manuscript images for the cover.

I have been trying to move the medieval art used in Hârn to a more accurate manuscript style for a world based on 12th -13th century Europe. I found an old manuscript image that I used as a template and built my covers on that adding Hârnic elements in the design.

The cover shows a creator of sorts mapping the Island. The medallion has the Hârnic script for the initials NRC for N. Robin Crosby.

Here is the initial sketch and test layout. I did a pencil drawing, inked it, used actual parchment and gold leaf textures to finish the final image in Photoshop.

For HârnDex I decided to keep a similar look, but wanted to show the beginning of an adventure.

For the back of both publications I wanted to do something based off the standard for the back covers of most of our publications.
Here is the typical look for a back cover, which as been around for at least 30 years.

Here is the new back cover strongly based of the above but with a manuscript style.

Both will be available for sale on the website soon. HârnWorld will be available in hard copy in the typical binder.
The Dex is over 150 pages and is available as a PDF download.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Orbaal Invasion

I have finished the art for upcoming Columbia Games kingdom release. Orbaal was a big project for me, lots of hairy, and fur wearing Viking types to draw. I had to draw and paint over 50 images for this one.
The kingdom article is a few weeks away from being published as it goes through final review and editing.

This image is for the front page of the kingdom. I decided to illustrate something of the struggle going on in that northern kingdom; an invading Ivinian attacking a Jarin warrior.

I thought I would post a few of the reference photos to show a bit of my process. Also I wanted to explain to any neighbors who may read this blog why I was posing like this in my yard last week while my wife took photos.

While the above image is full of rage and testosterone, - well, the reference photos are too.

The reference shots, while very helpful, are just part of the process for creating the final image. I had to outfit these guys with proper weapons and clothing, but I also had to make the guys in the final image not quite so handsome. I also had to remove my awesome van in the background and replace it with the rugged coast of Orbaal. There were ton of other photos for the hands and face to use for reference as well, as the pose required more action or a changes. I tend to assemble a reference in Photoshop, arranging various photos, then selecting various limbs, hinging them at the joints to move around like puppets until I get a pleasing arrangement.

Let me know what you think- I am more interested in your thoughts on the top image.

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Excessive Facial Hair and Carpel Tunnel Syndrome

I am very close to being finished with the next big Columbia Games Kingdom release- Orbaal. Should be completely done sometime in July.
My strict Catholic upbringing has instilled in me a constant need to demonstrate just how much I suffer for my art and hopefully will result in all of you feeling guilty about my crippled drawing hand.
Orbaal has been a bit more taxing due to all the hair, fur and gruff line work needed to illustrate 39 hairy Viking portraits.
Here is a sneak peak at a few of the characters which will be raping and pillaging their way across Hârn.

Above is the King of Orbaal.

The next illustration is based off of a fanon article, I tried my best to get the basic look of the guy.

We do try to look at work done on settlements by Hârn fans that may have posted articles online. I think I was pretty successful.
Just so you know, after typing out this blog post my fingers are a bit sore.