More Underhive sketchbook pages

These next pages are me working on the hulking Goliath ganger, followed by some early Outlander sketches. I was wondering which of the Spyrer classes to portray and also working on the Redemptionist Deacon, a deliberate homage to Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill Nemesis The Warlock’s arch-foe Torquemada (and his Terminators). (Wikipedia entry for Nemesis the Warlock)

Here’s how I took a self-portrait photo (on the left!) and used it as reference for the crazed mutant preacher who wanders the lower levels of the Underhive. I didn’t just paint over it, I like to draw from it rather than ‘tracing’.

On these pages I was considering a BioShock Big Daddy look for the Pit Slave image, there are some doodles of Necromunda scenery too. (Wikipedia entry for Big Daddy)

Some more outlander sketches and an entire Pit Slave gang, including a robo-gimp(I don’t want to know if this is a ‘thing’) a Ned Kelly axe head chap, various cyborgs and a creepy tech to repair them.

All of this is fan art. More very soon.

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Underhive sketchbook pages

As promised here are some more of my sketchbook pages. These are a selection of pages from my Necromunda Sketchbook from 2008 (it’s 120mm 148mm, so smaller than my usual A5 one). I really like to look at other people’s sketchbooks and the one’s I had of mine when I was at the Hysterical Games Stand at Salute this year really got visitors interested in the miniatures.

This got me thinking ‘What’s a project I got really into?’ Well there are a few ongoing ones but the Necromunda Underhive one was a real labour of love for me and as I’d scanned in the sketchbooks a while back I would just need to arrange them into the order I had drawn them and upload them here.

It’s no coincidence that Necromunda was a really popular game; it required just the box with its rules, plastic miniatures, multi-levelled plastic and cardboard buildings inside and was a fairly simple, easy to learn ruleset which encouraged campaign play as part of the game itself. (Wikipedia entry for Necromunda)

In fact it’s still going strong online and Games Workshop have very belatedly cottoned on to this by dipping their toes in the water with their Shadow War:Armageddon game.

I was asked by Major Gilbear (not his real name, he’s a character from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series (Wikipedia entry for Gaunt’s Ghosts) by to produce a banner for the Underhive forum website (this site is now defunct though YakTribe Gaming are still using many of these images. Yak Tribe gaming site)

These first eight pages depict my initial ideas for the Underhive Houses of Hive Primus on the Hive World of Necromunda. I looked at as much of the original artwork from White Dwarf magazine, the game itself, it’s precursor Confrontation, the miniatures for inspiration and also threw some of my own ideas into the mix.

More on this tomorrow!

All fan art and not intended to breach Games Workshop’s copyright.

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Fantasy Fight Foes

I’ve been really busy with a few commissions the last couple of months, mainly Hysterical Games’ PanzerfĂ€uste fantasy WW2 game (which is still ongoing) and a couple of others which I’ve finished but are yet to be announced officially.

So I thought I’d post something from my many sketches that I’ve scanned onto my computer and not posted before. I found these characterful creatures which were one of my possible foes for my Fantasy Fight picture back in 2008. I may well re-use these ideas in a future project as I quite like their distinct shapes.

Here’s my image which I designed on isometric paper as an exercise in a Diablo I and II style isometric perspective.

Isometric graphics in video games on Wikipedia

More sketches over the next few days.

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Mutant Slave and Dregs Wrecking Crew

An old sketch of an idea I had for a miniature conversion for Games Workshop’s Inquisitor (a 54mm scale game with about a dozen figures in total and an almost Role-playing game campaign) of the Fellowship of The Ring’s Cave Troll brilliantly sculpted by (I think) Michael Perry.
I thought he’d would make a good mutant slave with the addition of some tatty clothes, a control collar and mining laser so I scribbled him here.
As always this is fan art and not intended to infringe any copyright.

When Microworld Games commissioned me last year to design some trollish mutants to act as a wrecking crew for the Dregs faction and they wanted a huge brutish look with twin flamethrowers, chainsaws and piledrivers I remembered the old sketch and proceeded to sketch out some suitably thuggish-looking giant mutants. The sketches can be found on my Facebook page (click the logo to the right).

Microworld Games

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Happy New Year! Some Dregs Dragoons

Happy New Year everyone! My final concept designs for the beast-riding Beastkin.

I decided the beastmen wouldn’t ride actual horses but a future horse-like beast and I wanted to add an element of a bovine or caprine animal to it. Now, I had a photo on my computer of a strange (to me) animal which I found was called a Takin and its larger, more convex snout seemed perfect. Takin animal
Incidentally the beastman balancing on a horse to shoot is based on a photo of a WW1 german cavalryman.

Microworld Games

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Dregs Tank Hunter and Mobile Artillery

These are the final concept designs for the Tank Hunter tank and the Mobile Artillery tank (both based on the same chassis, vaguely WW2-inspired). I gave the tank hunter metal tusk-shapes to give it a brutal look and the artillery tank a load of spikes on the ‘dozer blade so they would look different at a glance on the tabletop whilst still retaining the spiky, ramshackle nature throughout the range.

Microworld Games

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Dregs Armoured Transport and more sketchbook pages

Some more of my work for Microworld Games, this time the Dregs’ armoured troop carrier. I imagined the Dregs would be like a tribe of warriors and this could be their mobile long-hut. This one was partly based on the AAV-7 amphibious APC which has a jutting front like a jaw (for travelling in water).

These next two pages are of my initial ideas for the Dregs’ Mobile Artillery Tank and Tank Hunter with lots of little beast-men riders as I thought they’d add to the noisy, boisterous nature of the army. On the opposite page are some early ideas for the Beastkin Dragoons, beastmen riding on horse-like beasts to war.

Again these haven’t gone into production yet, but if you’re interested do go and have a look at what has:
Microworld Games

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More PanzerfÀuste sketchbook pages

A couple more PanzerfÀuste sketchbook pages. Here are my initial sketches for Hauptmann Entwickler; an eccentric Dwarf inventor veteran. He wears a WW1-style German helmet with a perch for his Nachtsichtfrosch (a simple lick will temporarily give him enhanced night vision!). I gave him little automaton robot mines which would march towards the enemy.

And here he is sculpted by the talented Irek ZieliƄski.
Hysterical Games shop – Dwarves

And here are some early concepts for the Gnome Infantry and their Alpine troops. I was trying various beard shapes and some subtle more French moustaches rather than Germanic ones. Traditionally Gnomes in PanzerfĂ€uste don’t sport moustaches but I imagined some younger Gnomes might have typically French moustaches!

Here are the current sculpts on Hysterical Games’ website:
Hysterical Games – Gnomes

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Dregs tanks sketches and Main Battle Tank

This is another Miniatures Concept project that I was commissioned for earlier this year. It’s for a range of Science Fiction 6mm miniatures produced by Microworld Games for epic scale fights. I was to produce some concept drawings for the various units for the Dregs, the mutant beast-men. I was given a brief description and some images to start with so I based my initial sketches on these to get a flavour of the units.

This first image was of the Dreg’s Main Battle Tank. It had to look functional but also brutal so I had a look at British Chieftan tanks as they have a distinctive silhouette along with some other directions from the brief (including a G.I. Joe tank!). The spikes, trophies and extra armour were all added by the Beastkin Raiders themselves. I imagined them riding the tanks to battle, eager to leap off into the melee.

They’re not available yet, hopefully will be soon, here’s a link to the website:
Microworld Games
More images tomorrow.

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Some fairly recent sketchbook pages

As it’s well past Hallowe’en (and not yet Christmas) I thought I should update my website! So for the next few days I’ll upload some relatively unseen concept sketches. These first were done when I had just started working for Hysterical Games in 2014.
Hysterical Games website

They’re my early ideas for the Troglodytes, a fantasy race unique as far as I can tell to the PanzerfĂ€uste world. Eventually they evolved into a full miniature range which will be arriving in 2017. In ‘The Land’ (the world of PanzerfĂ€uste) they occupy the area equivalent to Poland in our world (between the lands of the belligerent Dwarves and Dark Elves) so their equipment is based on the Polish gear and weapons of the WW2 era. They are described as underground dwelling (hence the name), mainly covered in fur, hunched but not simian, with tails and short horns. They’re fairly grotesque really so I tried to imbue much of that but at the same time give them some nobility! They have a shamanic culture so I added little bone fetishes and jewelry to some of them.


And for the third sketchbook spread we have some early ideas for the Troglogyte footsoldiers, an unused War-Badger mount for the cavalry and the Troglodyte Brute – Wojtek the Bear.

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SF & Fantasy Art