All posts by Will Beck

Fantasy, Illustrations, Sketchbook pages

Back to the PanzerfÀuste past

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Trow infantry sketches
Trow infantry ideas big fangs

Here are some more ideas for PanzerfĂ€uste that haven’t made it into miniature form (yet!). These are Trow, their equipment is based on the Swedish army of WWII. There is some Black Metal traditional Trow facepaint too.

I gave them big fangs after I sketched the whole double page and thought they were lacking something. Then I remembered my well-thumbed copy of Heroes for Wargames and a particular Asgard miniatures troll sculpted by ace sculptor Nick Bibby which I always liked. He had downward tusks/fangs; so I added them and they worked.

You can see him here if you’re interested: https://wheretheseapoursout.blogspot.com/2020/04/book-review-heroes-for-wargames-by.html and I think he’s available for US residents from here: https://thevikingforge.net/

PanzerfÀuste Trow infantry

And here is my final pencil drawing, after I’d asked whether or not Trow had tails (they do).

It was a large drawing; two A3 pages together. There’s loads of period-specific details with a Viking/Swedish/Troll twist. And the carved stone heads (top left)depict a famous Trow bard quartet.

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Concept art, Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

Colony 87 Report

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Colony 87 hover rickshaw and dino-beast
Colony 87 hover rickshaw

It’s been ages since I put anything online (I recently moved house which is very stressful). I’m working as a freelance concept artist for Crooked Dice Games and much of what I’ve created whilst in the game development phase is secret. However the beast in this illustration has been released as a miniature (sculpted by the talented Andrew May).

Colony 87 range – Pack Animal

Colony 87 jet bikes and beast riders

This creature (called a Sand Treader in the Colony 87 game) evolved from a sketch on these sketchbook pages from 2020 I drew for the Colony 87 project. (We’ve also got some Pale alien race ideas, my two bounty hunters on their jetbikes, a nomad on his domesticated giant bird, a Colony Police person on a jetbike, a wasteland scrap merchant on her dinosauroid, a raider type on his camel-lizard, some portraits of raiders, the hover-rickshaw and the beast that Karl at Crooked Dice liked, at the base some more colony cops on their bikes!)

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Life study

More life drawings.

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Life drawing in pastels on pastel paper,

No posts for the last few months as I’ve had to move town (from Huntingdon up to Newark-on-Trent) so I’ve had to leave my life drawing group of the last 25-ish years.

Farewell ‘Pencil Squeezers’ which eventually became part of The Buckden Life Drawing Group when Huntingdonshire Regional College got run down and sold off. I’ll miss the artistic discipline (an hour and three quarters of concentration – trying to capture what a living person looks like), followed by some lively chat down the pub with all my friends from the group. Many thanks to all the models over the years too.

To celebrate this time I’ve added some more recent drawings to this website, (not the most recent, I’ve yet to photograph them, I’ll tell you when that’s done). You can see them by clicking on ‘Figure Studies’ on the top.

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Concept art, Sketchbook pages

More PanzerfÀuste Mountain Trolls!

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Mountain Troll Commander

Here’s some more colour sketches of PanzerfĂ€uste Mountain Trolls. We have a Commander with a badge of a Iku-Turso or Tursas on his wool hat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iku-Turso_(creature)

Mountain Troll Lotta SvÀrd and Shaman

Next we have a Lotta SvÀrd (Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotta_Sv%C3%A4rd) and a Shaman with his ceremonial drum with a Troll rune pattern.

Mountrain Troll (Vuoritroll) Command

And here is the final miniatures concept page. The Lotta SvĂ€rd’s sword is loosely based on a famous Finnish iron age sword belonging to a noble woman. I invented all the runes at the top too! I really enjoyed drawing these three, I’d hoped to see them in 3D form some time but that wasn’t to be.

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Fantasy, Sketchbook pages

PanzerfÀuste Mountain Troll Anti-tank Team

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Here are some more sketches of unsculpted PanzerfĂ€uste Miniatures – These were Vuoritroll (based on the Finnish fighters of WWII) anti tank-team with their traditional weapons for taking out armour – logs and fuel drum molotov cocktails.

Various historo-fantasy games including PanzerfÀuste can be found here:

https://orcsinthewebbe.co.uk/

And Steve Blease, PanzerfÀuste mastermind, owner of Wessex Games can be found here:

http://www.wessexgames.co.uk/

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Comic art

Happy New Year!

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Fantasy Christmas Comic page 8
Fantasy Christmas Comic page 8

Happy New Year everyone who takes a look at this website! There has not been any activity here for ages, that doesn’t mean I’ve not been working. A lot of my creation is concept art for Crooked Dice Games’ Colony 87 game which is still in its early days.

Though I did finish the next page of my Fantasy Christmas Comic. Here, the adventurers who acquired miss-sold magic items have followed the creator of these objects; a Liche Zann-Tarr the Undying, to his mountain lair in the far North. They defeated his Moon Troll and his undead minions and are chasing him as he flees.

This was created from a physical pencil layout, scanned in and inked, coloured and lettered in Clip Studio.

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Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

To Colony 87 and beyond!

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I’m still working on Colony 87 but much of it is top secret. Occasionally I find a sketch or concept drawing that has been sculpted (this time by the talented sculptor Andrew May) and released.

This page contains four new characters; a woman who repairs robots, often cobbling them together to sell, the itinerant lawyer helping the poor, a sinister alien artefact trader and a lone, aged colonist unable to walk but who drives around the market on his custom kart.

Colony 87 Market characters

You can purchase them here:

Colony 87 range – Bot Trader

Colony 87 range – Sci-fi Market Folk

Colony 87 range – Artefact Trader

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Concept art, Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

Colony 87 Bounty Hunters

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Late last year Karl from Crooked Dice asked me to draw concepts for a pair of Colony 87 Bounty Hunters that were reminiscent of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote

Above are my initial sketchbook pages; the Don Quixote character would be an aging but still tough bounty hunter and the Sancho Panza equivalent would belong to the Colony 87 squat humanoid race. (Though there’s an Insectoid Alien option here which Karl felt was a bit too monstrous!)

This page is where I refine the Don Quixote look, though I wasn’t quite sure about Sancho Panza and wanted to define the alien/human variant race more.

The pages show me inventing the high-grav worlder bounty hunter and his gear. The ‘Wheel Ships’ I imagined they travel in are built around a super-dense fragment of one of their worlds. I’m adding various high-tech elements to his gear and seeing what works.

You can see more on my Facebook page of the final images – https://www.facebook.com/Will-Beck-Illustration-911094838907212

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Concept art, Fantasy

PanzerfÀuste Winter War Part 4

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I didn’t post anything last month so I’ll make up for that with a few more in May. Here’s another miniatures concept that never made it into 3D.

Another Winter War troll, this time a specialist sniper for the mountain trolls. He’s a rare White Troll, slightly larger and more rotund than your average troll!

As I’ve done before you can see my original sketch on my Facebook page.

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Concept art, Fantasy

PanzerfÀuste Winter War Part 3

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Here are the command units for the Soviet Dark Elves, all have an element of dark elf styling: A senior officer in winter greatcoat and papakha hat, an infantry officer, two KhĂŽven Gralska Baba witches, an army doctor, an assassin (sniper), a remote observer witch, another witch with a sickle, a younger Dark Elf signaller and a Vodka Seller with a Cossack hat and hairstyle.

As before, my sketchbook pages can be seen on my Facebook page.

Related Images:

Dregs Beastkin Dragoons Dregs Wrecking Crew Colony 87 Prospector and surveyor drone Colony 87 Scrap Finder and Scaley Beast Mountain Troll Command Mountain Troll Sniper - The Ice Death Colony 87 Spaceship Breaker family - mother, son