Colony 87 Rides Along

September 16, 2025 Will Beck Leave a comment

In case you thought this website wasn’t still active, don’t worry, it is! I’ve just been very busy working on various projects; particularly on illustrations for Colony 87.

On that subject I noticed on Facebook a couple of my concepts for jet-bikes have made it into miniature form. Here are the original concept drawings:

Colony 87 Bounty Hunter 1 on Jetbike.jpg

Colony 87 Bounty Hunter 1 on Jetbike – side and top views

Colony 87 Bounty Hunter 2 on Jetbike

They were for a homage to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza but in a science fiction setting and these were the jet bike versions of Rocinante and Sancho’s mule (which I think in the story didn’t have a name).

The Bounty Hunters you may have seen on their jet-bikes on these sketchbook pages: https://www.willbeck.com/artblog/2021/03/colony-87-rides-again/

Here are the jet bikes on Crooked Dice Games site:

Colony 87 range – Jet Bike 1

Colony 87 range – Jet Bike 2

Though if you wanted to re-create my concepts in miniature form then you’d have to do a bit of converting! Here are links to those as well:

Colony 87 range – Bounty Hunter

Colony 87 range – Squire Sanchos

Happy New Year! More Colony 87 too.

January 10, 2025 Will Beck Leave a comment

Colony 87 – Sketchbook Oct2022 Colony 87 Anti-grav rickshaw ideas

Happy New Year everyone who looks at my art and this blog! Here’s a miniature that has taken ages to get a sculpt, it’s based on various sketches of mine that go back a few years. I think it was Jon, the originator of the Colony 87 range of miniatures, who wanted an anti-gravity rickshaw, with the weight of the miniature on the beast. Above sketches are me working out how to achieve this with options for various drivers.

Sketchbook Oct2022 – Colony 87 Outland Farmers ideas

Above is some ideas for Outland farmers travelling into Vandestad to sell their produce or buy something for their farms. I’ve changed my eel-lion into a pet eel-cat for the female farmer to be looking after.

Sketchbook Oct2022 – Colony 87 Hover-rickshaw plan and Outland farmer

And here I’m refining the design, with a mini-fusion generator on the back fuelled by hydrogen-bricks powering the anti-grav generator on the underside of the cabin.

You can purchase one or just admire the sculpting and painting here:

Colony 87 range – Hover Rickshaw

Back to the Panzerfäuste past

July 12, 2024 Will Beck Leave a comment

Trow infantry ideas big fangs

Here are some more ideas for Panzerfäuste 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 that completed the look.

That Nick Bibby miniature is available now from Alternative Armies along with a load of Asgard miniatures: https://www.alternative-armies.com/collections/nick-bibby-asgard-miniatures/products/fm27v2-half-troll-chieftain-35mm-tall

I think he’s available for US residents from here: https://thevikingforge.net/

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.

Colony 87 Report

June 7, 2024 Will Beck Leave a comment

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 – Sandtreader

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!)

Related Images:

Life study

More life drawings.

June 4, 2024 Will Beck Leave a comment

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.

Related Images:

Concept art, Sketchbook pages

More Panzerfäuste Mountain Trolls!

January 24, 2024 Will Beck Leave a comment

Here’s some more colour sketches of Panzerfäuste 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)

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

And here is the final miniatures concept page. The Lotta Svärd’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.

Related Images:

Fantasy, Sketchbook pages

Panzerfäuste Mountain Troll Anti-tank Team

January 8, 2024 Will Beck Leave a comment

Here are some more sketches of unsculpted Panzerfäuste 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 Panzerfäuste can be found here:

https://orcsinthewebbe.co.uk/

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

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

Related Images:

Comic art

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2024 Will Beck Leave a comment

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 named 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.

Related Images:

Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

To Colony 87 and beyond!

June 20, 2023 Will Beck Leave a comment

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.