Art of Progression: Looking Back at My Earliest Published RPG Works

The other day I was thumbing through the Necromancer Games version of City State of the Invincible Overlord and thinking about the early d20 days and how much things have changed.  I know 3e doesn't get a lot of love in old school circles, but I have to admit that it is what sparked my interest in gaming again after a ten year hiatus.  Not only did it revive my interest in gaming, the d20 OGL really intrigued me and made me want to get involved somehow.  When I look back on what got me started as an active participant in gaming, I tend to give all the credit to my involvement as an artist for OSRIC 2.x.  While that is what really got me into the OSR, I actually participated as a published artist before then.  Starting in 2002, I did some illustration work for Khan's Press.  A small publisher with pdf only releases.  I only made $9 from my work, but it did get my foot in the door and I learned quite a bit in the process.  More importantly, that got me back into really drawing again after almost ten years of neglecting doing anything artistic.  When I look back at those pieces, I can see how much I've grown as an artist.  Most of the work is very crude.  While I'm nowhere near where I'd like to be artistically, it is gratifying to see some progression.  As I am working on the content for the second issue of Delve! of what I'm doing now is really a fruition of the things I was doing back then.  So here's a peek at where I "started".  You can be the judge on how far I've progressed.









Comments

  1. PorkyAugust 15, 2012 at 10:04 AM

    There's some good, weird stuff in there, and I love the tower concept. The focus and structure is so different to the more finished pieces I've seen recently that it's hard to compare. I'm a big fan of your fuller scenes and heavy inked style. Daisy's colouring is also good stuff - she manages to get a palette that's naturalistic but unsettlingly unnatural.

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  2. Gothridge ManorAugust 15, 2012 at 5:40 PM

    I was looking through that same book this weekend and saw the pictures and thought 'hmm that looks like Johnathan's ink droppings. Sure enough they were...are. Very cool Johnathan. How's #2 going. #2 Delve! Not #2.

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