An ongoing project by Blanca Martinez de Rituerto and Joe Sparrow.

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Monday 29 April 2013

Petal

Petals are tiny fey creatures who can sometimes prove problematic to adventurers (but rarely intentionally). They inhabit secluded areas in temperate forests, and their chief reaction to travelers of any sort is to sing to them. This would, it has to be said, be less of a problem if the magical voices of Petals didn't put the listener into a drowsy, peaceful sleep.

While this might seem at first mischievous, they consider it in fact an act of utter benevolence - is there any creature alive who doesn't deserve a little more rest in life? Afterwards, they tend to their slumbering "victims" by removing their amour (it can't be comfy to rest in all those silly metal plates!) and weaving them soft garments of leaves, which the hapless adventurers wake up in.

The description of the Petal is so sweet I can't hardly stand it. I struggle a lot with the details on these lately - I want to add lines to define things like the mouth, fingers, but it's hard to make them not jar against the airbrushy shading. I'm pleased with the colours, though.

- Joe

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Slok, Frogwarden


Slok is a PC I created for a comedic-themed campaign some friends of ours are running and is a masterpiece of planning because, despite being a bit of a joke, he covertly manages to be a) sort of a cool idea (for me, anyway) as well as b) possibly overpowered (pending on my reading up on a couple of rules).

He's the first druid I've ever rolled - for some reason I've never been much attracted to the class - and also my first half-orc. Druids are popularly considered overpowered through sheer versatility - their Wild Shape class ability allows them to transform into a host of different creatures which can be useful in many situations.

Slok's gimmick is that I'm using the Pack Lord archetype (actually for the Pathfinder series of games, which we've taken to playing lately) with him, which means rather than just choosing one animal companion (as is the druid's usual allocation) Slok gets to instead have a selection of lower-levelled animal companions (divided up between his druid levels, so at level 4 he can have 4 lvl 1 companions, 2 lvl 2 companions etc). I've accordingly given him four giant frogs as companions (he also has to forgo a domain). Archetypes are fun! You should check out pathfinder if you don't already know it.

The art was fun. Wanted to get it done quicker so went for a more flat, graphic style.

Sunday 14 April 2013

Asherati

The Asherati are a race of elfish creatures who live in societies beneath the sands of great deserts. Standing around the height of the average human they nevertheless appear strangely lithe in their gait, wearing fluid, skin-hugging outfits of tanned leather. Their minimal taste in armour is a result of their primary method of travel - they are capable of swimming easily through sand, or other very loose soil, to get from place to place.

I went for a sort of earth-themed-Zora look for this guy, as you can probably see by the nose and the eyes. Did you ever play Majora's Mask? The Zora swimming sections in that are incredibly fun, they got a great feel for the momentum of it. Maybe it's an unconscious coincidence but the chunky golden swords remind me of the big weapons Ganon has in OoT.

This one's a back-and-forth mix of Photoshop and Paint Tool Sai.

- Joe

Jammy Dodger and the Marmelooze


Sorry about the lack of updates. See the previous post for our excuses.

Also sorry about cheating, because this is my new character, rather than a creature. I just finished DMing Paizo's Path of Immortality set of adventures, which ended up with everyone dying (except for one who went mad with power and another person who got trapped in the Astral Plane). Some of the players enjoyed it to the point of wanting to DM there own campaign, which they said would be silly.

Well.

So my new character is Jammy Dodger, gnome alchemist/summoner. The Marmelooze is what happens when you make preserves from magical oranges. It would seem I like playing gnomes that probably shouldn't be adventuring.

Dis gonn be good though.

Dungeons & Drawings Update!

Hey! We haven't been uploading stuff very often for a while now, so I just wanted to make a quick post giving some kind of context for the change in pace, as well as revealing some future plans for the blog.

Blanca and I both do most of our paid work as freelance animators. Dungeons & Drawings has so far remained a pretty much non-profit creative vehicle for us - our circulation at the moment is pretty good but we ain't no Game Grumps, and we don't run ads, but we're pretty lucky in that our main method of making money still generally revolves around drawing pictures.

Being freelance just means we do work on an as-and-when basis, so a studio will hire us for X amount of days. This means that work comes along in bursts, and sometimes it can be pretty intense! For about the last month or two we've been on and off on a couple of pretty crazy jobs, including a music video that we should be able to post soon - and unfortunately our D&D output has suffered. We both feel kinda bad, but it's just a result of the ebbs and flows of being a gun-for-hire in the art world.

Anyway, enough excuses! Today, we're back on track with a couple of illustrations flyin' at ya straight outta Streatham. But also we're happy to announce a couple of Dungeons & Drawings convention appearances in the UK - firstly

COMIKET at Central St. Martins on Saturday 20th of April

Comiket is a Small Press expo that happens twice every year and features a bunch of amazing artists that make really amazing art and comics.

LONDON MCM EXPO at the Excel Centre on 25th- 26th of May

London MCM is the Big Cheese of British comic conventions. It fills out one whole side of the gigantic Excel Centre and is typically a massive, colourful, hot, sweaty nerdfest that lasts for two and a half days. We'll be there in the Comic Village on Saturday and Sunday! Come by and check us out! Supposedly Shinichiro Watanabe (of Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo fame) will be there?!?! Woah!

We'll be selling a selection of postcard prints and stickers at both of these. If you live in England come along, we'd love to meet you! Also Joe will be plugging his new comic, too.

Anyway, back to our regular scheduling. Thanks for sticking with us!

- Blanca & Joe