Zodar

February 14, 2013, 4:57 am

Beedle had been ready to run the moment he saw it move. Seasoned treasure-hunter or no, a gnome is wise to observe discretion over valour when, in the act of raiding some dead god's temple, he sees what appears to be a broad statue of bolted black metal shift its weight and come alive! Legging it out of the temple with a small sack-full of gold, he nevertheless considered the day well-spent.

It was the following night that he realised things would not go so smoothly. Awoken by an odd sound on the wind, he peered from his tent to note - with horror - that the statue had followed him! Rather than attacking him it simply stood, observing him with an unfaltering gaze.

At first, Beedle had made the obvious assumption that it was some avenging demon, set in place by its masters to protect their treasure. But the thing did not seem the least bit interested in the gold. It seemed rather to simply appreciate his company, and it followed him wherever he went. Whatever it was, it certainly had the gnomish spirit of adventure! It wasn't the slightest bit afraid of trespassing in ancient tombs and temples. And it was handy in a fight, too - the thing could pop a goblin's head off like a corked bottle!

The hat and cape were Beedle's idea, but he had a feeling the golem didn't mind. This would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Zodars are pretty cool! A construct of unknown origin (no cop-out "a-wizard-made-it" backstory here; it's completely open), basically a shell of black metal filled with weird muscle-goo that can puff up to become strength 50 for a turn. For a medium-sized humanoid this is pretty crazy - but the interesting stuff is in the additional details.

Firstly, Zodars are actually capable of altering reality with a Wish spell once per year (although, the book tells us, they rarely deign to do so). Also, despite not having an intelligence score, they are capable of speech, although a Zodar is not likely to speak more than a sentence in a human's lifetime. And get this - when they do speak, every creature that hears it understands it regardless of what languages they know. Weird, huh? Also the armour Zodars are clad in is presumably some mysterious dimension X material because they are literally invulnerable to all damage except by bludgeoning weapons.

They sound sort of eccentric, too - apparently they occasionally travel around with adventuring groups on an enigmatic whim. The book sets it up that they're moved to do so by strange profound force but I like the idea that they just find adventuring fun.

SHINY BLACK THINGS AGAIN WOO HOO

- Joe

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Zaratan

February 17, 2013, 9:53 am

≫ Next: Fire Bat

≪ Previous: Zodar

The Zaratan is an almost-legendary creature of the sea. There are islands that people get stranded on, but the island moves. It moves so slowly that the people on it don't realize that they're on a turtle instead of on land. This animal, while large and potentially dangerous, is also slow and lazy. It prefers to float on the surface of the water with its mouth open, letting fish fly into its gullet. The creature can't be actively directed like a ship or horse, but a musician may play certain songs that excite the giant turtle out of its ordinary stupor. It's uncertain whether these turtles are their own species or ordinary turtles who have grown over millenia. No young ones have ever been found.

The beast-landmass is a very well-trod trope in stories. It's usually a combination of the size and slowness of the creature. A titan, whale, giant turtle or other creature will be asleep for long enough (or simply slow enough) for vegetation to begin growing on its body. People unsuspectingly walk on or even inhabit the island before they realize they're on a living creature.

This trope first appears in the legends and folktales of ancient sea-faring cultures. Today, you can see this played out in the Discworld book series, Pokémon, Shadow of the Colossus, Avatar the Last Airbender and probably a ton of other entertainment. The Zaratan itself appears in Jose Luis Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings.

--Blanca

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Fire Bat

February 23, 2013, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Immoth

≪ Previous: Zaratan

The only thing worse that getting a bat stuck in your hair is when said bat is on fire. If you're familiar with the Zelda series, you know how annoying a fire bat can get.

Like the Salamander, Rast and Efreet, the Fire Bat is a creature native to the Elemental Plane of Fire. They normally appear as winged bitey fireballs and reveal their more bat-like nature when their fire is extinguished (normally on death). At first you might think that the Fire Bat is your pretty standard fire-based creature. If it touches you, it burns, capable of setting things on fire, etc... But it also has a pretty interesting ability.

These fellas are voracious flesh eaters. Their strategy is to bite someone, keep their teeth in until they've eaten their fill and then fly away. However, where a fire bat gets full, it has a change to split into two fire bats. Both of which are hungry.

Just carry a bucket of water with you. They don't like water.

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Immoth

February 26, 2013, 6:23 am

≫ Next: Skirr

≪ Previous: Fire Bat

Immoths are large elementals of ice, making their home in the coldest parts of the material plane. Their dense flesh makes them difficult to damage and their bodies are encrusted with magic runes, whose powers they are able to unleash at will. It is said that Immoths inscribe these runes themselves as they travel from place to place. They are famously curious, possessing a deep hunger for information of all kinds, and barter (and some times fight) to obtain it. There is a legend that Immoths are recipients of some ancient information-gathering curse, forcing them to compulsively travel and learn. If this is true, it is thought the magic runes on their bodies started as a way to remember things.

This week's monsters are a kind of new idea - Blanca and I both chose monsters for each other to illustrate, and we didn't look at any existing images of our creatures. I think it helped me think outside the box a little more, so we're thinking of trying it again. Anyway, enjoy!

- Joe

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Skirr

March 3, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Porcupine Cactus

≪ Previous: Immoth

Skirr are massive undead flying creatures. The appear as vaguely humanoid avian creatures with long-toothed bull heads, often covered in funeral wrappings, like a mummy would. The question is what are these creatures? Who mummified them? Why would they do that? Are they an ancient intelligent race? Demons? Corporeal gods? A physical manifestation of evil?

Whatever they were, the evidence is long gone. Now they're animal-like monsters, crawling from their ancient tombs and flying in vast empty places where someone might be stranded. They swoop down on their unfortunate victim and snatch them up in their talons. They fly up as high as they can then let the victim drop...

Joe picked this monster for me to draw this week. It might be something we do to challenge the other person to step out of their comfort zone. Normally I don't go for skeletons. I can draw skulls okay, but the complicated-ness of the rest of the bone structure muddles my head up some. But I'm quite happy with the way the bones in this look, especially the rib cage, especially considering the extra weird-shaped bones that birds have.

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Porcupine Cactus

March 10, 2013, 2:36 pm

≫ Next: Zeuglodon

≪ Previous: Skirr

Standing in its ripened state no higher than a halfling, the Porcupine Cactus is so called for its bizarre method of seed dispersion. Rather than relying on its fruit to be digested, rainwater instead causes it to swell to an enormous size, whereupon any disturbance of the plant will result in its body rupturing, sowing the thornlike seeds in all directions. The Porcupine Cactus' detonation also serves a more greusome purpose - should the source of the disturbance be another creature, the volley of thorns may kill it, providing a fresh source of nutrients for the next generation.

This is another "blind" pick - Blanca chose the creature, then gave me nothing more than the text description, with the name blacked out. It's fun! I think I'd have probably gone for something more deliberately cactus-like if I'd known, which might have been a bit predictable. Its face - well, the eye, anyway - is part artistic flourish (ie I just like the way it looks) and part a response to the fact that the plant apparently possesses Low-light Vision. I know this is probably more a representation of the plant's ability to "sense" things around it but I just liked the idea that it would have a big eyeball. WELP

My posts have been pretty few and far between lately. I'm fairly busy! I promise I'll get back into the swing of things, though.

ALSO you can drop by the MCM Anime Expo in Birmingham next week and see Blanca and I! I'll be hawking my lame comics, too. Look for us in the Comic Village!

- Joe

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Zeuglodon

March 15, 2013, 2:59 am

≫ Next: Semnurv

≪ Previous: Porcupine Cactus

A Zeuglodon is a giant marine creature with a great crocodile-like maw and long-flexible body. Despite its vaguely reptilian shape, the Zeuglodon is a real-life ancestor of the whale. Like many whales, these fellas can be found primarily in cold waters. Despite their impressive teeth, the tail of the Zeuglodon is especially dangerous, being used to stun prey and break apart ships.

You know what I find tolerable? Model-building. You know what I find incredibly frustrating? Photography. The raft of the model was especially fun to make, which is made from various sticks from around where I live. I decided to do this to challenge myself with some different materials, and was a good deal inspired by the model-work of my friend Grethe Bentsen.

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Semnurv

March 24, 2013, 4:19 am

≫ Next: Carcass Eater

≪ Previous: Zeuglodon

Semnurvs are intelligent magical beasts who fiercely serve as champions for goodness and law. They have the appearance of a large dog with enormous, colourful wings in place of forepaws, using them to swoop down on enemies from great heights.

Semnurvs (or Simurghs), far from their rather... furaffinity.net interpretation in D&D, are actually a genuine mythical creature from iranian folklore, which makes sense as they fit into the whole "winged mammals" thing that you get quite a lot in the middle east (sphinxes, lamassus etc). Persian myth, as with every other moderately obscure folkloric tradition, has some pretty interesting nuggets in there if you're prepared to look!

Fairly quick one this week, as I still have another to catch up on to bring me up to date. I used a combination of Paint Tool Sai and Photoshop. The first time I used a tablet to draw was using the old Painter Classic when I was a kid, and Sai's a similar sort of thing. Even though paint programs like that are obviously never going to be quite as charming as the real life painting they're trying to emulate, the physical feel of the colour is still really fun. It's nice how colour mixes and drags in ways that you don't get in photoshop. I want to be able to do more sophisticated painting in the program but I started off with something pretty basic and graphic.

We were busy at last weekend's Birmingham MCM Expo and we're gearing up to exhibit at the main London MCM this May! Dungeons & Drawings are working on some big things right now, so if you're in London or even in England at all, do consider dropping by, we'd love to say hi.

- Joe

PS his head is modeled off a Borzoi, which I think is a particularly awesome-looking breed of dog.

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Carcass Eater

March 25, 2013, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Dungeons & Drawings Update!

≪ Previous: Semnurv

The Carcass Eater is a small animal a rat and a hound. As an animal whose main diet is comprised of carrion, its common haunts are graveyards, battlegrounds, abbatoirs and any other sort of place that would be home to heaps of rotting flesh. The Carcass Eater has a sharp sense of smell and can detect the smallest drop of blood, the scent of which drives it into a shark-like feeding frenzy. Its jaws are especially big, useful for tearing hunks of meat and breaking bones.

This was a blind image, given to me by Joe. I was kinda panicky when he gave it to me when I saw that it was an animal type creature. Animals tend to be, well, actual real creatures that either exist or have existed in the past; creatures of little intelligence and no magical ability. Sometimes there's bigger than usual. I was worried that he'd given me an actual animal and was worried that I was going to represent a real creature in a way that didn't represent it in reality. Which may have been interesting, now that I think about it, like how giraffes were drawn when the description was "camel-like creature with leopard spots".

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Dungeons & Drawings Update!

April 14, 2013, 5:42 am

≫ Next: Jammy Dodger and the Marmelooze

≪ Previous: Carcass Eater

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

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Jammy Dodger and the Marmelooze

April 14, 2013, 12:16 pm

≫ Next: Asherati

≪ Previous: Dungeons & Drawings Update!

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.

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Asherati

April 14, 2013, 12:26 pm

≫ Next: Slok, Frogwarden

≪ Previous: Jammy Dodger and the Marmelooze

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

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Slok, Frogwarden

April 23, 2013, 3:35 pm

≫ Next: Petal

≪ Previous: Asherati

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.

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Petal

April 29, 2013, 12:19 am

≫ Next: Gray Dwarves (Duergar)

≪ Previous: Slok, Frogwarden

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

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Gray Dwarves (Duergar)

May 4, 2013, 4:53 am

≫ Next: Dretch

≪ Previous: Petal

Like the drow, the duergar are a cold-hearted subterranean race of dark-skinned humanoids. Unlike the drow, they put on no airs of aristocratic refinement, despite thinking they're better than anybody else.

Duergar are deep believers that life is nothing but thankless, painful work, as the doctrines Laduguer state. The priests of their religion go through agonizing torture in order to prove themselves worthy. The rest of them are all craftsmen, creating beautiful treasure after treasure. However, they don't seem to indulge very much in them. The dress of the duergar is drab, without embellishment, while their works are locked away in deep trap-filled vaults. Life is work, not pleasure, even if it's the pleasure of artistic accomplishment.

Duergar also have a fascinating origin myth. Laduguer created the grey dwarves and taught them to work. And they did. But there was one dwarf, the Lone Craftsman, who would hide away from deific eyes and commit blasphemies: he created life. The Lone Craftsman made all the other races of the world and when Laduguer found out, he cursed him, transforming him into the first derro, another subterranan race made up of psychotic small man incapable of creation due to their small attention spans. So the Duergar see all other races as abominations and insults against their god. They especially hate other dwarves, seeing them as the Lone Craftsman's ultimate heresy. The only race they almost respect are gnomes, since they're almost as single-minded in their craftsmanship as the duergar.

They're tough to fight as well, with innate size-changing and invisibility abilities. I bet a good many adventurer has been smashed by an underground giant not realizing that they were fighting a dwarf.

There need to be more lady dwarves. Also, the lady dwarves need to be as hirsute as their male counterparts.

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Dretch

May 7, 2013, 12:22 am

≫ Next: Nashrou

≪ Previous: Gray Dwarves (Duergar)

Among the demonic hordes of the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, the Dretch is undoubtedly the most pitiful. Small, stinking, blubbery midgets, they are only barely intelligent enough to comprehend speech and cannot approximate it themselves - instead relying on a crude form of telepathy. Which is not to deny that Dretches are cruel, monstrous creatures who seek out murder and destruction for the sheer joy of it; merely that where there is a Dretch, there is also most likely a more powerful demon somewhere behind, goading it into action.

I finally bought a cintiq last week! This makes two entries so far made using a cintiq on this blog - this one and the Rogue Eidolon (which I made at a place where I was working last year). They both have a kind of painterly look, which is something the cintiq helps with. This guy was fun to draw, especially the graphic, simian face. I tried to get a balance between him looking scary/silly, it's a balance I like to straddle. What do you think?

- Joe

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Nashrou

May 8, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Cursed Cold One (Gelun)

≪ Previous: Dretch

Nashrou are among the many animalian predators that are scattered about the Abyss. Their intelligence is comparable to wolves, as are their pack hierarchy. They're rarely alone, but a solitary nashrou could be a good or bad thing. Good may mean that it's been separated. Or it could mean that they're a scout and the rest of the pack is shortly behind them.

Though fierce, these creatures have a big flaw: they're extremely vulnerable to specific hit. You hit one in an especially vulnerable point (i.e. score a critical hit) and you've got a pretty good chance of killing one instantaneously.

This was a blind monster (name and image blacked out) given to me by Joe. I'm pretty pleased that the image looks nothing like what's in the book, though I do regret that the one has a way more interesting body in an abstact geometry kind of way.

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Cursed Cold One (Gelun)

May 12, 2013, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: Centaur

≪ Previous: Nashrou

The Cursed Cold Ones may once have been humans. Once. Now they're translucent humanoid creatures entirely dependant on heat. Any temperature below searing hot causes them to freeze into a block of ice and enter an agonizing state of hibernation.

To counter this, they live primarily in hot deserts, where they're guaranteed long days of extreme heat and sunlight. But desert nights are notoriously cold and the Cursed Cold Ones must find a heat source of risk becoming blocks of ice for the next few hours. Because their bodies are natural heat sinks, their touch is much like the attack of an Ice Serpent, freezing their victims as they drain them of their heat. Even their gaze can cause an enemy to reel with sensations of deep cold.

Tried to get some sketchy shading with this image. Sometimes I really like the scratchy dark shadows I do in my sketchbook.

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Centaur

May 23, 2013, 4:56 pm

≫ Next: Aranea

≪ Previous: Cursed Cold One (Gelun)

Centaurs are a noble race of beast-men who, as in their appearance, straddle a line between humanity and animal savagery. Their trust is hard to earn; their wrath is cheap indeed!

Sorry for the lateness of this! Busy work and busy weekends make Joe a tired boy. Also apologies for the boobs on display here, I just felt like 99% of the fantasy centaurs I see are bare-chested, muscled males and I felt like switching up the gender - the result is something like Walt Disney's (planned) topless centaurs for Fantasia meets Merle from Escaflowne or some other borderline-furry catgirl cheesecake from my youth. I'm not much fond of furry art (to put it lightly), but for some reason centaurs and mermaids seem to avoid my distaste.

In any case, I've been looking at a lot of drawings of girls lately (Chris Sanders, Alex Ahad) and I felt like trying my hand at a pretty girl - I think the hair is a little boring, but I like the face and the rest of it. Maybe I'll change up the hairstyle later - for now, I'll just post it. Feel free to berate me in the comments for my possible idle sexism / corruption of America's youth etc etc. :)

- Joe

PS be sure to look at it full-size! I might put up some detail images tomorrow.

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Aranea

May 27, 2013, 2:45 pm

≫ Next: Summoning Ooze

≪ Previous: Centaur

So these little ladies are about a step away from being werespiders. An aranea is a shapeshifting magical spiders, with a unique humanoid form, one beastly form and a third form being somewhere in between. Though not good, these creatures aren't evil, which is something quite pleasant when it comes to sentient spiders.

I just really dig the idea that the little old lady in the house down the road that makes extra nice sweaters has a bit of a secret. But that doesn't mean she'll eat you. Well, maybe she will. Villagers probably get the ol' torch and pitchfork when they find out about that. They've still got a good bit of poison, spells and sticky webs to gather you up with. So just be a dearie and keep Grammy Spider's secret, okay?

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