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Pen & ink on Bristol + Photoshop, 2012.

Hey, look what I’ve been doing all week! After deciding to stipple the background for some reason I can’t feel my hands anymore!

Explaining what the heck is going on here would take way, way too long, but the short version is that this is a deity a character of mine worships, and the big Lion Dance thingy is a monster that’s part of said deity’s cosmology. Or you can just assume it’s painted on the side of the world’s most badass van. Either works!

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Pen, ink, and Photoshop, 2011 (finalized 2012).

Shinmatsu Yae, winner of the Shinmatsu Family’s Miss Congeniality contest for four years running! Wait, no, that’s a lie, she’s a disgraced yojimbo pissed off because someone killed her charge and taking it out on everybody who even slightly gets in her way. Bushido maps onto the “lawful evil” alignment unnervingly well.

I hadn’t drawn any heavily-inked pieces in simply ages, so Yae here was a warmup! I didn’t have room to draw her no-dachi (she prefers it to a bow, which she only really has for emergencies and hunting), didn’t accentuate her leg spines enough and entirely left off her arm spines, and had some shaky linework in places, but I don’t really care: this was a fun way to get me back into larger-scale works. Oh my goodness but I love inking textures!

This was the first time I’d designed her a set of armor; while it’s not the first set of samurai plate I’ve done (see Hida Toshiro, below), these suits are freaking complicated and I expect I’ll perfect the design as time goes by.

A red-on-white background might be kind of cliche for a character whose native culture is based off of historial Japan (mainly the Edo era), but they’re her house colors, so whatcha gonna do?

Upcoming: drawing members of the family the Shinmatsu jerks are sworn to protect.

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Mechanical pencil, 2011.

Wait, no, this is the last one for now.

Hida Toshiro, bushi of the Crab Clan and quite possibly the hairiest man in all of Rokugan.  Clockwise from lower right: in his kimono for court (and grouchy about not being in his armor), as a member of the Miami coast guard for a “period characters in modern dress” thing, and finally doing the Kani Dansu, an honorable performance which all Crab Clan aspire to be able to master.

Pinchu pinchu!

Not pictured: his enormous tetsubo, his go set, or his drinking problem.

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Mechanical pencil, 2011.

And finally, some Song of Ice and Fire RPG characters. I can’t remember their names for the life of me but they shared the same noble house; I played the fairly intense clergywoman at the top (she led their province in a mixture of modern faith and Old Ways in a sort of Santeria mix), while the better half was the heir to the household guy on the bottom with a knack for mass combat.

Sadly, we ended up giving up on the game because the campaign started relying far too heavily on PVP, which neither of us like very much.

I still really like my crazy cleric’s design and may recycle bits of it in the future.

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Pen + ink, 2011.

The Biggest Fan is the world’s biggest fangirl. She won her powers in a trivia contest she entered out of boredom, having been ditched by her friends at a convention she didn’t even want to go to, and now fights crime with the power of being Very Big and Very Strong. She still really likes comic books.

That terrible-ass car in the background was the inspiration for me spending time on the Gnomotors Wakabi, depicted earlier.

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Mechanical pencil, 2011.

Just some 50 Fathoms characters: Rilly Rimvander, an orange-skinned masaquani (like humans but exaggerated) sharpshooter, is on the left, while Plisskin, an enormously unlucky doreen (dolphin-man) brawler, is on the right.

Unlike a lot of the pencil stuff I scanned today, this one didn’t get mauled by the scanner.

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Dry-erase marker, 2011.

Tiv here is Raanan’s childhood friend who was traded to another warband as part of a peace agreement. He’s an accomplished cook and woodsman that the universe opts to urinate upon pretty much constantly. Being a mystic, he tends to assume that his constant suffering is a part of a greater plan, and the heavy “weeping” tearmarks just reinforce this idea. He’s responsible for guiding Raanan through the wasteland safely.

Tiv changed designs and sexes a bit during the concept stage, as may be apparent. The version with the black hair tied up in a bun is currently the most accurate.

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Dry-erase marker, 2011.

Sketches of Raanan of Cool Waters Warband, a MUD character of the husband’s who is currently either dead or in need of being remade due to an unfortunate incident with a boar. His goal is/was to travel through the wastelands north of his homeland and hone his swordplay skills on the heathens to be found in the forests beyond, returning to his people once he feels fit to fight for persons of superior honor. Think of him as a Fertile Crescent samurai fueled by the power of asshole dickery and you’re on the right track.

Those are cowrie shells in his hair. It’s not obvious from the monochrome, but he has white hair, charcoal fur, subtle spots, and a wee little nubbin tail.

The sunglasses and yakuza suit are obviously not exactly theme-appropriate, but he seemed like the kind of guy who’d roll with honor-flavored organized crime.

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Pen & ink, 2011.

A pair of rival wizzrobes from a Legend of Zelda-themed Savage Worlds campaign my husband is tinkering with on and off.  The various pig heads are Ganon-themed mons, of course.

The blonde one is blue, the brunette is orange; their eyes glow the opposite color.  They alternate between not being able to stand one another and having very nice private weekends (usually broken up by a stupid argument, like over phasing versus teleporting. who phases anymore?).

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Mechanical pencil, 2009.

Just some ninja guy who apparently uses katars. Dancing Wind was, if memory serves, a character thrown together for a theoretical fighting game in which every contestant was an attractive fella. I don’t think we went very far with this aside from some elf-looking gentleman with a wolf pelt around his waist who carried a sword. Damned if I remember that guy’s name…