Friday, May 1, 2009

Inspiration Dump

These images aren't doing any good just sitting around on my hard drive!

Arthur Adams draws himself a mean sexy snake-lady. I was thinking of writing up D&D stats for this one, but then decided that between lamias, yuan-ti, mariliths, and succubi, it'd be pretty redundant.

This is a prehistoric animal whose scientific name escapes me at the moment. The image is called "Suthirinodon", but that was from a Japanese site, and they always butcher scientific names when translating them into katakana and then back into Roman characters. Anyway, "moleratpig" seems like an appropriate description. An animal like this would be the ancestor of the snuffling, tusked, xenophobic dwarves of the Freed Lands setting.

Jeff Rients posted this bad boy long ago. I am a big hobgoblin fan, but more than that, I love the Miyazaki-esque feel to this guy. This is literally one of my favorite RPG-related images, ever, and I wish I could find out who drew it.

Found this guy on a Russian-hosted site about a Forgotten Realms campaign. Looks like it might be D&D 3e art, but it looked vaguely Central Asian/Eastern European to me, so I saved it for Freed Lands inspiration.

16 comments:

  1. 1. Ssssssalome Triumphator. She's definitely making an appearance when I get round to writing up the Seraglio of Silver Masques.

    2. Orcish atavism. Kept as guard animals, breeding stock and emergency food supply by the (Thool-style) Orcs of Nagoh.

    3. Wu-Pah the Excessively Prepared, Hobgoblin Fighter NPC. I assume that little pictograph at the bottom-right of the image is Korean?

    4. Tiphor the Distracted. A fighter suffering the effects of a long-ago curse of...what was the question?

    Good artdump.

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  2. Chris: "I assume that little pictograph at the bottom-right of the image is Korean?"

    Looks more like stylized Chinese characters to me. The glyph on the hobgoblin's helmet, where the horns meet, is also Chinese.

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  3. To answer the question of the hobgoblin's origin, look no further then the amazing talents of Hayami Rasenjin, a Japanese artist best known for illustrating numerous Japanese table top RPGs as well as manga on the subject. Rasenjin is a big fan of Dungeons & Dragons and probably one of the foremost advocates and bloggers on traditional RPGs in Japan.

    You can check out his website at http://park5.wakwak.com/~rasen/

    AD
    Barking Alien

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  4. Thank you very much, Barking Alien!

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  5. Hey don't thank me, check out my blog, lol.
    (Rimshot)

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    Barking Alien

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  6. Thanks for identifying that, BA!

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  7. That Ssssnake-Woman is Ssssuper-Ssssexy.

    See what I did there? Word Play!

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  8. Oh, and BTW...

    my word verification was Orkscus.

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  9. Don't you mean Orkssssscussssss?

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  10. that third image is very Miyazaki-esque. i'm glad your reader identified it - i'm gonna have to check that site out too.

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  11. oh, and the cartouche at the bottom left, as you could probably guess, is just a stylized stamp of the artist's name. and the character on his helmet is "Darkness" ('yami' in Japanese).

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  12. In addition to the botox, I think your snake woman has had some work done on her ears. It's sad that we live in a society that puts so much pressure on snake women to conform to an unnatural and unattainable ideal of beauty.

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  13. catharsix: "oh, and the cartouche at the bottom left, as you could probably guess, is just a stylized stamp of the artist's name. and the character on his helmet is "Darkness" ('yami' in Japanese)."

    Thanks for the clarification. I knew I could count on you.

    The rest of Rasenjin's work is a bit more wacky than the hobgoblin, but still enjoyable. He seems to have a Russian fetish, which is interesting, at least.

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  14. the rest of his stuff does seem more traditionally manga-like, and less like Miyazaki's Naussica-era work. this one is awesome though:

    http://park5.wakwak.com/~rasen/02mono01.html

    SPACE BEHOLDER!!!!

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  15. It's a stylinodon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylinodon

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  16. Hey, just checking out the artwork and I can source the "weaponmaster.jpg" for you (the last image). It's by Steve Prescott and appears on pg. 79 of Magic of Eberron.

    Cheers!

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