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Kris Smith commissions (Simius/Super Apes added 5-5-14)

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Got art?
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urbwar
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Post by urbwar »

kevperrine wrote: - what are Kris' rates and timeline for characters like these?
he charges $15.00 per figure in color. IIRC, B&W cost $10.00

As for timeline, it depends. The 5 most recent had a deadline of about 5 or 6 weeks from when I told him to do them. I forget what the timeline was for the Golden Age heroes, but I know he finished them a day or so early. Since I haven't sat down to finalize planning for my first villain book, I don't have timelines for art for a release. I play that by ear. We've discussed about 5 or 6 image concepts so far, but as that's only half of the planned roster for the release, we are nowhere near planning a deadline. If there will be one. I don't really have a release date in mind, so I don't plan for one yet. In the future, who knows?
kevperrine wrote: - do you have an example of how you ask for art? I'm interested in how you do the art direction. What's your creation/direction and what's the artist's
When I come up with a concept, I send him a description for that concept. Many images use bits and pieces of ideas from other sources, so I try and get images of those sources for him to reference.

For example: I had specific influences for the Cosmic Legion uniforms. The basic design is modeled from the costume of Ultimate Captain Mar-Vell, but sans helmet and with different colors. The chest symbol was the symbol for the New Universe character Starbrand, but reversed. The pointy shoulder parts of the uniform comes from a more recent costume worn by the hero Nova. I sent images of those 3 things, and described what parts of each I wanted. He then drew a sketch in B&W, and when I confirmed that matched what I wanted, we went into what the characters who wore those outfits would look like.

I tend to use various influences in many designs. Not all, but at least 80% or so of the stuff he's done for me has been done that way.
kevperrine wrote: - the style is VERY similar to the style of artist I've worked with in the past on supers projects (my HERO HOOKS book I did for M&M). I love the style. THIS THIS THIS... should BE the style for all of BASH! If this artist (or a similar style) were hired for art direction on ALL of the BASH! material (especially the new updated rule printing),
I like his style because it reminds me of the DC animated style, but is just a little different. I just really like the style. I am going to use art from other artists, but my dealings with some others have been less than satisfying. Kris always comes through for me so far. If he falls behind, he busts * to catch up for me. He loves doing art for me, because I tend to tell him little bits of backstory on the characters, so he gets a feel for what they're like, not just what they look like. He told me that he really digs doing Golden Age stuff after all the stuff he did for me in that vein. I think he did a great job with some of those characters, and while Vigilance Press has come out with a kick * line of Golden Age stuff, I am hoping to do my own as well.

Anyway, for the most part, Kris is the in house artist for Soultaker Studios, much like Dan Houser is the one for ICONS. I will use others here and there, but afaik, Kris is just as much a part of Soultaker as I am.
kevperrine wrote: - strangely ... coincidentally... I have a character made and published from my HERO HOOKS book from 6-7 years ago named "Velocity Johnson". That said... I was at the same time bummed (that our name choices were so close) and excited, because the art is beautiful. LOL
Not sure, but I may have an image him too. I thought the character was named Velocity Jones, but I couldn't remember (I think the name on the image file was just VJ). If that is the same character, then he was an influence on the name of Velocity Jane.
kevperrine wrote: - I may have missed the info... what is all this for? Will it be a published product of some sort? It should be. If the product lived up to half of the art style... it would rock.
Almost all the art I've posted here has been specifically created for one shot games I've run locally for Recess, which is a gaming event sponsored by NerdNYC, a forum/community here in NYC for gamers, and nerds of all types. I feel super hero games are partly a visual thing, so having art for the characters inspires the players, especially given that many will be new to the game system (if they know it at all). So yeah, I bought all this art to use in one shot games.

However, Chris (and others on the forums) have encouraged me to do something with my Golden Age one shot as a release. if I do, some of the characters will likely end up in it for use by players if they want to use it as a one shot. I just need to revise them from the original stats, as some came out more powerful than others.

I'm tempted to possibly do a Cosmic Legion sourcebook (though I might rename the group), since I think there is a lot of potential with it. I dunno. I have too may * ideas for possible books, so I need to kind of focus on one project at a time!
kevperrine wrote: - I have a project... a simple one. That I'd love to be able to have art like this done for. I did it before, but I haven't looked into finding a new artist (or requesting from my old artist) in awhile. Hence with all the questions.
Well, feel free to contact Kris. I linked to his deviantart page in my first post, so you can some of his other work. If you want his email addy, pm me for that. I know Chris wanted him to do some work for BASH, but I never asked him or Kris about it. He's done some art for Cartoon Action Hour Season 2 (it was an ad for him in that rule book that got me to contact him back in 2009), so he has done rpg work before.
kevperrine wrote: overall... love it. Great stuff. GO YOU!!

-kev-
Thanks. The great art Kris does for me is part of my motivation to run games when I can
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Post by urbwar »

As I'm considering releasing Plague of Darkness, I had to have a new version of S'lar because I don't think I could include an ION Guard character in the book as a sample character. So I had Kris do a new version of the character as a member of the Cosmic Legion. His skin color was changed to Orange, as the original red didn't mesh with the legionnaire costume, as it includes red in the color scheme:

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Post by kroh »

Fantastic piece. Looking forward to this
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Post by urbwar »

thanks. I don't think it came quite as good as the ION Guard version, but that's likely because Kris was in the middle of doing a batch set of commissions for me when I asked him to whip this up.

It's still a great piece though. Of course, figuring out what kind of powers to give him is the next part of the equation
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Post by bentleyml »

Wow. I love the images and style in this thread. Awesome.
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urbwar
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Post by urbwar »

Ok, I posted the image of Glare this afternoon, but don't see it here now. let me do so again, and hope this time the post sticks:

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This is my main character in a V&V game I've been part of for about a year now. There's another version (ie different colors) that Kris did for me to use as a villain in our projects. Hope you all like it!
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Post by Dustland »

Dude looks formidable!
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urbwar
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Post by urbwar »

Dustland wrote:Dude looks formidable!
He is, but ironically, he is the weakest member of the team. He's grown in power as he's gotten more experienced, but some of the other characters have been around much longer, and some of their abilities far eclipse his. We were fighting aliens last night, and his armor took alot of damage from various hits. Thankfully his buddy Modi (yes, Thor's son) came to his rescue.

At least my new character is the weakest now, so Glare doesn't feel too bad. I need to get him drawn up in the near future too...
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Post by Saker »

Great suit. Can you post Modi?
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Post by urbwar »

Saker wrote:Great suit. Can you post Modi?
Modi isn't one of my characters, so I don't have an image of him. The guy who plays him has an image done with art from City of Heroes I think, as it looks kind of like Poser art.
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Post by urbwar »

Since my first release is getting closer to completion, here's one piece that will be in it. If you've seen the sketch thread, you've seen the sketch. Now, in all her chilling glory, is Hoarfrost of The Triad:

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Post by Dustland »

Sweet! I've noticed a lot of these (really cool) pics seem to be very dark. Maybe it's just my monitor.
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Post by MrJupiter »

Awesome characters. I can't wait for your book to come out!
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Post by urbwar »

Dustland wrote:Sweet! I've noticed a lot of these (really cool) pics seem to be very dark. Maybe it's just my monitor.
Not sure. I can't tell if they look dark on my end, as I've never noticed that before.
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Post by urbwar »

MrJupiter wrote:Awesome characters. I can't wait for your book to come out!
Thanks Mr. Jupiter! Still need to resolve an issue about the art, than Walt will pump out the G Core version, followed by the one for Supers!, then the BASH version will be next. After that, we'll see what follows...
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