Anatomy of a token

Hi everyone! I've been posting the concepts for my upcoming token pack to my Twitter account but I reckoned some of you guys might enjoy a look behind the scenes of how the sausage is made :) I'm going to use this thread to post the concept art for the current pack (And perhaps future packs if there's enough interest) as well as a step-by-step on how I create tokens. I hope you guys enjoy it! I'm currently working on the first of two Elves packs, I've so far finished the tokens for the Knight and Rogue archetypes and I just did the concept for the Cleric; I'm not sure yet what the last class is going to be, I'm thinking Monk to keep it in the "melee" side of things with the second pack being your caster types. Instead of different skin types this time I'm doing " High Elves " and " Forest Elves " as you can see the designs are basically the same; I worked really hard to make the design appeal to the nature of elves so there's a lot of leaves/feather patterns. High Elves to me are basically Forest Elves that moved away from the forest and live in big magical cities, but their heritage is still reflected on their clothes, weapons, and armor albeit using less earth tones and more gold and blue tones. Anyway, enough text, on with the pictures! Knight/Fighter/Paladin tank type: Rogue/Assassin/Shady guy in a dark alley: Cleric/Priest/Healer type: If you've followed my work and supported it before you might have noticed the new branding; it's not changing anything, I just feel I needed to put them all under the same umbrella; so if you see that logo you know I made it :) I'll be back in a few days with a step-by-step of how a token is made from beginning to end!

Hey guys, I'm back as promised with the step-by-step on how I create a token; I'm sorry for the double post but I feel the first one is already plenty big and image heavy! Please feel free to ask any questions about the process if you have them! Without further ado: Step 1: After some feedback from community members regarding anatomy and proportions on some of my previous packs I started using an app on my iPhone and iPad called "Skelly" (There's also a similar one called "Handy" but I don't have as much use for that one anymore). Skelly was developed by the amazing artist Steve Prokopenko (If you want amazing, free, learn-to-draw lessons watch his videos on YouTube under ProkoTV), it's powered by Unity, I believe, and all it is is a skeleton that you can pose to your heart's content. For this particular token (A rogue) I chose a rogue in a running action pose dual-wielding daggers. Step 2: I take a screenshot in Skelly then email it to myself, move into photoshop, set the opacity to 25-30% and do a very rough, very quick sketch on top of it. Skelly sort of works like my construction lines, although I still use those sometimes. Step 3: I tun-off the skelly layer, reduce the opacity on the sketch one also to 20-30% and draw the finished clean-lines on top. Notice there are no weapons yet. This is because I draw the legs, torso, and arms in its own layer. This way I can re-use the torso and legs for other weapons and only have to redo the arms in different poses (Which I also pose in Skelly) You can't tell here but I also fill the figure itself with the same gray as the backround and marge the lines into it, that way I can lock the layer and render without going outside the shape. Step 4: First stage of rendering; I felt the cloak was too long for what will essentially be a 512x512 token when I'm done so I made it smaller and on to rendering! This is just a primary shadows and lights pass. I do this with a big brush, hardness 0% for an airbrush feel and exclusively use black and white. I also use a modified smudge brush tool to help me blend. A time saving tip I can give you is to do your shadows on a "Multiply" clipping mask, your light in a "Screen" clipping mask and that way you can use black on the shadows one to add shadow and white to remove it without laying down any actual white. The opposite applies to the screen layer. This is also when you pick a light source and make sure you stick to it! Step 5: At this point what I've done is gone to the actual drawing layer and fill-in the different values for the different materials. Once I'm done with that I merge all the layers down (Except for the background) Step 6: Here's the final render ready for color. I've just added details and tightened the shadows and highlights. At this stage I'm using a brush with 100% hardness and the opacity and flow set to pen-pressure. It's just a regular round brush. Step 7: Color! A lot of people like to use a color layer, I use a Soft Light layer instead since it allows me to still the values, not just the colors. I use this Soft Light layer as a clipping mask and just lay down flats. Once done, I add another Soft Light layer clipping mask and add blue shadows, yellowish highlights, depending on the light source and the material. Step 8: This is my own little thing and I'm still tweaking it, once I'm done I add Exclusion layer set to 30% on top of everything and fill it in one uniform color that basically blends everything together really nicely. It's like the dude's rug. In this case I used a warm purple, but depending on the lighting you can use blue, red, orange, yellow, etc. Green will give you a cool, sickly, spore atmosphere look perfect for a noxious gas filled lair! Lastly, I adjust the Levels and Saturation as needed (I especially need to do this because the bulb on my Cintiq is on its last legs, so I move it over to my main monitor for this part. I will hopefully be getting a new Cintiq in the next few months) Next time (In a few days) I will cover how I create weapons, add the cast shadow, re-size the token, and wrap it all up to package it and upload :) Until then, feel free to ask any questions!

<a href="http://i.imgur.com/uXEFceJ.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/uXEFceJ.jpg</a> Thats actually really cool though. Now to develop talent to do anything beyond drawing a nice stick figure on top of the skelly.

Awesome tutorial, like Jake I think i need to hone some skills before being able to make full use of this but seeing behind the curtain of a talented mind is a real treat! Can't wait to see what you post next.

When's the next installment coming? :)

Jake M. said: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/uXEFceJ.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/uXEFceJ.jpg</a> Thats actually really cool though. Now to develop talent to do anything beyond drawing a nice stick figure on top of the skelly. Ha! I love that, that's how I used to feel when I watched other artists make stuff 20 years ago, and now here I am making my own :) This is not meant as a drawing workshop/tutorial but rather a "how a token is made" look behind the scenes; that's why I didn't go in-depth with the actual drawing and painting (What type of brushes I use, etc.) but if that's something you'd like to know, ask away!&nbsp;Feel free to pick my brain! Ziechael said: Awesome tutorial, like Jake I think i need to home some skills before being able to make full use of this but seeing behind the curtain of a talented mind is a real treat! Can't wait to see what you post next. Thanks! Feel free to ask any questions! There's a lot of skill involved behind drawing and painting, but I truly believe everyone can do it, you just have to put a lot of time into it. &nbsp;That means I sacrifice a lot of my gaming/tabletopping/TV/Movie time for the sake of drawing and painting. &nbsp;The only way to get good at it is to practice, practice, practice! If it's something you are interested in doing starting with the basics is the best thing and my recommendation is to watch Stan Prokopenko's drawing videos on YouTube (ProkoTV) and Robotpencil tutorials (These are paid, but dirt cheap and totally worth it!) G V. said: When's the next installment coming? :) Right now! :) I'm sorry I can't update this thread as often as I'd like, I've been babysitting my 6 month daughter full time while still doing my IT day job and whatever little spare time I have is dedicated to working on the new pack. I'm going to post the new tutorial in its own post since this one's gone too long with the replies, I hope the mods don't mind :)

Alright! In this tutorial I'm going to cover how I make the weapons as well as the shadow for the token; the last tutorial will be about token sizing (I've already done it, so I'll post it in the next few days when I have time to write it up) Step 1 in weapon making is drawing the weapon itself. &nbsp;Sometimes I like the very first sketch I do and some times I do several rough sketches before I'm happy with the look. &nbsp;The idea of doing the weapon outside of the token is that I can then re-use it for other tokens, while I have done that in a few cases I almost always end up creating unique weapons for each token LOL In this case, I wanted the weapon to of course, look elven and fit with the theme. &nbsp;This is one of those instances where I was happy with the first iteration sketch. &nbsp;I did the sketch using blue this time as it makes it easier to sketch over it afterwards, I recommend doing this but it's not necessary. &nbsp;The step for creating this weapon are exactly the same as the token, so I won't write it up :) Once the weapons is finished, all I do is scale it down, as well as rotate it (And sometimes flip it) to put it in the hands of the character. &nbsp;Once it's in a place where I like the look, I create a new mask for the dagger's folder and mask out the hand shape. &nbsp;The beauty of doing it in a mask is that everything black is transparent and everything white is the image itself; so unlike deleting, if I mess up and mask out too much I can always mask it back in by switching to white. Sorry if that's confusing... Lastly come the shadows; this is super simple stuff; I do a layer under everything, draw the black shadow on it, change its opacity to 50% and apply it a 9.4 Gaussian Blur. &nbsp;Why 9.4? 9 and 3 are my wife's favorite numbers and 9.4 is as close as I can get on the slider without typing the number every time :-p I also generally include my wife and daughter's name in the details of as many tokens as I can; generally where there's a lot of runes or gilded details and they can be hidden. The reason there's no daggers in the first two is because since I re-use poses for different weapons I always make an "unblurred" version of the shadow for each pose without weapons. &nbsp;Then for every token I make a copy of that layer, add the weapons, and then apply the blur :) I'm happy to see you guys are enjoying these! The next post will be all about saving the token, resizing, etc. &nbsp;It's going to be kind of boring and technical but I think that's all that goes into it. &nbsp;If you guys are interested I can use the thread after that to answer all and any questions you guys may have, and if the mods are OK and it's not breaking the rules I can use it to post concept art for the rest of this pack as well as upcoming packs (Elves 2, maybe Elves Females, definitely Dwarves, Dark Elves, etc, etc.)

Wow, it's been almost a week since the last post! This one should wrap the whole thing up; hopefully I can keep you away through all this technical babble! At this point I save the token as a .PNG file; so far the token is being worked on at 300 DPI which makes the file huge, something like 3K pixels by 3K. &nbsp;After that, I use the following Photoshop action that basically trims all the transparent pixels and crops the image, reizes it to 512 pixels in width and 72 DPI. Of course not all tokens are square, so the next step is to make the canvas' height also 512 pixels. Lastly I save the token's PNG version along with a ton of tags! &nbsp;The tagging process is tedious, so I always have the more generic ones in front so I don't have to change them for the rest of the pack, then I add more specific ones to each token at the end and that way I don't have to repeat myself. &nbsp;Thanks to the Roll20 team this process is a lot less tedious than it used to be, we had to upload each token one by one back in the day and re-write each tag for each token over and over. &nbsp;It would take me sometime 4-6 hours to upload a whole pack! Here's what the final token looks like along with its tags (I've put the generic ones every token in this pack has in bold): HighElfAssassin [Elf,Male,DnD,DW,Pathfinder,Fantasy,Token,Character,PC,Hero, Melee,Rogue,Assassin,Stealth,Daggers].png Not sure what else I can cover but if you guys are game I can keep using this thread to put concepts for the other tokens in this and future packs (Like the first images on the first post) since you all don't get to see those at any point other than here or my Twitter account.

Personally, I'd love to see the concept art. Love your tokens, btw.

Love the art, but sometimes the tokens are just too dark on the screen to see any details.

G V. said: Personally, I'd love to see the concept art. Love your tokens, btw. Thanks, I'll definitely post it here then; you guys are welcome to give me feedback on the concepts before I move to final :) HoneyBadger said: Love the art, but sometimes the tokens are just too dark on the screen to see any details. Thanks! I do lean towards dark since they spend the majority of their time inside a dark dungeon and I feel it adds to the atmosphere :)

Concept art for the Forest and High Elf Monk archetype

Dark makes it more difficult to see/find the tokens and we end up highlighting them with aura's just to find them.

Hey everyone! Here's the concept for the young mage archetype for the next pack. &nbsp;I'm trying to keep the design consistent with the archetypes on the&nbsp; previous pack when it comes to outfits and colors. &nbsp;For this I'm planning to do a young mage, old mage (Very Gandalf, stereotypical looking wizard), a bard and I'm still undecided on whether I'll include a ranger or a druid; both if I have time. These are of course just rough sketches with the intention of exploring shapes, designs, accessories, and color schemes. &nbsp;They are nowhere near final, for instance, I'm fully planning to make the patter on the coat gold for the High Elf and silver for the Forest Elf. Feel free to post any questions, comments, or feedback! Fernando

are you using Gimp, Photoshop, or Manga Studio when you render your tokens?

Hey Jack ! Great question! I use entirely Photoshop CC (Can't beat the $20 a month deal for it, in my opinion!). &nbsp;My preference stems from being a Photoshop veteran, I have been using it for like 20 years at this point and know most of it by heart while still learning new things now and then. &nbsp;I know the shortcuts so well that it really speeds up my work at this point. I have in the past tried Gimp, Sketchbook Pro and Corel Painter, I have no yet tried Manga Studio though I hear good things about it. &nbsp;I could never get into the Corel Painter interface, I found it to be awesome for someone who comes from the traditional media world but since I've always been a digital guy it was always hard for me to transition to it. Sketchbook Pro is amazing for sketching, though it falls short on everything else. &nbsp;Their Pencil brush is still my favorite in any software, it feels just like using a real pencil on paper. &nbsp;The program is also super light and fast even on my Surface Pro 1. &nbsp;I hear Manga Studio is very similar, and I understand their ink brushes are amazing to use. &nbsp;I don't personally ever ink my stuff any more, so I haven't been too curious to try it out. Gimp unfortunately is not my cup of tea; I once tried being all about Open Source but quickly came back to Photoshop and Office. &nbsp;The problem with Gimp is that it tries really hard to be Photoshop, but it falls short (At least for power users). &nbsp;So every time I used it I kept asking myself "Why am I using this instead of Photoshop which does the same stuff but better!" ultimately I felt my work suffered. I also use an old (10+ years) Wacom Cintiq 21UX and I find that Photoshop and Wacom seem to work together because their products play really well with each other. They are only tools, of course, they don't make you better or worse, but I do find that they allow you to work faster if you pick the right one for you. Sorry if that was longer than intended, I get really wordy when I talk about the stuff I love, haha!

I understand completely.&nbsp; I am trying to venture into going full digital, I am largely a traditional pen and ink, washes(read Copics) kind of guy right now.&nbsp; But I see the need to go full digital.&nbsp; Any tips?

Great stuff Fernando! I am using Manga Studio on my Surface with Photoshop as a kicker. I jumped to Manga when Adobe went to the subscription. Now I use both regularly. If you like to paint you might want to give it a try, I have much more fun with Manga as it feels more fluid in the workflow. Yeah there is some "how come it doesn't have this feature" moments, but I find I am less likely to manipulate like I would in Photoshop. Your concept work looks great. Keep up these posts, very cool!

Hey again, Anthony ! Man, so many tips! First of course is get yourself a tablet, you don't need to rush and get a Cintiq, I recommend you get a cheap Intuous first to get used to working on a tablet and digitally; working directly on the screen believe it or not doesn't make it super easier. &nbsp;It is much more fun, and it is faster, but when you are starting out what slows you down more than anything is learning the software, not the tablet itself. &nbsp;Although, of course, if you have the money go for the Cintiq. I definitely recommend sticking with Wacom, I've tried other brands and quite frankly I'm always left underwhelmed. &nbsp;I will say however that when you are first starting out you probably won't make use of all the pressure levels (2000+) so the cheap stuff is good to get you started. I would highly encourage that you pick a program and stick with it; try them all, but definitely find one you like and master it! In my case that was Photoshop because it was pretty much the only player 20 years ago, now you have many awesome choices. Don't put the tablet in "mouse" mode, get used to regular tablet mode where your cursor just "jumps" to where you place the stylus on your pad. As with everything art related, practice, practice, practice! Your stuff will probably suck at first, it's OK! You'll want to go back to your comfort zone, don't! The fun of being an artist is to constantly push yourself and your art! No one is forcing you to post your stuff online, so practice a lot and draw stuff just for yourself. &nbsp;You'll find the more time you spend with the software, tablet, etc. the better you'll get and the more little things you'll discover that will make the whole process easier! If there's anything else, please let me know! Thanks&nbsp; Greg, &nbsp;I've been very curious about Manga Studio for a while so maybe I'll finally give it a shot! Hopefully I can find it somewhere super discounted, right now I'm saving every extra penny for a new Cintiq since my old faithful is probably going to kick the bucket any day now. &nbsp;I've had it for like 10 years though, I'm still amazed at how wonderfully made it is that it has lasted this long without many problems (I had to replace the power brick once, but it was around 5 year mark) I do find that the latest Photoshop version works really well and lag free on the Surface Pro; that was my biggest complaint when I got it, but the current version is super smooth and very touch friendly!

Great stuff&nbsp; Fernando D. - Really cool to see how you do it!

Thanks! Glad you like it! I normally don't do two concept drawings in a row without working on some tokens in-between but I couldn't get to my iPad with Skelly today and I had a couple of hours so I cranked out the old wizard concept while I was at it. &nbsp;I always like to include the cliche, trope-y Wizard in my packs because I am personally a sucker for tropes. &nbsp; I know a lot of people frown on them because they are so overdone, but I don't care, I love the familiarity and the pedigree that comes with a trope. &nbsp;Using a stereotypical wizard for instance means everyone already knows 80% of what there is to know about your character, so you can focus more on roleplaying his specific nuisances and not have to worry so much about the broad strokes and back story. Anyway, I'm rambling! This guy was obviously influenced by Gandalf, mainly in his pose ( This image in particular ) and since he's an elf I was heavily influenced by Final Fantasy XIV's Ramuh; I love the way they did his beard in that game! The staff is a work in progress and more of a placeholder, I'm also going to give him a long, flowing cloak I didn't include here.

I love how vibrant your colors are. The portrait/character stuff is great!

Thanks Devin ! I really dig your stuff as well! :)

Hey everyone I'm currently working on a non-token related art project that is consuming a lot of my time so work on the next pack has slowed down significantly. &nbsp;I don't have any new concepts to show but I wanted to share these two with you guys, they are my submissions for the Battle Chasers Creature Contest, unfortunately neither one made the cut for the winners or runner-ups but I'm still proud of them and wanted to share them with the Roll20 family :) Some of the elements of the Slime Lord could eventually make it into a future demon pack, who knows?

Well 5th edition is rolling, DMs are making their own monster stat blocks, and I think these would fit perfectly into adventures across a wide variety of RPG platforms. It would be great to see you in imaginefx one day. Keep entering those contests and good luck.

Ne-crow-mancer... I love it! Great stuff Fernando! &nbsp;Really great. &nbsp;

Thanks Alexander ! Unfortunately this contest left a bad taste in my mouth after the announced winner turned out to be a traced piece of clipart...I don't think I'll be entering any contests again in the future :) I think that's a great point about 5e, I hadn't considered it. &nbsp;Maybe when I'm done with the dwarves I'll do some more monsters! I've been itching to do some Lizardmen and Dragonlings! Thanks, Alan maybe it's becoming a dad, but the intensity of my puns has exponentially grown this year, leaving a wave of groans in my wake everywhere I go!

Hey everyone, I'm done with the Mage and Wizard tokens so here's the concept for the Elf Ranger. &nbsp;The weapon on the token will be a little more detailed and interesting to look at it. &nbsp;With these concepts I focus more on the outfit's design, I want to make sure that the details as well as the colors fit with the rest of the characters in the token pack and previous pack. I keep it very quick and loose, I did these two in about 2 hours (The beauty of working in grayscale then coloring is that I can quickly concept different color schemes). The final outfit will probably be a little more detailed as well as have additional designs, but I'm very happy to use this as a base/guide. Since he's a ranger I figured he spends a lot of time in the woods so while I kept his golden elven hair, unlike the other characters his is long, unkept, and all over the place. &nbsp;Same goes for his beard. This guy is naturally attractive, but doesn't care about his appearance. &nbsp;I thought about giving him some scars, but I'd rather not impose that trait on the people that will use him.

Hey everyone, not sure if anyone is still paying attention to this thread but I'm all done working on the Ranger and wanted to share the Druid/Shaman archetype. &nbsp;Here's the concept for it, as always, there will be some changes to the final look for the token, for instance, the staff will be more elaborate and I will play around some more with the color scheme for the Forest version as I'm not 100% happy with it. As always any all questions are welcome!