First Roll20 Token Pack Art Sneak Peek!

So exciting.  I'm already completely addicted to Roll20 tokens, and I've just started.  This piece took me a half day, so that means I should be able to start cranking out a respectable number of packs on a very regular basis.  The goal is to populate the Marketplace with as many of the best-looking figures I can possibly paint. Unbelievably fun. The Aranea, from the Dungeons & Dragons SRD:

Impressive, I like it Fred.

+1

Oh that is a scary looking beastie!  Nice!

+1 to all the above

+1

Impressive work. You're really got that skill down pat :)

Very nice. Look forward to seeing more!

Just keep in mind that a lot of your tokens will be squished down into 70px and 140px squares. Sometimes, if you're lucky, 210px squares. Very complex art with lots of colors gets muddled at those sizes.

Here's a test of the image... I think it still holds up... if you play the game at smaller than 100% you do loose a lot... BUT that's what putting it in the handouts is for... VERY nice work Fred, very inspirational... I hope to join your ranks soon, with some of my own work... Keep up the great art... IF this isn't clear, I right clicked the token, went to set dimensions and chose units instead of pixels. And it was already set at 5 width x 5 height, so I went down by 1 increment each and copied them, so you might see how they'd hold up if someone was playing at 90% with the map, and lower...

Excellent work, I love the classic fantasy painterly look! Reminds me of Frazetta or Rowena.

Thanks, all!  And for Jonathan--I keep a separate navigator window open when painting in Photoshop that shows me the entire creature at a much smaller size--this keeps me honest when it comes to adding detail because if it doesn't visually work at a distance, then the added sparkle isn't worth much.  I want each piece to look great large as well as on the map at play size.   I believe that if you're going to shell out money for my figure packs, then you're going to get something pretty for your purchase.  :-) And just think--in case any of my smaller creatures get magically giant-sized, you won't have to be embarrassed to enlarge it to your heart's content for fear of the NPC or monster turning into a pixelated mess!

Looks awesome! I recommended to Devin as well.  Look into making some Drow and other things Drow.  There is a kickstarter just about finished for Rise of the Drow going from level 1 to 20.  Won't be out until closer to next year so you have lots of time.  Also think about making Car Wars tokens.  Steve Jackson has committed to redoing Carwars after his New version of Ogre on Kickstarter pulled in millions of dollars.  So there should be some demand for Car Wars stuff.  Now we just need the rotating to get better in Roll20!

A peek at the Basilisk's head.  Not finished with this guy yet...and I can't keep posting these, or there'll be nothing left for me to put on the Marketplace! As you may have guessed, my first set will be entirely D20 SRD creatures of medium size of the Magical Beast type...

+1 !!!

+1

I finished the Basilisk this afternoon.  Tomorrow--the Blink Dog!  Which, disappointingly, looks a lot like...a dog.  A regular dog.  Would the Roll20 community care if I took a little artistic license to at least make it look like a Magical Beast, or should I stick with the description verbatim? Spending the day on just a dog seems a bit of a let down.  *haha*

I can just see the complaints stacking up now, "Fred, these dogs are too cool!"

Take some license. I'd rather have some flair to it than a 100% "true to core" token.

I think artistic license is fine as long as its obviously still what its supposed to be.  I'd usually stick with the right colours and general shape.

Konrad J. said: I think artistic license is fine as long as its obviously still what its supposed to be.  I'd usually stick with the right colours and general shape. No problems there, Konrad...I promise not to make him a "Blink Bunny"  *haha*  ;-)

Fred Lang said: Konrad J. said: I think artistic license is fine as long as its obviously still what its supposed to be.  I'd usually stick with the right colours and general shape. No problems there, Konrad...I promise not to make him a "Blink Bunny"  *haha*  ;-) Ooops, that posting actually came across totally wrong.  I was trying to agree with the artistic license is great.  Just with a few caveats.  I can't wait for some of your monsters to come out.  If you have any Giants in the old brain rattling around I'd love to get them!  My campaign will be going up against a crap load of Ogres, Hill Giants, and Frost giants soon. :)  I've got all of Devin Night's stuff as well so that should tide me over! :)

I just had a thought.  You might send out a survey on the most wanted tokens?  I use Survey Monkey for when I need to survey my hockey team on trophies and stuff.  You could list the tokens you most want to do and then have everyone choose their top 3?  THen you get an idea on what people want.  You can send the survey to people that you have email addresses for, but even better for here I think is it gives you a link.  You post that here.  People click on the link and then answer the question.  Its anomomous.  Just a thought.

Konrad J. said: Fred Lang said: Konrad J. said: I think artistic license is fine as long as its obviously still what its supposed to be.  I'd usually stick with the right colours and general shape. No problems there, Konrad...I promise not to make him a "Blink Bunny"  *haha*  ;-) Ooops, that posting actually came across totally wrong.  I was trying to agree with the artistic license is great.  Just with a few caveats.  I can't wait for some of your monsters to come out.  If you have any Giants in the old brain rattling around I'd love to get them!  My campaign will be going up against a crap load of Ogres, Hill Giants, and Frost giants soon. :)  I've got all of Devin Night's stuff as well so that should tide me over! :) I'll eventually get to all of the D20 SRD monsters!  RIght now I'm working on the Magical Beast type.  Then I'll move on to another type--maybe Aberrations.  I'll try to slip in some Humanoids in between the more exotic creatures, and those will be sets of one humanoid in all of the D20 main classes--so you'll have a Halfling bard, rogue, fighter...you get the idea.  Then back to monsters, and rinse / repeat...! I want to push out a lot of quality packs quickly and just plain not let up.  My fingers, toes and eyes are all crossed in hopes that this is a successful venture.  I haven't been as excited about a new project in...well, in forever.  Roll20's Marketplace is allowing me to combine my two favorite things--painting and RPGs--and I'm really hoping to find a permanent niche in the new virtual tabletop world. Thanks for the continued great replies!

Would those be type packs (aberrations, heroes etc?), random ones (whichever ones you've done lately), one big one (D20 Monsters!) or some other setup? Also, on a related note, that aranea at the top, was that intended as a freebie or is it intended for a pack? Thought I'd ask before making use of it :)

Asaram said: Would those be type packs (aberrations, heroes etc?), random ones (whichever ones you've done lately), one big one (D20 Monsters!) or some other setup? Also, on a related note, that aranea at the top, was that intended as a freebie or is it intended for a pack? Thought I'd ask before making use of it :) They'll be "Type" theme packs for sure.  I figured that would make them easier to categorize and more useful for you guys and gals.  The Aranea will be in the first pack, but I wanted something complete to show the kind of polish I'll be giving all of the creatures.  I felt that, after finally being able to start on these that I should "put up or shut up" about them!  :-D So technically the Aranea is part of "Tier I Magical Beasts, Pack 1", but I did realize before I posted it that I couldn't prevent someone from using it.  Consider it a playable advertisement!

Alright. Sounds fair enough. Will be looking forward to the pack, magical beasts are pretty much 90% of the enemies in the campaign I'm working on, but most are bloody hard to find tokens for. (was considering using tokentool and the game graphics for them, which is less than ideal) And cudos on the freebie, will be using it on Sunday I think.

Finished the Blink Dog today.  Next up, the Cockatrice.  At this rate, I'm planning for April 1 as the release date for my first pack--or however long it takes from submission to it ending up on the Marketplace, anyhow. All 5'X5'-space Magical Beasts, painted at 700X700 pixels for maximum clarity and detail at various sizes and resolutions.

Have you thought about how shadows will be done.  One problem with doing a real drop shadow is when the token is rotated the shadow looks wrong since its now facing the light a different way than the other tokens.  I think in the Dundjinni forums the default way was to simply put a shadow (photoshop would be a glow) all around the token equally.  Just wondering if there is a standard people have decided upon, might be a good idea.  Might be good to hear from Devin Night as well on this.

You probably don't have the time, but it would be nice to see progress updates on your designs as you go.  You could write Sample over top of them and do them at lower res?  Or do like the Basilisk and just part of it.  Or I'll just shut up and wait for your magic to become available! :) Another set that seems to be lacking to me is some really nice tokens of each class.  Devin night has some, but they are his earlier work.  I'm using them, but would love to get some more realistic tokens, no offense intended Devin!!!

Konrad J. said: Have you thought about how shadows will be done.  One problem with doing a real drop shadow is when the token is rotated the shadow looks wrong since its now facing the light a different way than the other tokens.  I think in the Dundjinni forums the default way was to simply put a shadow (photoshop would be a glow) all around the token equally.  Just wondering if there is a standard people have decided upon, might be a good idea.  Might be good to hear from Devin Night as well on this. With the directional lighting and static lighting in the dungeon tiles / maps, there's never going to be a perfect shadow for the tokens, because they can't react to that simulated light source.  I'd rather go for a shadow that gives a sense of depth and leaves the problem of "which direction" to the user to overcome with suspension of disbelief. I've seen the "all around shadow glow" in the Marketplace, and I'm not a fan.  It doesn't give any sense of height or depth.  All of mine will have a standard 30% opacity drop shadow set at a 45 degree offset, then warped in Photoshop to give the illusion of depth--meaning, I warp the shadows to touch the "feet" of a given monster, then push the shadow away from the body to create the illusion that the body is higher off the ground than the feet are--which would be true if we were looking at something real.  :-) I think Roll20 users will overlook that the shadow at X or Y place will not match up with whatever light source is painted on a map tile or with the light from Roll20's directional lighting.  For me, it's 100% a better solution than the "all around shadow glow" look. As for updates, I'll keep them under wraps until the packs go live from now on.  I should be able to put out a new set of packs every 10 days to two weeks after the first one goes live, so you won't have to wait long in between sets.  I may include a teaser image at the beginning of each pack cycle so that folks know what's coming next, though--good idea there...! I fully intend to make it through all of the monsters in the D20 SRD, and those include Humanoids.  For each Humanoid race, I'll make a pack representing the core classes (if they're normally playable races), and go wild with variations for the other ones (that are usually used as enemy NPCs).  So I'll get there eventually. If my packs sell well, then I'll be breaking off of all outside client work to produce them non-stop for the Marketplace, which is pretty much what I'm doing right now to get the ball rolling! :-)

1st April? That's pretty fast, excellent news! :P And sounds like something to look forward to Fred, though when it comes to PCs I think I prefer to go with custom ones.

Asaram said: 1st April? That's pretty fast, excellent news! :P And sounds like something to look forward to Fred, though when it comes to PCs I think I prefer to go with custom ones. Custom tokens will totally be part of my Roll20 efforts--but maybe not until I get several packs out.  I still have to think about pricing for anything custom!