The Mandalorian is starting today. I’m pretty excited. I Borrowed a design from an old Sergio Leone poster by Bob Peak. Well, the original drawing is from Bob. I’m not sure about the poster design.
poster
Rollplay: 5 Year Anniversary
Rollplay is a series of live tabletop RPG campaigns streaming on TwitchTV.
I worked with JP, the creator of Rollplay, when I did the poster for Rollplay: Nebula Jazz. He contacted wanting to do something for the 5 year anniversary of Rollplay. This turned into an idea for putting every character from Rollplay history into the poster. I have been watching Rollplay for a couple of years, so I thought "That would be fun!". Little did I realize how many characters there actually were. Good God!
Final Drawing.
I started going through show wiki's to find character info from all the shows that came before I started watching. I was quickly closing in on 100 characters. I started to panic. This was going to be a lot of work. Thankfully, JP did come up with the idea of putting most of the characters from West Marches on a list (upper leftish), since there were around 45 characters from that show alone.
Color coded layers
Usually, when I'm hired for a job, there is at least a short brief of the characters. Clothing, weapons, personality, etc.. But this wasn't your average job. There were no official descriptions to go from. But I knew these characters each had a pretty defined look, from the evolution of the characters during their respective shows, and what the fans of the show expected.
I quickly realized that I wouldn't have time to watch all of the show intros (where the characters are revealed). Let alone all of the episodes of each show to get the little inside jokes and important changes to each character. Thankfully, there is a dedicated fan base with some talented artists. Some of the shows had wiki's with character descriptions and more importantly, fan art. I started collecting fan art in my reference folder. It was immensely helpful. Especially for the shows that I hadn't gotten around to watching.
This is just a small sample of all the fan art from the show. I tried to include one from each person. I'm sure I missed some. But that's what I could still find in my reference folder.
At this point, it's just time. We were seriously up against it to get done on time for the Anniversary show. I was putting in 16 hour days just sitting in front of my computer. It's like handwriting. You can only go so fast before it becomes illegible.
Color!!!! I can finally see the finish line when I get to this stage. I started fooling myself that I didn't have that far to go. I could not have been more wrong. I was cursing everyone and everything, muttering under my breath, and talking to myself.
As the last day approached, JP and I were frantically going back and forth to make sure my sleep deprived mind hadn't forgotten anything, and all the logos were right, etc..
Final Render with all the show logos
And with a 26 hour day to cap the madness, I'm done. I slept for a day and laid in bed and watched Netflix for the next.
You can pick up the poster over on the Rollplay Teespring store
And if you are curious about what in the hell Rollplay is, you can go to the Rollplay viewers guide, all the shows are archived on YouTube so you can catch up.
Rollplay: Nebula Jazz Poster
I started a huge write up explaining Twitch, how I ended up watching Twitch, what Rollplay is and more importantly what Rollplaly: Nebula Jazz is. Then I remembered, I hate typing up huge posts. And I hate reading large posts, when I really just want to see the pictures. So, if you are interested, go find out for yourself. It's called Google. It's your friend.
If you want to hear my "personal journey" (quotes mean sarcasm) with Twitch, buy me beer sometime. I'll tell you anything you want to know, and some you don't.
Just to be polite, I've added links at the bottom of the post if you want to know more about Twitch, Rollplay, or just Nebula Jazz.
So here are the initial sketches. Two typical poster ideas, and two somewhat inside joke ideas.
We decided on #2. I had to figure out the background and play with values.
The final drawing. Once again, I have gone back to doing my final drawings traditionally instead of on the computer. It just feels better, and it gets me away from the computer.
Then there is the quick and dirty block in.
And on to the final. I used a vector program to create the background, so I could get clean lines, and it's just easier for me when it comes to that stuff. Also, I changed Aurora's (girl on the logo) legs, cause it just wasn't working for me. Plus there were other little tweaks as the process went on.
There you go. Go buy the poster. Because, who doesn't need a huge slime dude on their wall.
POSTER: teespring.com/RP_Nebula
Or if you want a poster signed by the Nebula Jazz cast, plus itmeJP, Aureylian and SirScoots
check out Rollplay Patreon for a limited time offer.
Your twitch and rollplay rabbit hole links:
Itmejp's (creator of Rollplay) website: http://itmejp.com/
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/
Jp's Twitch: Twitch.TV/itmeJP
Youtube Archives: https://goo.gl/LPtT2k