Numenera Equipment

Designing equipment for the world of Numenera is an interesting experience. As almost all of the technology in the game is left over from previous advanced civilisations, often the initial use and understanding behind the technology has been lost along with its creators. This leaves many items that have been modified to perform new functions or have abilities and functions that are not obvious from their appearance. This made for some fun drawing the items, where I could think about interesting and unusual shapes, textures or colours without necessarily having to work out exactly what each button or widget on the device does or even how it works.

Here are a couple of pieces which have been released as Thunderstone: Numenera cards from AEG, and also appear in the Numenera Core book from Monte Cook Games.

First up is the Chemical Injector, originally called a Virtuous Admixture (I think that was a much cooler name!) in the art description, here is how it was described:

"This is a high-tech injector, full of a frothy yellow liquid—like a Red Bull in injectible form. The hand holding it is kind of grimy, with bad nails. A low-tech person is using this high-tech device."

Chemical Injector

Next is the Bio-energy Cutter, or as the original description described it, the Soul Cutter! This one went through a bit of a change in the sketch phase. The Description asked for:

"This broad sword has a glowing blade. The cutting edge has a blue sheen to it, like there's a line of monofilament or something that lets you cut so sharply, you can cut SOULS as well as bodies. Whoa!"

My initial design was a bit too 'generic fantasy sword' in style and didn't have the unusual-tech influence we were going for in Numenera. As you can see the revised sketch (below) captured a more unique design...

Bio-energy Cutter Sketches

And I think the final illustration is much better for it (and I think one of my favourite equipment pieces I worked on!

Bio-energy Cutter

Heaps more to show, but you'll have to come back next time for more ;)

Numenera Creatures

With Numenera being one of the products including my artwork released this year at GenCon, I have a swag of interior work to show. Instead of swamping you with all of it in one hit I thought I'd break it up into a few posts (and also give me something to show for the next couple of months!)

First up are a couple of critters I got to illustrate for the creature section of the Numenera Corebook from Monte Cook Games (awesome people to work for by the way!).

The Culova is a spidery humanoid with spindly legs, a bulbous midsection, and a pair of human-like arms with three fingers. Eight beady eyes adorn its head above a disturbingly broad, toothy mouth.

Bred for battle in a prior world, these creatures are gigantic moths with pale yellow wings and bodies the color of skulls. Most have a wingspan of at least 5 feet. When they open their wings wide, they shed a brilliance that withers flesh without harming nonliving objects. “Stratharians” were not the ones to create the war moths, but were the first to find and make use of them in the early days of the Ninth World. The Stratharians are gone now, destroyed by the very creatures they sought to unleash on their enemies.

Karthador

GenCon is a great time of year, alot of the work done over the previous 12 months is released and finally able to be shared. I have a handful of products coming onto the market this year, and Karthador is one I have been really itching to show!

This book is from Reality Blurs, with the bulk of the setting and writing by the talented Darrell Hardy. It's a retro feeling future fantasy with a sprinkle of post apoc, and was a whole lot of fun to work on. I was trusted to produce the cover and all of the interior art.

I'll share the cover first, I was really pleased with how this piece came out and found it very refreshing to work on something a little different. The idea was a still life of some of the equipment you might find in the world of Karthador...

 
Next up I'll share some of the interior artwork...