Saturday, June 9, 2012

Corbin: From the Sketchbook

Corbin
No. Enc.: 1d4 (2d6)
Alignment: 90% Chaotic/10% Neutral
Movement: 90' (30')
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 3 (Gain levels as dual-class Thief/Magic-users)
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d4 (Bite), or by weapon/spell
Save: MU4
Morale: 10

Sly con-artists, cunning ambushers, ravenous bandits with a fondness for all things shiny, the Corbin prowl the peripheries of settled territories looking for likely marks, gullible dupes or obvious victims to loot, rob or pillage. But these are not simplistic pig-snouted brutes who stomp around hacking things with axes and pissing in wells, no--these are clever humanoids who seek to acquire ill-gotten gains by way of subterfuge, misdirection, trickery and without drawing a weapon...when they can. But should all else fail, or a target prove unwilling to abide by the Corbin's rules, they will get nasty. Plenty nasty. Watch out for the back-stabber behind you...

5 comments:

  1. Good line work, may I ask what your process is? Is this tablet drawn? Scanned and relined or simply pen and ink.

    Nice sneaky humanoid as well.

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  2. Thank you. I use different techniques/approaches for whichever piece I'm working on. It all depends on the circumstances. Ball-point pen on bar napkin works fine for some things. Sharpie on warehouse walls works good too...but is hard to scan/photograph effectively. In this case I drew out the character using a razor point pen on a scrap of type-writer paper. It sat in my art-case for about twenty years, then I scanned it in and added the background. There is a 3-point stroke added-on in Photoshop, mostly because I didn't take time to do it with a thicker pen this time around.

    I do not own a tablet, but hope to get one soon--I have been learning to do digital painting, and a tablet would really help make that far more do-able.

    The Corbin are fun to run. Very mischievous. Not terribly confrontational, unless provoked. Easily bribed or distracted. Players who think a bit before lunging at everything with pointy objects can often times work out some sort of deal with these folks. Encounters with the Corbin are a good opportunity to delve into some of that 'the player's skill versus their character's skill-on-a-sheet' thing that some of the old schoolers talk about.

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    Replies
    1. Very clean for freehand line, my training (ancient now) is in oil and acrylic and I blame that for my pen work tends to be messy. I guess it's just like anatomy - a matter of practice, no magic clean up tool on the screen.

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  3. Thanks again. I used to draw a lot more than I do now, but I'm looking to get back into it over the Summer. I like to do stuff freehand and then scan it in to overlay textures or to colorize or add shadows. I'm still looking for a magic clean-up button, or plug-in but so far, no luck. Anatomy is one of those foundational skills we all come back to again and again, or we go draw buildings or trees. Practice is the only real secret. Lot's of practice. Good thing some of us enjoy doing this sort of thing.

    It would be fun to try my hand at acrylics again. I used to do a lot of water colors, and Dr. Marten's inks with a crow quill and India ink, back in the day...but then I was lucky enough to get some drafting training in High School. The kind of drafting that used tape, X-acto knives, various pencils, rulers, etc.

    No one does that any more, I guess.

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  4. Good stuff. Exactly the sort of behavior I'd expect for a corvid of some sort.

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