Showtime - Kickstarting a Circus-noir Graphic Novel, and a bit on miniature technique

Along with my work with miniatures, my main creative outlet is my graphic novel illustration, and, after the requisite blood, sweat, and tears, my graphic novel, Tightrope: The Illusion of Height, is live on kickstarter!

The worlds of illustration and miniatures aren't as far apart as you might think. I actually use a lot of the same techniques in painting as I do in illustration-- one of the most obvious bits is my Object Source Light work:

The Face of Revolution - Kang Sketch

I really like Kang's concept, but felt that his pose didn't really convey his character.

Adaptation - Two variant tarot cards

I'd never really been a fan of woodcuts until I encountered Lynd Ward's "Gods' Man: A Novel in Woodcuts" in a little used bookstore.

Marseille Sophistiqué - Tarot Kickstarting, week 1 (part 5)

So, Kickstarter has come to town. As of writing this, my wife's and my kickstarter is about $50 from funded, as we pass the first week mark (I believe it was around 1:00 PM, last Monday, when we launched).

Marseille Sophistiqué is an updated version of the French Tarot (or Tarocchi) deck, which was created in Europe in the 15th century and used for card games well before it was adopted (and adapted) for fortune telling/divination.

For a little detail on how French Tarot is played, it's a point-trick taking game, that can be played in variants of 3-6 players (4 is standard, and the larger family of games can accommodate 2-8 players), that revolves around the idea of intentionally unbalanced hands: The cards are only very lightly randomized, with the goal that one player will have a strong enough hand to take on a team of all of the other players, combined.

Marseille Sophistiqué - Tarot Illustration (part 4)

So, things are getting pretty close to set, with this deck. The image above is a variant on our box art- we're going with a horizontal format- and features a preview of our Trumps/Major Arcana.

Marseille Sophistiqué - Tarot Illustration (part 3)

...And then there were four.

In the Cards - Tarot Illustration (part 2)

I've done quite a few more cards, and fine-tuned the ones I've completed further.

In the Cards - Tarot Illustration (part 1)

So, this is a pretty big shift from most of what I've been doing.