Commissioning Art For Street Wolves: Concept to Execution
I thought it might be interesting to give a look behind the curtain at what the commission process for Street Wolves can look like. Artists share their process, but what’s it like for a tabletop role playing creator? How do we work with artists?
I’d also like to take this opportunity to share how much I enjoy working with artist Nataly/natbugart, so this is also a way to share some links to her.
Step 1: Conception and Estimate
In the estimation phase I send Nataly some ideas on what I might want to see along with some images to get an estimate.
I get inspiration for Street Wolves commissions from a variety of places from old magazine ads to screencaps of action movies and television shows.
A big source is the television series Miami Vice. In this case, I was inspired by this image I found online of Crockett and Tubbs looking through a peephole.
Because it’s less expensive to do only one figure, I asked for an estimate with just one character and not two. After getting the estimate, it was a months long waiting game to fund the Kickstarter art goals, then get to this piece.
There was also another image I had found at the same time, but the scene was much more complicated with three figures and was really sad. Because of the higher cost for that one and the fact I wanted a more “fun” illustration, I didn’t commission that one, but may come back to it for a future release.
Step 2: The Commission
Once I had the Kickstarter funds, it was actually time to commission the art. I had to think of a character to focus the image on. Who might be interesting to see? In this instance it had to be, Material Kid. She’s a great embodiment of Street Wolves. She’s very 80s looking, is brash, and has a great personality. She came out of my home games as I developed the concept and she’s my favorite NPC to play.
And as mentioned before, for this image I wanted something more fun. I had just commissioned a bunch of more serious ones, so it was time for something slightly less serious.
I sent the following image of Material Kid to Nataly as a reference:
I also sent the following image of Kimberly Tiffany (a character who appears in the Jumpstart), with the request that I’d like as much detail in the commissioned illustration as this one (sometimes you can save money with an artist if they do less detail, in this case I was willing to pay more).
The one issue I had with this comission: I couldn’t think of anything “fun” I wanted Material Kid to do in her pose. She’s already blowing a kiss twice in art in the book. What else could she do? This I left in the hands of Nataly, asking her if she had any ideas.
Step 3: The Sketch
The rough sketch that N_bug sent back was great, but we had some crossed wires. She missed the Material Kid directive and went with Kimberly Tiffany. Still looks great, but we needed to adjust that.
And even though it’s rough, I wanted to make sure we got the hand holding the bottle right. And because I didn’t want to learn how to use a 3D modeling program, I whipped a mini using Hero Forge to get across how it could look. I tried to match the pose as best I could in Hero Forge and then spent time adjusting the wrist/hand/arm position.
I then sent it to Nataly along with a few more reference images of what Material Kid looks like.
Step 4: The Revision
Nataly got to work and then knocked it out of the park! I really had no further notes at this point. Though we did need to get the “door” and peephole yet.
I sent these two reference photos so we were on the same page. Sorry, I can’t share them though because they’re photos that likely have a copyright on them.
Step 5: Final Touches
Nataly quickly came back with the following version of the art. It was perfect!
I went into Photoshop and distorted the art just a smidge to give it the more accurate circular peephole look (I’m so sick of the word peephole right now). I could have gone a lot more fisheye lens feel, but I could feel Material Kid yelling at me in my head the more I used the bloat tool.
You may see this art used in the future for something else, so I wanted the illustration to be non distorted to be more versatile. Thankfully, Nataly saved me some time by providing a distorted background in her Photoshop layers.
And that’s the typical way I work with artists on my projects. I like to provide a lot of references for them and give direction, but I don’t want to be too picky and crush their spirit/artistic freedoms. And if there’s some sort of effect I feel like I can do, I just have them do their thing and then work on it on my end (making sure they’re cool with that).
Nataly’s Links
If you’d like to commission art from Nataly or would simply like to follow her work, here’s some links:
One Last Thing
Nataly is Ukrainian and even if you can’t buy commissions, please consider donating to help the people of Ukraine. Many people suffer from the war. A couple of good charities to give to help (in Ukraine and elsewhere) are World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders.
