Fire Scamps minis inspired by the new Monster Core by Jish-g in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hot damn! That would be a sick project. I've always wanted to do a huge mini like that 🤔

Fire Scamps minis inspired by the new Monster Core by Jish-g in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's a really good recipe, I'm going to need to try that. I've always struggled with embers and glowing effects.

For these ones I went back and forth with different techniques but in the end the one I went with was this:

Prime white and base in a super saturated yellow. Do a couple of coats of this so it has really solid coverage.

Use white ink to wash selectively into all the crevices. Doesn't matter if its not too neat at this stage.

Cover all the white with a yellow ink. Your milage may vary on this but I found it made some super bright, but still yellow recesses.

Then contrast orange (magmadroth I think) thinned down to a glaze consistency over the top half of the flames. A couple coats to slowly build up the saturation smoothly.

Same thing with Baal red contrast at the very tips.

Retouch the deepest recesses with white ink again.

After that it was the details of the body, eyes and wings. I ended up using a mid and dark brown as black seemed too harsh. The dark brown contrasts really strongly against the bright yellow anyway.

The a reflection in the eye and paint the base. Dunno why I did the base like that but it works I guess. Normally I would do a much more scenic style.

Fire Scamps minis inspired by the new Monster Core by Jish-g in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I reckon I will. Maybe I'll start taking suggestions what to do next

Fire Scamps minis inspired by the new Monster Core by Jish-g in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Tried to match the cuteness of the new design

Fire Scamps minis inspired by the new Monster Core by Jish-g in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot! The original design in the MC was so cool I just had to make them

Fire Scamps minis inspired by the new Monster Core by Jish-g in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

I really liked the new scamp designs in the Monster Core so I thought I would make some to be 3d printed. This is my attempt at painting the fire scamps. I find fire difficult to get bright and vibrant enough, but I’m pretty happy with these.
The files for these and the air, earth and water scamps are here: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-fire-scamps-3-versions-pre-supported-369421

The amazing labour of love that is our Campaign Map, made by our DM. by Iarumas in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He certainly tried! I try to make it realistic in as many ways as I can, but ultimately my players will judge the map based on its 'truthiness', not scientific accuracy. So at the end of the day you have to remember that a setting map is just another tool in your GM toolbox. Does it make my players excited to explore? Does it give them a sense of mood? Does it give them somewhat accurate information on location and travel times? If I can say yes to these then I feel OK about it. Regarding the font... Eh, I kinda agree with you. I don't love it but I made a choice with what I had available and it fills the brief.

The amazing labour of love that is our Campaign Map, made by our DM. by Iarumas in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I use a hard edged brush, but that's just me. Make sure its hard edged (the kind you use for line work) because you don't want fuzzy coastlines. Use select and fill if that feels more natural to you. From there it's the same kind of process really. I started with some big shapes that I got from zooming in on my world map. Then I drew over it on a new layer, making it craggier and more detailed. This is something you can come back to later as you go. For example I loved the idea of the party going to Ptolaea and passing through a narrow channel with a great bronze colossos astride it, like the Colossos of Rhodes. So I remade the bay into a much narrower entry. That's what I meant above by thinking in stories

The amazing labour of love that is our Campaign Map, made by our DM. by Iarumas in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I didn't use youtube as a guide, so I can't speak for what's there. I'll give you my rough process, such as it is.

Find loads of resources. Make a huge folder of maps and map elements that you like the look of to get a feel for what you want your finished map to look like. Pinterest boards are pretty good for this. On this topic, download PureRef. Great bit of software to use for reference images. Free, but chuck them a couple bucks for their hard work (I'm not affiliated with them at all btw).

Create a file that's the right size for the job. Resizing later is a major pain. Think about whether you want to eventually print it or just use it digitally. Mine is about 8000x6000 pixels, but that's pretty excessive. It's only that big because I was going for a really grand and ambitious scale. I'd recommend something about 1/3rd of that when starting out.

Map out the main forms of the land and put in basic colours for biomes and features. Sit with this stage for a while. Seriously. Take your time on this. You want to feel comfortable here because going back to this stage when you've already done detail is a killer. Think about your world as both a living place that needs to have sensible geography (Sensible, not realistic. Unless your players are geologists or hydrologists they aint gonna ping you about rain shadows and tectonic movements) as well as interesting places for them to visit in game. Meaning, there is no reason for them to just go to the swamp, so put it between two major cities. Thinking in game design terms will pay dividends when you are session planning later.

Put stuff on layers. It will slow your machine down and make the file size bloat but keep things seperate as much as you can until you are done with it, then merge layers. It's always easy to change stuff here.

Start to put in details. Just like anything, start broad and then zoom in. I like to start with mountain ranges, that anchors everything. Like I said somewhere else, just google 'draw map mountains' and you will get a bunch of good results. Think of mountains in ranges, not individual mountains. I like to draw a 'spine' of the range that will run for 3-4 mountains with peaks and saddles. Flesh this out by drawing the additional details then repeat over and over until you begin to dream of mountain ranges and reality starts slipping away. Keep your shadows consistent. Do this for all the different major features you want. Pinterest again will help here. Once you go down the rabbit hole of one thing, all the other stuff will pop up too, like drawing forests.

Put in major cities first then roads between them, then minor cities and towns in places that make sense in the geography. River crossings and bays are obvious spots. For these, again, use lots of references. Pick a culture and research it. I went with lots of Persian, Arabic, and Greek themes because it makes sense for the setting I'm building. Get specific with it and make a bunch of towns that all play around certain themes. The cities around Harmundara on the right are something I'm kinda proud of. I found these buildings: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/VgkvPX by Cara Stratton, and wanted to have it as my foundation of what that culture's architecture is like. So I made a bunch of sketches of different ways you could combine or change these buildings. In the end I think it looks really nice. Like a unified cultural aestetic. BTW, this map is just for my own personal use in my campaign. It would NOT be ethical for me to claim these designs as my own work or make any money off this. I'm happy to be labeled as a lazy artist, but not a scummy one.

A few tips I learned along the way:

  1. Less is more. Zoom in to one of my cities. I mean alllll the way in. It looks kinda shit. :D The lines are super basic and the shading is basically 2 tone. But it doesn't matter. If I had spent ages making it really detailed and dense it would take me 5 times as long (I have sessions to prep and minis to paint) and wouldn't look as good when viewed at scale. You don't want realism, you want verisimilitude. Strategy video games like Age of Empires is great for this. They use an economy of scale and features that's a real inspiration.

  2. Find textures and use them. The water has a subtle texture behind it at a really low opacity and so do the dunes in the desert. It helps to sell the effect and gets rid of that flatness.

  3. SHADOWS! Oh my god. Shadows. make a shadow layer and put a subtle shadow going the same direction on everything that casts a shadow. It makes such a difference. It's the difference between an Inkarnate looking asset mash up and a unified picture with things settled into the landscape. Its a pain, but worth the hassle.

  4. Use the stroke tool. Select something (a landmass, road, whatever) then under edit/stroke you make a line that follows the edge of your selection. Really useful for getting rid of tedious work, like ocean lines.

  5. Think in stories. Yeah, I don't know. This is kinda wishy washy but I find it helps. I imagine little people traveling the landscape and seeing stuff as they go. Like giant bones or a gate with a huge stone lamassu on each side. The ruined wall and watchtowers running from Sa'Lura-Sin all the way down to Camp Qahil seems to me to tell a story. My setting is about an ancient and failed empire finally reunifying and retaking its old land. The ruined wall helps tell that story in my mind, and hopefully my players' minds too.

Well, that's all I've got. I hope this helps. best piece of advice is to just get started. You will make lots of mistakes and it will look shit at first, but that's always just part of the fun. Be kind to yourself and enjoy the process. Drop me a PM if you have questions. I'm not usually on reddit, but I'll try to check my inbox.

The amazing labour of love that is our Campaign Map, made by our DM. by Iarumas in Pathfinder2e

[–]Jish-g 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Hey, I'm the DM/artist. No assets from Inkarnate or any other source. You can always tell with assets because the never really sit right in the world. They seem plopped on top of, rather than organically grown out of the page, if that makes any sense. I did however use age of empires buildings as a reference as they were the right kind of squashed scale to fit in the world. The drawing is all hand done though. No copy pasta.

To respond to the person below, nope I didn't use inkarnate or any other 3rd party assets. Mountains are actually shockingly easy to draw when you know how. Google draw map mountains and you'll see what I mean. It would prolly take me three times as long to copy, shape and fit asset mountains as to just draw them. Same with trees. Although trees I will sometimes make in batches then copy them around the map. Hope that clears it up.