DM Toolbox, Black & Red

It's been awhile since I've made a toolbox and certainly time for a few changes to the build.  For one thing, now that I have a much better 3D printer I was able to add some decor to the corner caps.  Didn't even need to wrap them all up in tape and weathering.  Due to the material I had on hand I had to use some cuts that weren't as clean as I might prefer.  The solution there was the extra bit of leather under the emblem.  It's another piece of vegtan and even stained in more or less the same way as the emblem.  It's just flipped so the flesh side faces out, giving it a different texture.  I like the effect but don't know if it's something I'll ever do often.

Dog Collar for Radric

Radric's a nice looking pit bull who'd outgrown his previous collar.  I'm guessing he has a thing for ice cream too since the client was very keen on having it on the collar.

Dice Pouch, Star Wars meets D&D

This pouch was a gift for the client's spouse and all I really had to go on was that they were a fan of Star Wars and D&D and the pouch should mostly be black.  I manipulated the Star Wars font into some initials and tossed in some crossed swords for good measure.  Voila!

Handrawn Map

For anyone who follows me on twitter this is probably old news.  As soon as work let up enough to permit me the time I took a cartography course offered by Deven Rue (details at rueink.com).  I've made lots of maps from scratch but usually the whole process happened in the computer.  Ms. Rue draws her maps by hand and aside from the different technique it was exciting to see how someone else approaches the same problems.

I couldn't guess how long it took to draw the map since it I worked on it a couple hours at a time over the course of at least a week.  I had a vague idea of what I wanted when I started and starting with a pencil (as opposed to a mouse) made it pretty easy to play with things on the fly.

I bought a set of micron pens and some heavy vellum paper for just this sort of project.  Using the two together there's a sort of subtle texturing to the lines that, again, wouldn't necessarily come out of a map drawn on the PC.  Of course, it took forever to ink all those trees and do some of the shading and details but probably not that much longer than it would've taken on the computer when I think about it.

I'm pretty happy with the result on its own and I've noted some things I can improve on when I get the opportunity to draw another map.  In the meantime, I took advantage of having a high resolution scan to add some color and detailing.  Now it'll probably sit about gathering dust until I can pull it out and make use of it in some future campaign.

Buckles, Ski Patrol

I guess someone's having a party on the slopes in Colorado!  They cleared me out of buckles so hopefully I can restock before the next order comes in.

Map, New Orleans Neighborhoods

I received this commission with a few specs when it was purchased but wasn't able to reach the client afterwards.  It probably didn't help that with the backlog of orders I had at the time it was a week or two before I was able to finalize a draft.  Still, I think the map came out pretty well and it met the specs I was given so I hope the client's happy with it!

Dice Cup, Mass Effect: Andromeda

The latest installment of Mass Effect was released a couple weeks ago so of course it's been on our minds a lot.  The way Bioware can spin a story out characters and choices is pretty remarkable.  One of our regular D&D players keeps showing up to games wearing N7 swag.  With all this it would've been hard not to make something showing off how much we appreciate this franchise and the community around it. 

It's pretty great stuff! ^_^  The dice cup's is up on the store here.