For a long time now I have wanted to write a tutorial about buying art commissions from artists on the internet.

The images here are from an upcoming game about Special Forces and Monsters!

Eventually I began working with an Artist on the Ghost Guns RPG project.

Sketches and Artist’s renderings by Enmanuel Martinez, I asked Enmanuel if I could show some of the Work In Progress stuff to give people a behind the scenes view of the process and he agreed.

Originally we started with some Monsters, so lets talk about Monsters. Same as the last article, posing as part of the image composition is just as important as getting the rest of the details right. If you don’t send pose references to you artist expect to have to add that direction later on.

So our first Monster was supposed to be a stylized Ghost, I sent some references and Enmanuel came back with this.

Wraith Sketches

From left to right Sketch 1 was the most dynamic, Sketch 2 looked like someone startled him but not much else was going on. Sketch 3 looked almost too human and wasn’t what I wanted for this piece, but it did have the echo-y effect I wanted. I asked Enmanuel to give me a Sketch 1 with the Sketch 3 echo effect.

Wraith Final

The Wraith was the first of the monsters, next we went with something we’ll call the Beast, although we both had a decent Idea of what we wanted, I didn’t send any references or poses for the Beast.

Beast Sketch 01

Sketch 1 and 3 are just kind of hanging out, Sketch 2 Enmanuel was going for kind of a Planet of the Apes kind of thing, but the back legs just weirded me out. I found some poses and asked for another round of sketches with adjustments to 1 and 3. Also the no neck thing had to go.

Beast Sketch 02

Looking over this, arm and hand poses are much better, having actual necks is better, but I’m not liking the Horns on Sketch 3. I ask to get rid of the horns and eyes on Sketch 3. We always imagined the Beast as a blind hunter.

Beast Sketch 03

After a long process of kind of favoring Sketch 1, Sketch 3 turns out being my favorite and Sketch 3 is what we use for the final. It is important to play around and try new things when you aren’t seeing what you want and maybe just maybe send the artist a couple of poses before he or she starts sketching.

Beast Final

Final Beast art and onto the Zombie art.

Zombie Sketch 01

Sketch 01 I really like the face, Sketch 2 I really like the pose, Sketch 3 doesn’t have much going on. I ask for a version of sketch 2 with Sketch 1’s face.,

Zombie Sketch 02

Sketch 02 is the one we go with and I think you’ll see the final has a lot more detail.

Zombie Final

After these Zombie, I wanted a Vampire type of character, I sent some references and got some great sketches back.

Vampire Sketch 01

Sketch 1 seems to be the one just standing around this time, Sketch 2 is pretty good, Sketch 3 looks like he’s waiting to catch something or start wrestling someone. I really want to see Sketch 2 with lots of the bright streaks on his skin.

Vampire sketch 02

Sketch 2 with streaks it is.

Vampire Final

All of the images were done in grayscale, none of these are done in color or rely on color, a lot of the equipment stuff is going to be in Black and White, likewise Guns don’t always need color to show all of their details. The Black and White motif will also accommodate some of the horror aspect of the monsters.

I hope this helps some of you out there looking to buy pieces for yourself or for your own RPG projects.

If you have any feedback about this post or our books please feel free to contact us.

Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com