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 Pirates, Space Pirates!

Eventually I began working with a Hungarian Artist on the Galaxy Pirates RPG project.

Sketches and Artist’s renderings by Tamas Baranya, I asked Tomi 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.

The pieces below are for a Space Fighter, it was supposed to be a basic cockpit pod with two big engines and knifelike wings.

So in the beginning we get the wings that look like a peach with no pit, based on the wings alone it looks too much like something Star Wars did. The engines are way too tiny and the wing roots off of those engines probably couldn’t bear the weight of those wings.

Eldred Fighter sketch

I take the sketch in Photoshop and fill in the peach pits, blow up the engines and try to draw a straight line on the outside of the wings to create a wedge.

Edited Sketch

I ask Tomi to take a look at the mangled job I did in PS and see if he can work with that.

Tomi’s revision

Thanks goodness for professional artists, the engines look better, wings look fantastic and the cockpit is shaping up.

Final Image

So in the end this is the Eldred Space Fighter, hopefully it will mark the beginning of a redesign era for the Eldred Cruisers to keep all their ships looking similar.

I hope these articles give you a better feel for the process how to use thumbnail sketches, and for making design choices to make your setting unique.

So breakdown of the Fighter sketch, the Eldred Fighter had concepts in mind, and hopefully a specific publishable project.

-The final images were done in black and white, 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 and Spacesuits don’t always need color to show all of their details. Certain thing like Grenades will be in color.

-Eventually I came up with a project, I could try to compare it to other starship supplements for pricing and sales information which means I might know how much money I might make back on it.

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