Tumbling

As this place has become a ghost town, I would like to point people towards my Tumblr: drawthetoy.tumblr.com

I've been posting pictures of my collection there along with the occasional drawing. I hope to again begin posting here as well, but time will tell. 

Sharing with Others

One of they joys of playing RPGs is the collaboration. Sitting with other creating a story, or world or even just creating the characters can be such fun. As I said I didn't play until  college and in the years since I haven't gotten to play too much. A few years back I listened to the Penny Arcade, PVP, Wil Wheaton podcasts. Those lead me to the Major Spoilers Critical Hit podcasts.

Critical Hit is really good as they keep it clean and I was able to let my son listen. He then became intersted in play D&D too. I'm not much of a DM but I was able to do a few simple campaigns with him and his less interested sister. My wife even played once with us.

So below is my son's first character, Heskan, the dragonborn warrior.

First Characters

Well D&D month is coming to a close and I'm only getting around to my second post. Maybe this blogging thing isn't for me. Well if there is anyone still reading, hello internet peoples.

I dug up an old sketch book to show the first few characters I made. These drawing would have  been from 1994 or 95. As any artist will tell you it's a bit rough looking back at old art, but all these pieces lead me to the artist I am now.

First up is Kauch, elven thief. As I mentioned in the previous post the first setting I played in was Dark Sun. Elf in the Dark Sun world were very tall and tended to have dreadlocks. They were desert people. The beginning of the game had all the player characters being transported on a slave ship. They then attempted to take over the ship until they were captured again. The most notable part was that my character attempted to hold on to a weapon by clenching it between his but cheeks. It was a cross bow bolt and of no use. Even when the team eventually found a crossbow, no one wanted the bolt.

Next was Tal Jepel, human cleric of lightening. I spent a lot more time working on the back story for this character. The DM and even developed the version of religion he followed. It was primarily based on speed and Tal had an exceptionally high dexterity. His main focus was to have thought and action be one. Sadly after all that work I only got to play him once. 
Back when I drew this picture and the one above I did all of my inking with a tech pen with a tiny point. Tech pens are in my opinion the worst thing to ink with. They give you a dead line with no weight or feeling. You also spend much of your time unclogging them. Thank goodness I eventually discovered brushes.

Finally we Taruk Jepel, human ranger. I thought it was a fun idea to have my characters be related. Taruk was the character that I got to play the longest. By then end his group had slayed a dragon and the decision was made to turn in into a paladin an specifically a dragon slayer. We only played one more game with him in that roll, before the group fell apart. We did play several other one shots, but nothing was as grand or epic as the adventures as Taruk, Reefe and Posius.

To end this post here is a recent drawing of Taruk, Reefe, and Posius. Hopefully you can see that I've improved over the years.

Real men can calculate Thac0

My first set of dice.  Any gamer will tell you picking out your dice is as important as picking your character class.

And now for something completely different. Instead of the usual action figure, I am going to talk about another sort of toy, the polyhedral dice. Specifically those used in the playing of Dungeons and Dragons and other RPGs.

The mighty d20

Now like most kids I was aware of D&D, but had never played it. I knew some kids in high school who played and my school even had a gamers club. Being a shy fellow, I never asked if I could play too. I secretly wanted to though. It wasn't until college, specifically my sophomore year, that I began hanging out with a group of like minded nerds and one proposed a gaming session.

d6s

We went through two sessions with a large group of people. Each had a different DM and a different setting. The first was Dark Sun, in which I played an elven thief, and the second was Ravenloft, in which I played a human cleric. The group eventually whittled down to four and a new game was begun, one that would last most of the year.

Do they even make percentile dice anymore?

The new game was set in just the generic D&D realm. I played a human ranger name Taruk. The co-other of this blog played Reefe, a halfling fight thief. (Yes D&D is how Kir and I became friends The 3rd player was a Minotaur mage. Finally there was our DM, who  to this day is still one of the best DMs I have played with. He was good and both planing things out and playing off the cuff.

So in honor of the good times I had and the friendships I have made, I am kicking off D&D month. I'll be posting pictures of the various characters I've played and the various groups I played in. I may even see if I can scrounge up old drawings from when the characters were first made.

d4 friend of daggers and lower mage spells

M.A.S.K. Condor

Battle of the Helm..er..M.A.S.K.

Awhile back I mentioned my love of figures with helmets. Take a cool figure and put a helmet on them and they became awesome. Imagine my joy when a toy line and cartoon came along with this exact same premise, M.A.S.K.

M.A.S.K. or Mobile Armored Strike Command, came along towards the end of the transforming toy craze of the 80s. Instead of vehicles transforming, converting or go-botting into robots, the cars and motorcycles of M.A.S.K. transformed into... slightly  different cars and motorcycles and things.  The best part of the line was that each vehicle came with a driver who had, you guessed it, a helmet which you could remove.

Now my family were a bit on the poorer side and I really didn't have many vehicles for my action figures. An action figure only cost a couple bucks back then but vehicles and play sets could be in the double digits. I really didn't think I would be able to get anything from the line. Luckily some of the M.A.S.K line were relatively small and cheap. In fact one of the best toys was one of the cheapest, the Condor.

Condor was a green motorcycle which converted into a helicopter. It was sleek and a really well designed toy. Condor was piloted by Brad Turner, who was some sort of rock star in the show. Aside from his mask the figure had glasses molded on his face. As a young nerd, it was exciting to see a figure with glasses. Sure they were meant to be sunglasses, but still I could pretend he had trouble seeing the black board in school just like me.

I ended up with 3 M.A.S.K. vehicles during my childhood. Some of my friends had more, but everyone had the Condor. Even though he was common, none of us thought he was lame. The fact that we had all put the same toy on our Christmas lists can attest to his awesomeness.

Making amends

Yes, we've been gone. So here's some toy catalog pages from the 80s. All better?

This is the first toy I remember ever having. The best part was the hand drill.

Yes there are Star Wars toys on this page, but I also had the crayola set in the bottom right hand corner. Do they still make sets like that? I'd highly recommend them for any aspiring artists.

Prototype Man-E-Faces.

I had the Battlestar Galactica Viper. It was one of my favorite toys, but unfortunately it didn't survive. 

MORK!

Yes, we've been gone. So here's some toy catalog pages from the 80s. All better?