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? 

A bit of the process

So I love sketch blogs that show a bit of people's process. I think it's rather... well brave isn't the right work, but maybe honest when artists let you behind the curtain. So with that in mind I decided to post some of the preliminary sketches for the work I have created here. I hope you enjoy them.

freakie sketches along with some paint smudges

my original Mister Miracle didn't feel quite right

some thumbs for my second attempt at MM

Zuckuss tumbs

uh... what do you know

So I did my drawing of Slave 1 and after I scanned it in I accidentally inverted the image. And I liked it. So here it is inverted.

We're Back - Slave 1

Slave 1
The coolest ship in the star wars universe? I might argue against that now, maybe. But as a kid, no, there was no ship more awesome, more iconic or more badass. Did it help that Boba Fett flew it? YES.



I mean LOOK at that thing. How fucked up is that?

From Wookieepedia -
"Some people mistakenly believe the Slave I's design was inspired by a lamp post outside the ILM building. But Nilo Rodis-Jamero, an art director on The Empire Strikes Back, said that his design for the Slave I was actually based on a radar dish. It was later on when the ship was being constructed at ILM that someone pointed out that it resembled a street lamp, and from then on people just assumed that that had been the original source of the design."



I think it looks like a horses head. And how awesome was it that he flew it vertically?




The Challenge: Draw Slave 1. Examples: in flight, in combat, on the landing pad in Cloud City, delivering Han to Jabba, etc