The Future is Gooz

Concept: It is the future and all the pretty people are dead. Only the lowly Gooz remain.

Long live GOZR.

#gozr

Echoes (Older'n Dirt Art XXVI)

Page one of Echoes, a Pan-Gea comic written by my friend Jayne and scribbled by me on Paris Paper for Pens.

Fawn & Serpent (Old Art XXV)

More Pan-Gea stuff. This one was cool because a guy sent me a sketchbook in the mail so I could draw directly into it. It wasn't "his" sketchbook, in the traditional sense. He would take to conventions and pay comic artists to draw in it. Most of the art already in the book was from creators I didn't know but there was at least one or two pieces from big names. I just can't remember who the hell they were.

It struck me as a bit odd and risky to send a stranger such a treasure and ask them too doodle in it. But it turned out pretty good, I think. There's a color version of this that will show up in the series later. Since I'm getting old and senile I might forget I wrote this one and repeat the story like a codger telling tales of The Big One.

Sarrow (Really Old Art XXIV)

This guy's name is Sarrow. I think he was supposed to be a character in my comic Pan-Gea: Seven Arrows, but he ended up being cut. He's still bitter about it.

Pan-Gea Logo (Old Art XXIII)

Here's a logo I made for my comic Pan-Gea soon after its release. I was anticipating it to be a series, but that didn't pan out. Never got to use this one except on a tee shirt.

Inspiration, Utility, Prurient Magic

An RPG experience isn't just at the table. I think for sure that actual play is the most important outcome for an RPG - that's what they are made for. But another important goal for an RPG is inspiration.

When I first jumped into gaming I was mostly doing it alone. The game books I owned, few though they were, were sources of endless inspiration. I read bits of them and flipped through to see the images, read the stats, etc. I got ideas. I made shit up.

When I create game books I want to inspire. I am actually less concerned with how much actual play occurs than I am with how much I inspire people to play and be creative. If you picked up some issue of Black Pudding and it gave you an idea that made you feel inspired then that is 100% fulfillment of my goal. If you then use the book at the table, that's icing on the cake.

As I move forward with my creative life I plan to embrace this attitude more fully. I plan to be a little more relaxed with how I create and just let things be what they are. I plan to make more books and I plan to make them with even more of an eye toward inspiring people. Sure, I still want them to be useful in terms of play, but the table utility is not and cannot be the number one priority or else I'll lose my god damned mind.

Let's call it 60/40 aesthetic/utility.

Speaking of inspiration... I found this little doodle. Obviously from some pocket notebook I was carrying around, probably around 2008 or so. I think this was an idea for a magic system with 7 magics. Given that the 7th magic is sexual, who knows what illicit ideas I was cooking up back then.

Come to think of it, this scheme has 3 different emotion/feelie based magics. I believe the Lovely school of magic was all about good vibes, healing, etc. Emotric was about emotions, mental states, etc. And Prurient was the horndog school.

Blood Red Sketch 1000

Quick colors for this chick. Prismacolor markers.

Brig Iceclover (Older Than Dirt Art XXII)

Brig Iceclover was a character from my Pan-Gea comic, a sister to Fawn Rainchild.

Blood Red

Keeping it loose tonight, sketching and brainstorming. Feeling pretty good. Life can be a real shitstorm, so we gotta take our breaks and our good vibes where we can get 'em.

Here's a Blood Red style doodle for ya. Blood Red, in case you didn't know, is one of the labels I slap on my pin-up style art. Back in the oughts I did a couple of pin-up books called Blood Red. Nobody noticed, and perhaps they are better left buried. I was really a bit nuts with the tits back then. Seriously.

Armor? Who the hell wears armor?

Russ Hillborn (Old Art XXI)

Russ Hillborn is a cat person character I created long ago. He's sort of a Gandalf figure who appeared in a short comic called Winter.