Hugo Negron's Blog - Posts Tagged "grenadier-miniatures"
Thanks to all who participated in the free giveaway!
I just wanted to reach out and say thank you to all the folks who entered to win a free copy of Forging of a Knight, Prison Planet of the Mah-Lahkt! Three winners were picked, so Kim M., Shayla K., and Steve B., you'll be receiving your copy shortly!!
Next up will be some notes on the upcoming Forging of a Knight Book Four, the Stolen Thief, author interviews, and some fun looks at some old newsletters from a certain company called Grenadier Miniatures, for those who remember and for those who may not...
Happy Halloween!!
Next up will be some notes on the upcoming Forging of a Knight Book Four, the Stolen Thief, author interviews, and some fun looks at some old newsletters from a certain company called Grenadier Miniatures, for those who remember and for those who may not...
Happy Halloween!!
Grenadier Bulletin No 2
Another blast from the past - still a fun read - Riega Nerd and a "changing" Editor...
https://www.facebook.com/Forging.of.a...
https://www.facebook.com/Forging.of.a...
Grenadier Bulletin 5
Conventions, editorial good-byes and the F19 Pegasus...can't go wrong with that!
https://www.facebook.com/Forging.of.a...
https://www.facebook.com/Forging.of.a...
Interview with Ron Shirtz (Part One)!
As mentioned prior, an awesome interview with this talented illustrator/writer! From his work as shown in the Grenadier Bulletin, the Polyhedron, and Dragon Magazine (see attached some of my favorites from Ron taken from the pages of the old Grenadier Bulletin - Croink, the Rollin' Golem!), sit back and enjoy!
HN: Hi Ron – thanks again for taking the time to be interviewed! Let’s begin with telling us a little bit more about who Ron Shirtz is. How did you get into cartooning/illustration?
RS: Drawing runs in my family. My Dad showed some talent in his doodling. My older brother drew a lot, and I was inspired by his cartoons, though not as talented. I began doing cartoons of my Boy Scout troop, Church activities, and went on to draw a monthly strip, “Original Grin” for my High school newspaper. I enjoyed making people laugh.
HN: You’ve illustrated various cartoon strips, shown in both the old Grenadier Model’s Grenadier Bulletin and TSR’s fan mag the Polyhedron, among others. Some examples include The Knight Error, Croink, and Pennsylvania Smith. In addition, you have been involved in some RPG projects and created your RPG Tiles, which were famously shown in Dragon magazine. How did you develop your ideas for these?
A little background history... I've always admired the graphic components of the many RPG and wargames I’ve bought over the years. In fact, I'm usually sold on the graphic presentation of a game rather than the game system itself. I find the visual display of painted miniatures on colorful map sheets and game boards the coolest part of the gaming experience. When I bought a copy of the Milton Bradley game HeroQuest, and later Space Crusade, in 1998, I would not play either until I had all the miniatures painted!
In September of the same year I came across Dewayne Agin's HeroQuest website. On his site was a page devoted to downloadable game tiles for HeroQuest. Seeing this page sparked the desire to try my hand at making game board tiles. My first tiles were terrible, and thankfully forever digitally deleted. In the next two and a half years, I mastered the art of making tiles and eventually contributed over 100 full color game tiles to Dewayne's site.
Dewayne was very supportive in zipping the files and making new pages for the thumbnails to be posted. Many times I sent him a second or third version of a tile to replace the previous one that I discovered had minor errors. He cheerfully uploaded it to keep my sensitive artist ego happy. In 1999, at the suggestion of a HQ fan, I decided to try to market my tiles by offering a printing service for my tiles. Encouraged by the response, I created Working Stiff Productions.
Feeling confined with the standard 8" x 10" size format, I began making custom-sized 11" x 17" tiles. My next big break came when in October of 2000, the art director of Dragon magazine, Peter Whitley, reviewed a portfolio I had sent. He contracted me to do a series of five full color tile posters for five issues in the Dragon. Four posters tiles have been published in the issues 280-283. The last poster was to my knowledge never published. Perhaps it may yet appear in some future issue of the Dragon. Working for Dragon magazine helped me set higher standards for my tiles. Peter Whitley was very kind and helpful getting my work to fir a published format.
My work drew the attention of Mark H. Walker, of Shrapnel games. He commissioned me to do a set of game maps for his groundbreaking game, Forgotten Heroes: Vietnam. The 2003 August issue of PC Gamer gave Richard Caravan and I high marks (88%) for our artwork for the game. Richard designed the superb counters, and I did five full color maps. It was a great honor to hear the National Vietnam Veteran's Art museum had inducted the game into its art collection.
HN: What program do you use?
RS:Adobe Photoshop is my program of choice. I can’t speak on the merits of other image paint programs like Corel Draw or Canvas, but Photoshop has everything a 2D digital artist could ask for. Layers, special effects filters, dozens of art tools, and color adjusting features. I also used a plug in program called Alien Skin to create extra texture effects such as bevels, glows, wood textures, glass, fire, and many others. Back in the late 1990’s Photoshop was a ravenous pig that tapped all of the computer's resources. It would take all the RAM, hard drive space, and CPU speed you can give it, and still ask for more! Not that it freezes or crashes-- it is a very stable program. But when you are working on an 11” x 17” tile at 250 DPI, it will slow to crawl when applying a filter effect or performing a simple cut and paste.
Graphic images that physically large, at such high resolution, really tax a computer. When I first designed tiles for Dewayne's site, I was obliged to set them in 72 dpi resolution for easy file downloading. I slowly increased the resolution up to 100, to 125, to presently 250 dpi. The higher dpi gives beautifully detailed images, but at the cost of humongously large file sizes. Your printed piece will not be as sharp as compared to a 250 DPI one, but still look pretty good for gaming.
HN: Hi Ron – thanks again for taking the time to be interviewed! Let’s begin with telling us a little bit more about who Ron Shirtz is. How did you get into cartooning/illustration?
RS: Drawing runs in my family. My Dad showed some talent in his doodling. My older brother drew a lot, and I was inspired by his cartoons, though not as talented. I began doing cartoons of my Boy Scout troop, Church activities, and went on to draw a monthly strip, “Original Grin” for my High school newspaper. I enjoyed making people laugh.
HN: You’ve illustrated various cartoon strips, shown in both the old Grenadier Model’s Grenadier Bulletin and TSR’s fan mag the Polyhedron, among others. Some examples include The Knight Error, Croink, and Pennsylvania Smith. In addition, you have been involved in some RPG projects and created your RPG Tiles, which were famously shown in Dragon magazine. How did you develop your ideas for these?
A little background history... I've always admired the graphic components of the many RPG and wargames I’ve bought over the years. In fact, I'm usually sold on the graphic presentation of a game rather than the game system itself. I find the visual display of painted miniatures on colorful map sheets and game boards the coolest part of the gaming experience. When I bought a copy of the Milton Bradley game HeroQuest, and later Space Crusade, in 1998, I would not play either until I had all the miniatures painted!
In September of the same year I came across Dewayne Agin's HeroQuest website. On his site was a page devoted to downloadable game tiles for HeroQuest. Seeing this page sparked the desire to try my hand at making game board tiles. My first tiles were terrible, and thankfully forever digitally deleted. In the next two and a half years, I mastered the art of making tiles and eventually contributed over 100 full color game tiles to Dewayne's site.
Dewayne was very supportive in zipping the files and making new pages for the thumbnails to be posted. Many times I sent him a second or third version of a tile to replace the previous one that I discovered had minor errors. He cheerfully uploaded it to keep my sensitive artist ego happy. In 1999, at the suggestion of a HQ fan, I decided to try to market my tiles by offering a printing service for my tiles. Encouraged by the response, I created Working Stiff Productions.
Feeling confined with the standard 8" x 10" size format, I began making custom-sized 11" x 17" tiles. My next big break came when in October of 2000, the art director of Dragon magazine, Peter Whitley, reviewed a portfolio I had sent. He contracted me to do a series of five full color tile posters for five issues in the Dragon. Four posters tiles have been published in the issues 280-283. The last poster was to my knowledge never published. Perhaps it may yet appear in some future issue of the Dragon. Working for Dragon magazine helped me set higher standards for my tiles. Peter Whitley was very kind and helpful getting my work to fir a published format.
My work drew the attention of Mark H. Walker, of Shrapnel games. He commissioned me to do a set of game maps for his groundbreaking game, Forgotten Heroes: Vietnam. The 2003 August issue of PC Gamer gave Richard Caravan and I high marks (88%) for our artwork for the game. Richard designed the superb counters, and I did five full color maps. It was a great honor to hear the National Vietnam Veteran's Art museum had inducted the game into its art collection.
HN: What program do you use?
RS:Adobe Photoshop is my program of choice. I can’t speak on the merits of other image paint programs like Corel Draw or Canvas, but Photoshop has everything a 2D digital artist could ask for. Layers, special effects filters, dozens of art tools, and color adjusting features. I also used a plug in program called Alien Skin to create extra texture effects such as bevels, glows, wood textures, glass, fire, and many others. Back in the late 1990’s Photoshop was a ravenous pig that tapped all of the computer's resources. It would take all the RAM, hard drive space, and CPU speed you can give it, and still ask for more! Not that it freezes or crashes-- it is a very stable program. But when you are working on an 11” x 17” tile at 250 DPI, it will slow to crawl when applying a filter effect or performing a simple cut and paste.
Graphic images that physically large, at such high resolution, really tax a computer. When I first designed tiles for Dewayne's site, I was obliged to set them in 72 dpi resolution for easy file downloading. I slowly increased the resolution up to 100, to 125, to presently 250 dpi. The higher dpi gives beautifully detailed images, but at the cost of humongously large file sizes. Your printed piece will not be as sharp as compared to a 250 DPI one, but still look pretty good for gaming.
