Interview with Ron Shirtz (Part Two)!
Continuing the conversation with Ron Shirtz from Part One...
HN: How long does it take?
RS: Depending on the complexity of the tile, whether it’s just a dungeon floor or a decorated room, anywhere from 1-5 hours for an 8”x 10” size tile. High-tech tiles take more time as they required lots of nuts, bolts, buttons, etc. Larger (11” x 17”) tiles are ten times longer to make. It took 40 plus hours to create the Space Freighter tile set, “Brandy’s Lament”. I was pretty burned out after making that one. It was several weeks before I would even consider making another tile!
HN: How do you achieve such realistic effects?
RS: Using a combination of design techniques and clip art photos I can achieve a near photo-realistic effect with many of my tiles. Clip art saves me considerable time from having to design sub-components for many tiles. But using clip art effectively is more than just cut and paste---much of the clip art I use has to be resized, cropped, trimmed, flipped, rotated, distorted, and otherwise modified to fit the scale and colors of a tile. I spend a lot of time researching hundreds of clip art files to find one to suit my purpose. But while I make use of stock photo clip art, the majority of my tiles are created ex nihilo in Photoshop. The real key in making realistic tiles is the use of lighting. Highlights and shadows give depth and drama to artwork. Using Photoshop’s layers, blur filters, dodge and burn tools I can create lighting effects to make the tile more dramatic. Adding texture overlays also enhances the finished product. These texture overlays can be imported and blended in at different levels of transparency to really set off a stone floor and other tile elements. Keeping the tiles to 25mm scale can be tricky--I keep a 25mm miniature next to my computer compare against the tile on the monitor to help keep the tiles in reasonably close to scale. Even so, I often fudge with the scale to make items on the tiles bigger than life for dramatic effect--- I used the excuse of artistic license more than once to justify my errors in keeping scale!
HN: Where do you get your ideas for tiles?
RS: Mostly movies & comics. I take a cinematic approach to my work. Among my favorite artists are N.C. Wyeth, M.C. Escher, the Brothers Hildebrandt, and Jack "King" Kirby. A lot of the old adventure movies from the 1960's give me inspiration for themes to make tiles. The idea for the "Crocodile pit" tile was from an old Tarzan movie I saw as a kid. Nowadays when I watch a movie I spend more time watching the scenery and the sets than the actors! Sometimes I get ideas from studying photos of historical buildings and structures from the past. The tricky part is making the idea translate into a top-down perspective on a tile. I often approach the design of a tile as if I am building a stage for the action to take place. I often add obstacles, pathways, different elevations, and other features to make a tile unique, and to give challenges for a party of adventurers to overcome. My goal is always to make a tile evoke mystery or drama. I like to think that my tiles often tell a story by themselves, giving the GM ideas for running an adventure.
A final bit of advice: Don't be too discouraged if your first attempts don't come out very well the first time. (Then again, you may be a natural born artist and whip out masterpieces on the first try--I've seen it happen!) If anyone saw my first tiles I did three years ago, you would have thought they were pretty pathetic. It wasn't till my second year I started to turn out some decent ones, and by the third year I was finally good enough to get Dragon Magazine's attention to publish my work. Even then, it wasn't until my last two tiles in the poster series that I begin to hit my stride. You must decide if you are going for masterpieces, or just some nice, useful tiles for gaming-- It can be a toss up to decide which would you rather do ----gaming or making tiles! Live with your choice and don't compare your work with others unless you are going for masterpieces. I make tiles because I enjoy it, (or getting decent bucks to do it!) The minute making a tile seems like work is when I wrap it up and call it a night. It's gotta be fun to be worth doing.
HN: Which of your works is your favorite? What characters were the most fun to develop? Which were the most challenging?
RS: I would say all have been my favorite. Each one engaged my imagination in a new way. One thing I learned is that there is always another story or picture to be made. So whenever I’m asked, which my best work is, I say “The next one”.
As far as the most challenging, I would say the map boards for Forgotten Heroes, Vietnam. Lots of detail, and I had to make sure all the geomorphic maps would align with one another regardless of their orientation. Every hex had to be given a reference number.
HN: What are your plans long-term? Do you have additional/different works in mind?
RS: None really. I pick up the odd job here and there. I’ve shifted gears and now concentrating on writing my first book, a sci-fi adventure titled: The Last voyage of the Brandy’s Lament.
HN: As an author, it’s sometimes difficult to finally say a product is finished, no matter how many times you review or edit. Is there anything you would go back and change from your creations? Where there ideas you had in mind and then decided NOT to include?
RS: Oh yes. I rarely had a project that I did not wish I could revise after it was published. Can’t tell you the number of times that the day after I submit a project that the muse pays me a tardy visit and THEN tells me what I should have done instead! But when up against a deadline, one seldom has the luxury to mess about multiple versions. It’s often “Gotta get ‘er done!” “Publish or Perish!”
Often I wished I had added some more features here or there, or emphasized some of the elements. Composition is the key. I like to design my layouts asymmetrically to create dynamic angles and poses, while ensuing it is balanced and not ready to fall over.
HN: I have a 5 year old son, and structuring time around him can be challenging! I’ve lost count of the times he nearly pressed the delete button on something I was working on…how do you find time to develop your projects?
RS: Heh. Usually forging sleep, and working in the wee hours. Or getting up early. Makes for being a zombie for the rest of the day, but one must suffer for one’s art.
I’m paranoid about backing up my work. One time I invested 40 hours designing some HeroQuest RPG floor tiles, and blew off backing them up. Of course Murphy ’s Law kicked in, as my computer decided to pick up a virus and I lost everything. Oh, the pain! Never again. I vowed.
HN: Do you have a certain method you use – i.e., a certain room, music, mood, etc., to help get you in the right creative frame of mind?
RS: Not really. Sometime I do listen to music. But usually ideas come to me when I waiting somewhere, or attending a boring, purposeless meeting. My co-workers will see me scribbling furiously, thinking I am dutifully taking notes, when instead I’m doing thumbnail sketches of future projects.
HN: What are you working on right now?
RS: Nothing at the moment. I’m currently working on my first novel, a sci-fi adventure titled: The Last Voyage of the Brandy’s Lament. Boy, do I now have a greater appreciation of authors! The book is currently in its 17 month of gestation, and I have at least another 4-6 weeks to go to finish revising the original draft.
The rest of my time is spent on my favorite hobby, painting miniatures and creating tabletop scenery. I find it very therapeutic, if nothing else. I’m a terrible gamer as far as strategy and tactics go. I seldom ever win. But I do love the visual pageantry of miniatures displayed on a scenic game board.
HN: Where can readers go to find out more about Ron Shirtz?
RS: Well, I do have a Facebook page, but I am very shy to share much about myself. But Google Dwayne Agin’s Hero Quest page, or my name, and examples of my early RPG tiles can be found and available free for downloading.
HN: How long does it take?
RS: Depending on the complexity of the tile, whether it’s just a dungeon floor or a decorated room, anywhere from 1-5 hours for an 8”x 10” size tile. High-tech tiles take more time as they required lots of nuts, bolts, buttons, etc. Larger (11” x 17”) tiles are ten times longer to make. It took 40 plus hours to create the Space Freighter tile set, “Brandy’s Lament”. I was pretty burned out after making that one. It was several weeks before I would even consider making another tile!
HN: How do you achieve such realistic effects?
RS: Using a combination of design techniques and clip art photos I can achieve a near photo-realistic effect with many of my tiles. Clip art saves me considerable time from having to design sub-components for many tiles. But using clip art effectively is more than just cut and paste---much of the clip art I use has to be resized, cropped, trimmed, flipped, rotated, distorted, and otherwise modified to fit the scale and colors of a tile. I spend a lot of time researching hundreds of clip art files to find one to suit my purpose. But while I make use of stock photo clip art, the majority of my tiles are created ex nihilo in Photoshop. The real key in making realistic tiles is the use of lighting. Highlights and shadows give depth and drama to artwork. Using Photoshop’s layers, blur filters, dodge and burn tools I can create lighting effects to make the tile more dramatic. Adding texture overlays also enhances the finished product. These texture overlays can be imported and blended in at different levels of transparency to really set off a stone floor and other tile elements. Keeping the tiles to 25mm scale can be tricky--I keep a 25mm miniature next to my computer compare against the tile on the monitor to help keep the tiles in reasonably close to scale. Even so, I often fudge with the scale to make items on the tiles bigger than life for dramatic effect--- I used the excuse of artistic license more than once to justify my errors in keeping scale!
HN: Where do you get your ideas for tiles?
RS: Mostly movies & comics. I take a cinematic approach to my work. Among my favorite artists are N.C. Wyeth, M.C. Escher, the Brothers Hildebrandt, and Jack "King" Kirby. A lot of the old adventure movies from the 1960's give me inspiration for themes to make tiles. The idea for the "Crocodile pit" tile was from an old Tarzan movie I saw as a kid. Nowadays when I watch a movie I spend more time watching the scenery and the sets than the actors! Sometimes I get ideas from studying photos of historical buildings and structures from the past. The tricky part is making the idea translate into a top-down perspective on a tile. I often approach the design of a tile as if I am building a stage for the action to take place. I often add obstacles, pathways, different elevations, and other features to make a tile unique, and to give challenges for a party of adventurers to overcome. My goal is always to make a tile evoke mystery or drama. I like to think that my tiles often tell a story by themselves, giving the GM ideas for running an adventure.
A final bit of advice: Don't be too discouraged if your first attempts don't come out very well the first time. (Then again, you may be a natural born artist and whip out masterpieces on the first try--I've seen it happen!) If anyone saw my first tiles I did three years ago, you would have thought they were pretty pathetic. It wasn't till my second year I started to turn out some decent ones, and by the third year I was finally good enough to get Dragon Magazine's attention to publish my work. Even then, it wasn't until my last two tiles in the poster series that I begin to hit my stride. You must decide if you are going for masterpieces, or just some nice, useful tiles for gaming-- It can be a toss up to decide which would you rather do ----gaming or making tiles! Live with your choice and don't compare your work with others unless you are going for masterpieces. I make tiles because I enjoy it, (or getting decent bucks to do it!) The minute making a tile seems like work is when I wrap it up and call it a night. It's gotta be fun to be worth doing.
HN: Which of your works is your favorite? What characters were the most fun to develop? Which were the most challenging?
RS: I would say all have been my favorite. Each one engaged my imagination in a new way. One thing I learned is that there is always another story or picture to be made. So whenever I’m asked, which my best work is, I say “The next one”.
As far as the most challenging, I would say the map boards for Forgotten Heroes, Vietnam. Lots of detail, and I had to make sure all the geomorphic maps would align with one another regardless of their orientation. Every hex had to be given a reference number.
HN: What are your plans long-term? Do you have additional/different works in mind?
RS: None really. I pick up the odd job here and there. I’ve shifted gears and now concentrating on writing my first book, a sci-fi adventure titled: The Last voyage of the Brandy’s Lament.
HN: As an author, it’s sometimes difficult to finally say a product is finished, no matter how many times you review or edit. Is there anything you would go back and change from your creations? Where there ideas you had in mind and then decided NOT to include?
RS: Oh yes. I rarely had a project that I did not wish I could revise after it was published. Can’t tell you the number of times that the day after I submit a project that the muse pays me a tardy visit and THEN tells me what I should have done instead! But when up against a deadline, one seldom has the luxury to mess about multiple versions. It’s often “Gotta get ‘er done!” “Publish or Perish!”
Often I wished I had added some more features here or there, or emphasized some of the elements. Composition is the key. I like to design my layouts asymmetrically to create dynamic angles and poses, while ensuing it is balanced and not ready to fall over.
HN: I have a 5 year old son, and structuring time around him can be challenging! I’ve lost count of the times he nearly pressed the delete button on something I was working on…how do you find time to develop your projects?
RS: Heh. Usually forging sleep, and working in the wee hours. Or getting up early. Makes for being a zombie for the rest of the day, but one must suffer for one’s art.
I’m paranoid about backing up my work. One time I invested 40 hours designing some HeroQuest RPG floor tiles, and blew off backing them up. Of course Murphy ’s Law kicked in, as my computer decided to pick up a virus and I lost everything. Oh, the pain! Never again. I vowed.
HN: Do you have a certain method you use – i.e., a certain room, music, mood, etc., to help get you in the right creative frame of mind?
RS: Not really. Sometime I do listen to music. But usually ideas come to me when I waiting somewhere, or attending a boring, purposeless meeting. My co-workers will see me scribbling furiously, thinking I am dutifully taking notes, when instead I’m doing thumbnail sketches of future projects.
HN: What are you working on right now?
RS: Nothing at the moment. I’m currently working on my first novel, a sci-fi adventure titled: The Last Voyage of the Brandy’s Lament. Boy, do I now have a greater appreciation of authors! The book is currently in its 17 month of gestation, and I have at least another 4-6 weeks to go to finish revising the original draft.
The rest of my time is spent on my favorite hobby, painting miniatures and creating tabletop scenery. I find it very therapeutic, if nothing else. I’m a terrible gamer as far as strategy and tactics go. I seldom ever win. But I do love the visual pageantry of miniatures displayed on a scenic game board.
HN: Where can readers go to find out more about Ron Shirtz?
RS: Well, I do have a Facebook page, but I am very shy to share much about myself. But Google Dwayne Agin’s Hero Quest page, or my name, and examples of my early RPG tiles can be found and available free for downloading.
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