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Art Highlight: “Agent of Entropy” by Jim Cornell
Hi there! As we close in on the Kickstarter (launching Tuesday morning!!), Jim Cornell is back with another dive into the Terrors and Tommyguns art he’s made so far. If […]
Hi there! As we close in on the Kickstarter (launching Tuesday morning!!), Jim Cornell is back with another dive into the Terrors and Tommyguns art he’s made so far. If you like these highlights (and we know you do), you can read them early by joining our Discord. Enjoy and we’ll see you Tuesday for the launch of the campaign!
Last week I talked a lot about how non-traditional I wanted our monsters to look compared to more mainstream cosmic-horror games, and this one is a good example of how, to use a scientific term, I got “nutty with it.”
Part of what made this piece a big deal was that it was the first piece of Terrors and Tommyguns art that I made on an iPad with Procreate, as opposed to Photoshop on a desktop computer. Procreate’s a hell of a program, but there was still a pretty hefty learning curve, which actually translated very well to this monster’s overall design.
Without being able to get really heavy with lines like I usually do, I took what I had done for the previous monster, and just made “random” shapes on the canvas without trying to actively think about what was coming down. This is a technique called “automatic drawing”, and it is frequently used as a method for overcoming artistic blocks, and the fear of the blank page. I was able to use it to come up with very abstract shapes that hopefully, would make a monster. The concept of sanity, and the human mind’s ability to process the cosmos is a big deal in most Cosmic Horror, and the swooping shapes and ellipses of this particular fella hit home as a monster that was more of a danger to the player’s mind as opposed to their body.
Another key part of this monster’s design was something I have mentioned before, which is the lack of clear definitions of “good” versus “bad” when it comes to elder, outer entities. They exist beyond such binary definitions, and I wanted this monster to reflect that. While it does have a relatively well-defined body and overall shape, I wanted it to hopefully come across as unknowable and strange, as opposed to “it has lots of tentacles and spikes and teeth” etc.
One of the most refreshing and simultaneously scary things about Terrors and Tommyguns is having to push myself out of my comfort zone when it comes to monster design, and the last two weeks have hopefully demonstrated my process in trying to really create something players haven’t seen before. I hope you guys like what you’ve seen so far, and I’ll be back next week with another peek into the Hammersmith Gallery!
Drinking Horn Games 