Art Update: The Black Bestiary

Well, I've got some very good news.

Mark Catho, my publisher and owner of Skortched Urf Studios, who I've been using as my store front the last few years for all my Otherverse Games releases, just sent me an email. He's going to be comissioning some new art work from Anthony Cournoyer for Black Tokyo's upcoming Black Bestiary. 

From this first email, I'm not quite sure exactly how many new pieces Mark will be funding, so I sent a 'top ten' list of concepts and creatures I would like Mark to illustrate. I focused mostly on the big name villains of the setting, high CR threats and quirky creatures that I can't find stock art. So over the next couple of days, I'll find out which of them will get illoed and start doing art direction of those specific creatures.

One really good thing is that Anthony works almost as fast as Amanda, so the book should be out fairly soon. Some more details: right now Black Bestiary tops 100 monsters (!). I have specifically commissioned art for around 50 of those, stock art for another 20 or 30 and a remaining 20-30 creatures which lack illos at this point. I've been debating whether to go ahead and publish now with what I have or wait a bit.... even if I publish now, Black Bestiary would be exceedingly art heavy and well illustrated. I'm glad I waited, because this is good news all around.

Meantime, I'm working on a futuristic melee weapon sourcebook as a companion to The Advanced Arsenal and Advanced Armory sourcebooks in preparation for doing an Enchantments of Heavy Future soucebook in the same vein as the exceedingly crunchy and well received Enchantments of Black Tokyo. The more 'workman-like' Advanced tech books are basically laying the groundwork for the more imaginative Enchantments sourcebooks, and I plan to do something similar, an Enchantments of Otherverse America next year some time, fully converting that setting to a Pathfinder powered, magic-friendly setting! Expect big things with Otherverse America sometime next year.

I'm also taking some time away from these to work, in little spurts here and here, on a revision of Battlechangers, my Transformers homage RPG from 2011. I'll do something with that one sooner or later too.

Blessed Be,
CHRIS