I wanted to talk a little about the my art book Blood Rituals: The Art ofTom Baxa . I can't believe it,
but the book has been out for about 4 1/2 years now. I did a Kickstarter
to get the book printed and released, in 2010 and it was quite an involved
experience with so many things to do to bring it to fruition.
The Kickstarter site launched in April of 2009, and I did
my campaign in July of 2010. So needless
to say it was the early days of Kickstarter and there weren't a lot of people
on it from the gaming community yet. Backer
incentive strategies like stretch goals and add-ons didn’t exist yet and there
were no fulfillment or marketing companies specializing in KS at that
time. I’m sure there were a lot of
people on there already, especially in publishing and other product areas, but
I didn't have the wealth of examples to draw from that are available now on KS.
So I was flying blind, but I totally saw the potential of using crowdfunding
for my artistic endeavors.
When I did the Kickstarter campaign video, I had the
cover paining for the book about halfway painted, and (if I remember right) I
had the book laid out for the most part.
I knew I wanted to do a brand-new painting just for the cover and I
thought it be kind of fun to have a sexy babe with the demon (how could you go
wrong right?) and some Blood! This is
the final cover painting in all its glory.
The way I personally work is that I spend a little time
envisioning what I might want to put on the cover, then I just start sketching and
see what plays out. I seldom do a bunch
of thumbnails or multiple sketches, because I usually enjoy what comes out the
first time when I put pencil to paper. My sketches are line drawings that I
mount down to a board and paint over.
Buy the book here: Blood Rituals: The Art of Tom Baxa
When I mix oil paints to do a painting I'll always do a
little mini sketch like this just to get a sense of the colors and how they're
relating to each other.
Graphic design
To my surprise one of the things I had the most fun with
was the graphic design of the book. Whenever
I start a new book, IP (intellectual property), or project I always start with
the title and create a logo for it so that I can brand it across any kind of
marketing efforts I apply. Sometimes I
draw my own logo, but often it's not
much more than finding a cool font and jazzing it up to make it into a logo.
I was fortunate to have had help from a professional
graphic designer on Blood Rituals who
help me lay out the book and get it ready for print. However I did have a
tremendous amount of input on the graphics and the way the pages would look,
especially on the chapter/section title pages. Here's the section title page from the concept
art section. Each of these two page
spreads had a little bit of creepy prose that I wrote on the left-hand page. The prose related to the up-coming section
and I always use the word “blood” somewhere in the pros and highlighted it using
the same font as the book logo. I also created
the layout in imagery for the two page spreads.
Invoke the whispered ways, and
Call into being
Wretched creatures conceived from a
Fractured imagination.
Incantation
A baptism of Blood
An impure awakening.
Rise
Vile ones.
Feed.
Here's another page from the Wicked Fairies section. I provided the designer with a bunch of
textures and some examples and he did an excellent job of laying out the rest
of the book, placing artwork over the background textures.
I also designed the back cover of the book. This was quite fun because I got to play with
some design elements and visual balancing of the page; and I also enjoyed
working with fonts.
Putting this book together was an amazing learning
experience for me and I know it will serve me well in the future when I release
my next book. Running the Kickstarter also was quite an experience and I
learned a lot and I continue to learn from all the amazing artists and creators
in our community who have been doing Kickstarters.
Blood Rituals: The Art ofTom Baxa is a 112 page, full-color art book with images that span my 25
year career. It's full of art from your favorite games like Dungeons &
Dragons, Magic the Gathering, World of
Warcraft, Shadowrun, and more. There's also a few samples of my fiction in the
book because at that time I knew I was going to be writing more in the future. I’m actually working on an illustrated novel
right now (more on that later).
Buy the book here: Blood Rituals:The Art of Tom Baxa
And here's a flip through video I created why flip
through every page of the book and you can get a glimpse at all the awesome are
inside that will likely make you want to run out and buy the book.
Tags:
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