Machosketch

[Cazdon]

Ah HECK! I didn't know you were such a great artist too! Cecilia Flemming is one of my favorite characters in general, and seeing all this amazing artwork is really cool! There's even a wonderful drawing of Torque, so thank you!

[Carthusia]

God I always love seeing the art people draw about this game.

 

Cecilia is absolutely one of those HoS characters where I do look forward to them running the shift, as at least SOMEONE on the sec team is guaranteed to know what their doing.

Never change

[ZN23X]

These pictures and their stories are fantastic and make me wanna try to play and see if I can recapture the magic again...

[Machofish]

PSA 2: Weapons on Patrol

The annoying thing is that the Sec players who need this advice the most are the ones least likely to listen to this advice: Running around with your weapons unholstered makes you considerably more vulnerable and liable to be attacked than if you're patrolling with holstered weapons.

"But Machofish, having my weapon holstered just means I have to click more buttons when I see a threat! That split-second could be a life-or-death matter!"

And yes, that is a strong argument. Unfortunately, SS13 logic causes it to be false. Wins often go to wheoever has the drop on their opponent, and an officer with their weapons out without knowing specifically who they're trying to shoot/baton means that anyone hoping to take the officer down gets that much more bang for their buck with their opening move, since something as simple as an un-telegraphed melee disarm can cause an officer to lose their stun weapons and usually their life as a result.

From personal experience, most of the crimes stopped by security occur when security responds to a third-party being attacked, not by an officer being attacked on their own and somehow fighting back: If you identify a threat, it's easy enough to backpedal while drawing your weapon of choice, then move in. Alternatively, if you're responding to a distress call, only draw your weapon only once you get close to a department or station area that the distress call came from, to minimize the chance of losing your gear to butterfingers before you even arrive at the scene.

 

And now for something completely different:

I'd explain more, but I genuinely don't remember the context.

Perhaps that's for the best.

 

And some more sketches from GM'ing Shadowrun:

 

"Lone Star" is one of the "Public Security Companies" in the Shadowrun universe: Imagine SS13's security, just with deadlier equipment, no admin oversight and no incentives to follow their own laws.

Tried redrawing Moody with a 'rounder' face, and I think I'm on to something. Overall, I'm really pleased with how this sketch came out. 

 

A sample Shadowrunner I sketched/statted while trying to figure out 5e's deeply disorganized rulebook and wrap my head around what a 'cyberpunk' theme even looks like.

And more NPCs:

The suit here was cribbed from a picture I found on Google Images for "Aztechnology," here. I have no idea who the actual artist was who came up with the design, but they deserve credit.

Edit: Well, the sketch has mysteriously vanished from my imgur account, so I'm guessing someone took exception to that. Oops.

Trying to come up with thoughtful image descriptions while sleep-deprived at 1:00am on a Friday night is difficult, so I'll probably be editing the caption text continuously over the next day or so.

Edited May 24, 2020 by Machofish

[ConfectionCore]

MORE MACHO ART! Ahh, I'm excited to see a thread update Such cool arts!! 

[Darkmight9]

Personally if I ever get a chance to play/GM a shadowrun game it'll be with 4th edition because of how much of a mess 5th is from what I've heard.

[PhantasmicDream]

Yas! Bootyful.

I personally relate a lot to Cecilia in the sentient machine guns drawing. 

 

personally played a little Shadowrun my self (like a session) it was fun, would do again.  But yeah, Cyberpunk setting/style is great but can get a little hard to get a grasp on...

[Machofish]

On 2/1/2020 at 8:54 AM, Darkmight9 said:

Personally if I ever get a chance to play/GM a shadowrun game it'll be with 4th edition because of how much of a mess 5th is from what I've heard.

I've never tried 4th edition, so I can't provide any sort of expert opinion there. That said, I'd say SR 5e's rules are written and organized poorly in the book, but make sense when they're put into practice. Between D&D and SR, it felt like Shadowrun's rules and character creation were thought-through a little better than D&D. One of my pet peeves with D&D 5e is that the races all follow Star Trek logic, in which the full gamut of dwarves, elves, etc. can be described as, "Just like humans, except considerably better in numerous ways with no real tradeoffs compared to humans" whereas Shadowrun's metatype system balances typically 'superior-than-human' fantasy species by forcing players to compromise on starting resources or attributes in order to select a fantasy species. There's also things like Shadowrun's authors have put a lot more time and consideration into how magic has influenced the development of their world from a lore perspective, while D&D just has world-breaking magic lying around that apparently nobody really thinks about. That said, it took me about a solid year of deciphering SR5e's rulebook before I finally understood enough to properly GM it, while in comparison I had D&D 5e figured out in about a week, so I might just be falling into a Sunken Cost fallacy.

 

 

I hope everyone's staying safe and well-supplied these days. I actually ran out of sketch paper due to social isolation--while that was disappointing at first, I think you'll agree it was a net positive.

You'll see what I mean.

 

Just a practice picture.  By this point I don't feel like I'm uploading a 'full' set of pictures unless at least one of them features Cecilia looking annoyed.

Swarmers are annoying.

Spoiler

This one was a bit of a challenge. I wanted the swarmer to occupy a large part of the page but also wanted to show Sec in pursuit without losing detail from either. Basically, the challenge here is that Cecilia takes up less space on the page than the swarmer, but I wanted to give the viewer the idea that she's larger than the swarmer, and only takes up less space due to depth.

Hostile wildlife.

 

As I mentioned earlier, running out of paper to sketch on prompted me to dust off a tablet I'd left neglected for some time. I'd given tablet sketching a try quite a few years ago but I think I let myself get discouraged from it too easily. This first sheet just includes various SS13-related doodles that I made to get used to the tablet.

A picture of Cecilia I made using ArtRage, a program intended to emulate markers and paints. I felt like I had to fight the software every step of the way, though I'm impressed by how the image looks convincingly like a crappy paint-and-markers art on canvas rather than something made using a program.

"Does SoP say I can't use my desk as a footrest? No. No it doesn't."

I give IAA a try whenever I want to play, but don't feel like I'm in the right headspace to try a 'proper' HoS round.  I think the reason a lot of players have difficulty with IAA is that they approach it with no prior experience in security, and see their relationship to the security department as one based on conflict rather than cooperation. To get security to do anything as IAA, you need to have mutual respect. To have security respect your opinion as IAA, you need to know when it's practical to emphasize SoP and when it's not. The job is much more about earning security's trust that you've got common ground with them rather than trying to get officers fired for incompetence or reduce prison timers.

Epic fight music of your choice goes here

When the Nuke Ops get whittled down to their last squad member, don't get cocky. There's usually plenty of good reasons why that last man standing outlived all their squadmates, such as being an unstunnable sith lord with a shielded hardsuit who's been on a meth-fueled rampage since reaching the station.

Something about the position of the Nukie's right arm is bothering me. I might have to fix that later.

 

Command roles are not suitable for players with an inferiority complex or an easily-bruised sense of pride. There are plenty of AI players who seem to relish making new Command staff go utterly berserk over relatively minor slights or small acts of insubordination. Spark 5.5 has made it into an art form.

This was meant to help setup the 'crazy captain' exchange above, though I felt having the context-less version there helped set up the joke better than leading with a sketch that 'gave away' the joke so to speak.

I wanted to add dialogue here, but I think it would've taken away from the picture: this is the "I demand to speak to your manager" face, the "I'll get what I want if I just get angry enough" face, adding text would really just be reduntant.

 

Cecilia's "I'm listening respectfully, but I still think your opinion is dumb" face.

 

Like I said, I think giving the tablet a try was a net positive overall. Don't get me wrong, I was happy where I was before, but this feels like a whole new level. 

Edited September 13, 2020 by Machofish

[ConfectionCore]

I love the stories that your arts tell, and I love the stories you tell with them. 

[Aza]

Cecilia Fleming needs no in-depth background story, for wherever she walks there is a story she tells.

[Machofish]

 

Spoiler

An attempt at storyboarding, based on a conversation between Kirimii and Rick Martini. I'm still not entirely satisfied that I did a good job on this, but this project became sort of a bottleneck since I, 1.) Didn't want to post my next batch of images without this, but 2.) I wanted to wait until I was "completely satisfied" with the work. It is what it is.

Wanted to try a couple of different perspectives. Basically I wanted to have one sketch of Cecilia at a high angle and another from a low angle. My idea was to make it look like she was being reflected in something like a pond or a window, but I'm not quite sure I got the angle right for that.

 

It turns out you can gank one of the deadliest megafauna in the game by just swarming it with killer tomatoes.

 

I admit I've sort of shelved Kirsten as a character (as it so happens, she shares a name with a server regular who's been around for longer so I prefer to avoid confusion), though I still like her design.

Edit: Since this, I've elected to compromise with a name change.

 

During a particularly slow round, the librarian swapped out the 'Space Law' book in the brig lobby with a satirically awful Star Wars fanfiction that had been retitled as 'Space Law'. Again, it was a very dull shift up to that point so everyone in security had a good laugh about it.

 

Slaughterdemon.

 

Laughterdemon.

 

I sort of messed up with the blood splash pattern. Initially I'd drawn the bright-red puddle, but then added the darker tone which I thought looked a bit more convincingly like blood splatters, but I couldn't be bothered to blend the two together.

 

Something interesting I've noticed is that antag roles and security both manage to feel like an uphill battle to the person playing them. I think it's because as an antag, the player only needs to consider success or failure in terms of their own individual experience while players in security tend to view 'success' and 'failure' as something that's measured across the entire department and shift.

 

And some miscellaneous tabletop stuff:

Spoiler

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get another Shadowrun session going in several months, despite my best efforts. While I don't know if my group is ever getting together again for another session, I think I'll get a little more use out of the character designs at least.

A couple of DnD characters I sketched as requests from random internet strangers on r/characterdrawing. Who knows, if I keep practicing maybe I could do this sort of thing for money some day.

 

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by Machofish

[PhantasmicDream]

Just wanna say that it's exciting to see you getting into digital art more. 

[WingedYordle]

I love the stories.

[Machofish]

One more.

Taking a break from stressing over job hunting. My old laptop finally suffered a hardware failure and I ended up losing a lot of my older work--thank goodness for Imgur. I'd make fresh work but frankly I'm out of practice and it'll take me a while to get back into it.

NT Rep walking around shirtless, 2.

 

Expressions.

 

A screenshot sent to me quite a while ago from a user who has unfortunately since deleted their account. I'm still impressed by the amount of effort it must have taken to arrange the individual gummy bears like that.

And now for some unrelated art:

A last "hurrah" for my Shadowrun work. 

 

And now a massive amount of work for a PF2E group I joined:

Hobgoblin character. I liked the challenge since pathfinder's artists give goblins and hobgoblins a distinctly nonhuman skull and face structure, and it was fun to imagine how expressions like joy or anger would look on a nonhuman face.

 

Kobold character w/ Drake mount. Kobolds are another classic fantasy species that PF2E depicts differently.

 

Suli-Elven Swashbuckler character. I didn't consciously intend for her to look like Esmeralda from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, though I'll admit the resemblance is uncanny.

 

Tengu Investigator character.

 

Conrasu Ranger. Yeah, PF2e has some utterly wild playable character options.

 

And also a bunch of scene setting from DM'ing: