I made Academy of Wonder quite a long time ago for Lost Spheres Publishing, as part of an expansion for the Pathfinder campaign setting.

Since I’ve been posting mostly Sci-Fi/Star Wars related images for a while, I thought it was a good moment to break the trend and slip some Fantasy in the middle.

I made this back in 2017, so I have to confess that I have no more details about how the project looked like eventually.

This was the product’s Kickstarter page, where Academy of Wonder was first published.

And this is the product’s page on DrivethruRPG, in case anyone is interested.

Despite the fact that it sat on my HD for almost four years, I’m quite fond of this artwork. It was the very first thing I did as a freelance Illustrator when I got back from the UK.

I had left SUMO Digital only a week prior, half of my bags were still to unpack, my Cintiq had a nasty crack on a corner due to careless movers, and my skin was still olive-grey due to the prolonged lack of sun.

Luckily I had quite a lot of work lined up, and this was first on the list.

Between some concerned thoughts about the new lifestyle, the chores and paperwork of moving from one country to another, and daily visit to the local beach, this was the first thing I made as part of a my new life.

Now that I think of it, my desk at the time was still in the darkest room of the house, right next to my bed.

If there’s one advice I can give to whomever is planning to work from home, it’s that you should never have your work station in the same room where you sleep. For some reason, moving from the bed to the chair doesn’t quite convey to your brain that it’s now time to do stuff.

Even if you go to the trouble of putting clothes on, the lack of a dedicated workplace makes things a lot more difficult, and I had to move all my gear elsewhere almost immediately.

Anyway, I remember that people at Lost Spheres Publishing were gracious about the little time I needed adjusting to new new situation, and the project went smoothly enough.

I meant to post the sketches too, but I just found out that in my Academy of Wonder folder, all files named Sketch01 to Sketch04 are the same version of a colour rough. So well, it looks like I wasn’t quite there yet with organizational skills.

I’ve made improvements since then.

By Paolo Puggioni