Academy of Wonder

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

Star Wars – Jedi Cloak

Jedi Cloak is an illustration I made quite some time ago for the Star Wars card game by Fantasy Flight Games.

As pretty much 99% of the illustrations I made for Star Wars or Game of Thrones, they tend to be published several months after we’ve worked on them. By the time they’re out I have no memory of which specific expansion they belonged to.

Plus, I had kind of forgotten about this one in particular, so we’re talking about three years ago or something like that.

Now, although I’m always very happy to do anything even remotely related to Star Wars, I have to confess that nothing equals the pleasure of illustrating a scene from the original movies.

I’ve already made illustrations for Rise of the Skywalker, or the Mandalorian, and despite having loved the shows, nothing compares to the thrill of drawing events from the first trilogy.

Jedi Cloak depicts an iconic moment of The Return of the Jedi, when Luke shows up like a badass at Jabba the Hutt’s court.

I still remember how damn cool he looked to me when I saw him the first time at the cinema, so I think I tried to infuse all that teenager wide-eyed marvel in this illustration.

Now, I now must describe why this scene is so crucial in the series. Bear with me and, well, NERD ALERT.

You surely remember that Luke’s first lightsaber (which was actually Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber) got lost, together with his hands, down an endless shaft at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.

The fact that he was sporting a brand new lightsaber at the beginning of Return of the Jedi didn’t go unnoticed to me back then. I clearly remember thinking “where does that come from?”.

Well, from a deleted scene!

I have to warn you, NERD INTENSIFICATION AHEAD.

Lightsabers were powered by what were called Kyber crystals, or Kaiburr crystals.

Building their own lightsaber was a crucial part of a Jedi’s training. When the time came, a young Jedi went to a temple on the planet Ilum, summoned somehow a Kyber crystal (which was made by organic and inorganic materials sensitive to the Force) and then used it to forge their own weapon following their own design and preferences.

After “Order 55”, Palpatine and Darth Vader destroyed all known crystals, and shut down all sites known to contain them. For this reason, while one the verge on completing his training, Luke found himself in the uncomfortable position of being without the main component to build his own lightsaber.

Eventually he found some schematics and instructions in Yoda’s hut, which allowed him to make a synthetic crystal, and assemble the rest with parts scrapped together in the city of Mos Eisley.

So that’s why he’ll later ask Yoda if “he’s a Jedi now”: he has indeed successfully completed one of the milestones in the Jedi’s training.

Despite Yoda’s snarky reply, when Luke shows up at Jabba’s court he is no student in training. He’s confident and powerful, and he has had countless adventures between the moment he was defeated by Darth Vader and when he finally moves to free Han Solo.

I still think that Mark Hamill was GREAT at conveying all of Luke’s newly acquired confidence, so this is definitely one of my favorite moments in the whole first trilogy.

I mean, wasn’t he majestic in this scene?

Despite Jedi Cloak being quite straightforward as far as illustrations go, getting it right did take some rounds of feedback.

The fabric had to feel thick and heavy, and the texture rough enough. So I went back and forth smoothing out creases, adding imperfections and things like that.

I have to say I’m quite happy with the final result, even if I say so myself:)

by Paolo Puggioni

Magic the Gathering – Glenn, the Voice of Calm

Glenn the Voice of Calm, the first card I’ve made for Magic the Gathering and my first work for Wizards of the Coast, makes me officially an MTG illustrator, which is pretty cool if you ask me.

I’ve wanted to work for them for at least 20 years, so you can imagine how happy I was when one of their Art Directors got in touch with me out of the blue asking if I was free.

Only an iron will and a strong professionalism prevented me to reply “For you? Fuck yes!”.
It was implied though, and after a few months and a surprisingly smooth and painless round of sketches-feedback-roughs-finals we came up with this.

Now, you may ask how a character from the show The Walking Dead fits into the traditionally Fantasy setting of Magic the Gathering.

The short answer is, I don’t know. I used to be an avid Magic the Gathering player back in the ’90s, but I stopped following its development (other than its artwork) a long time ago to save my sanity.

I have to confess I didn’t even ask, I just wanted to work for Wizards of the Coast!

I can only say that it was huge fun. The Art Director was great, I had to re-watch the first seasons of the Walking Dead, I had to take an insane amount of screenshots of Zombies as a reference, and that I had the pleasure of painting Glenn, who happened to be my favorite character from the show.

I was also chuffed to learn that apparently the portrait I made was directly approved by Steven Yeun, who played the character in the series!

For once, I also happen to have saved some of the sketches.
They’re pretty much variations of poses.
The shot had to be frontal, with no weird perspectives and with a bunch of Zombies in the background.

There wasn’t much room for variations, really.

Now, once one of the sketches was approved (after a few tweaks to zoom the character in) I made a couple of variations for the lighting.

The first one I made, shown below, had Glenn’s face slightly in the shadow, which I thought would have been an original way of distancing from the usual “let’s put a light in the point of interest to show what’s important in the canvas”.

I was actually pretty happy with it, I thought it was a great idea! As it happens, the Art Director wouldn’t have it so I ended up adding more saturation and brightness on and around Glenn’s face, which is what you see in the final image.

To be honest, I don’t know what I was thinking, that’s what Art Directors are for:) I mean, look at them side by side.

The first thing you think of in the first image is “nice, a big bright orange backpack. Oh and is that a face up there?”. So in hindsight I’m glad someone else talked me out of it.

Anyway, this is now Glenn the Voice of Calm, forever in the Wizards of the Coast records. I don’t have other Magic the Gatherings cards lined up so far this year, if there will be more in the future this is where I’ll brag about it first.

by Paolo Puggioni

Game of Thrones – Desperate Attack

Desperate Attack is one of the latest works I made for the Game of Thrones TCG by Fantasy Flight Games.

As always, I have no memory whatsoever of which specific expansion pack/rulebook/product this was made for.

And as it happens regularly, this had been sitting in my hard drive for several months, until the day I did some housekeeping and went “aw, I don’t think I posted this on my website, shame”. So here we are.

Now, Desperate Attack describes the fruitless attempt of Loras Tyrell to take Dragonstone, which – if memory serves – ended with his ass being handed to him, and his pretty face being disfigured forever.

I remember being mildly displeased by Loras Tyrell’s demise back when I read the book. But considering the massacre of major characters occurred up to that point, I have to place this about mid-height in my list of favourite dead Game of Thrones personalities.

In fact, the list goes abut this way, from most emotionally devastating to least.

– Robb Stark
– Ed Stark
– Catelyn Stark
– Hodor
– Khal Drogo
– Lord Varys
– Jorah Mormont
– Oberyn Martell
– Edd
– Pyp
– Yoren
– Ygritte
– Rickon Stark
– Syrio Forel
– Jory Cassel
– Maester Luwin
– Jeor Mormont
– Beric Dondarrion
– Lyanna Mormont
– Osha
– Myrcella Baratheon
– Robert Baratheon
– Maester Aemon
– Shireen Baratheon
– Mance Ryder
– Loras Tyrell
– Danaerys Targaryen
– Jojen Reed
– Olenna Tyrell
– Theon Greyjoy
– Rodrik Cassel
– Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun

So, all in all, sorry for Loras Tyrell, but at least he wasn’t beheaded in front of a crowd, or burned alive by a dragon, or gutted by a boar, or had his throat slit by an betraying ally, or ran over by a crowd of undead, or skinned, or torn apart, or poisoned, nor had his head crushed barehanded by an impossibly strong dude.

He died doing what he loved: storming a castle with his sword held high and all that.

Good for you Loras.

Star Wars – The Saga Concludes

I’ve been working on various Star Wars projects for almost three years now.

I’ve been able to post just a small part of them, as I’m never sure of what has been published. The working titles we get during production are always different from the final release, not to mention that the variety of products, expansions, rule-books and so on makes it difficult to keep track of what’s out and what isn’t.

The only way to have your doubts cast is to wait for your copy to be delivered at home, which usually happens a few months after the retail release, at least when your home is in Italy.

Anyway, it would appear that all this has come to an end, as Fantasy Flight Games has announced the end of its Star Wars products.

I can’t help but feel disappointed, as working on anything Star Wars related has been pretty much the highlight of my freelance career so far.

It’s not the artwork per se, or the compensation. It’s just, you know, Star Wars!
Getting an email with that in the subject never failed to put a smile on my face.

Oh well.

On a very selfish note – and as a very tiny bright side – Fantasy Flight Games used my artwork for the article I just linked, so I’ll take the chance to post it here uncropped.

The title of the image is Shien Mastery.

If you’re not nerds enough to have heard this word before, Shien is the fifth of the classical forms of Lightsaber fight. It’s characterized by its powerful counterattacks, and the most suitable to repel blaster shots.

In this image you can see Darth Vader kicking ass by deflecting two blasters at the same time, likely sending them back to their owners.

I have to confess that when I worked on this image I spent 80% of the time giggling and thinking to myself “Goddammit I’m drawing Darth Vader lol”.

Anyway, I’ve finished my last Star Wars pieces last month, so I think it will be at least a year before I run out of things to post.

I want to point out, if I haven’t before, that Art Directors at Fantasy Flight Games have been awesome throughout this time with no exception, and on top of Star Wars being Star Wars, it’s always been a pleasure working with them.

by Paolo Puggioni

Your Usual Cowboys Standoff

Good grief I haven’t written here in a while. As usual, the excuse is that I’ve been super busy, although I found the time to work on a personal piece that features cowboys in a standoff. More on this later.

Anyway, a very late happy new year everyone.
I understand most people have made new year’s and new decade resolutions.
I hadn’t.

The fact is that I realized pretty early in life that I have a very short attention span, and even with the best intentions I don’t work well with long term personal projects.

Paid work is different, but personal projects? I usually cheat with those without a second thought. Especially if I can justify them with “aw I work so much, I need to chill now”.

Or if another amazing personal project comes along.

So, I got as far as the 13th of January without a new year’s resolution, and I was fine with that. Then, as it happens, an idea popped to my mind, born from the realization that I’ve been doing much of the same for a while and I need to change a few things.

It’s not really a resolution, more like a master plan, I’m confident I’ll be able to stick with that.

I won’t share many details about it now, but my Master Plan™ involves among other things a bunch of new artwork made in a certain way, so I thought of a few settings to experiment with.

I started with an Old West piece.

As a rule, I’m not a fan of the iconic Old West setting. In fact, I kind of hate it.
Sure, I’ve seen all the Sergio Leone Movies a billion times, and they’re all awesome, but that’s different.

It’s the setting I’m not a fan of. I don’t like games that have the “old west level”, as if it were some kind of original spin. I don’t like when tv shows have that thing where they go back in time in Dodge City and meet Doc Holiday or whatever.

I was never a reader of Tex Willer, I never owned a toy Colt, or played cow boys with my mates as a child.
I always thought that using Old West as a setting was kind of lazy, pretty much like the Ice Level or the Lava Level in 80% of platform games.

In short, a cowboys standoff wouldn’t normally be my thing.

But, I decided to start off my Master Plan™ with something out of my comfort zone. Something I actually dislike. So there you go, despite everything, cowboys in a stand off.

To make it more fun for myself I used some nice and vibrant lighting, although on a fairly standard and super-rehashed composition.

It wasn’t so bad, in the end.
I guess if I go on drawing things I’d normally dislike, next thing I would be doing some Abba fan art.

by Paolo Puggioni

Star Wars – Bail Organa

Bail Organa is another Star Wars card I made for Fantasy Flight Games, and alas, once again I don’t really remember what specific expansion it was for.

Now, even though I enjoyed every single Star Wars card I made, I obviously enjoyed some more than others.
I mean, when you read in your briefs things like “Darth Vader does this” and “Han solo does that” you can’t help but giggle a little bit. When I got this assignment I actually went “Woo-hoo, Bail Organa!”

The reason why Bail Organa was one of my favourites is that I’ve had a bro-crush for Jimmy Smits since forever.
Look at his face, wouldn’t you trust a guy with that face? Wouldn’t he be the first one you call at 3 am when you accidentally murder your friend after a heated Super Smash Bros game you lost because of controller buffering?
He wouldn’t judge you, Jimmy Smits would never judge you.

And who would you want as a president of your country? That’s right, Matt Santos.
Which is why, after the mandatory 100th re-watch of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Siths required to paint this, I also watched again the West Wing. You know, to get into the spirit. Like method acting but for artists.

In fact, since digging up this image just made me think about it, I think that today I’ll also watch again the Jane Austen Book Club, which is a movie you should really check if, like me and every other sane person, you like Jimmy Smits.

Anyway, back to Bail Organa.

The other cool thing about this card is that I got to draw a Gran (that guy on Bail Organa’s right), which is a race that I loved since Return of the Jedi.
Although I also always wondered how the three-eyed set up would make sense under an evolutionary point of view, as all three of them pointing the same direction would have little benefit in terms of vision span.

I tried to keep the brush strokes more loose while painting the secondary characters, and I think that for once I managed to avoid over-polishing.

It’s subtle, but I think it works towards having Bail Organa stand out more, which he god dam deserves, doesn’t he.

Anyway, I would have posted this sooner but I’ve had some issues with WordPress, which the always impeccable Papermoustache managed to fix (thanks again!).

Next time I’ll post some Storm Troopers.

by Paolo Puggioni

Star Wars – Natural Talent

While browsing idly Fantasy Flight Games’ twitter feed, I noticed that my illustration “Natural Talent” had been released, so here it is!

For once I kept the promise I made last time and I didn’t wait four months to follow up with more Star Wars artwork.
This is part of Collapse of the Republic, a book that adds material to the Edge of the Empire Core rulebook.

Working on anything Star Wars related is always fun, and drawing one of the main characters makes it even better. Drawing Padme, I have to confess, was just the cherry on top.

When I watched the movies the first time I couldn’t help feeling amused by Padme’s wardrobe, and by her flamboyant display of outfits.
There was a board game in Italy in the 70s, I can’t remember its name. Basically the box contained a bunch of cardboard cutouts of ladies, and a bunch of drawings of dresses and accessories.

The game was about cutting the dresses and applying them to the models, and then showing them around to friends and family.
Padme always made me think that the writers had been addicted to that game when they were kids, and they were looking for some sort of catharsis by applying the most unlikely outfits to poor Natalie Portman.

In the movies Padme wears a new dress at every scene, always regal and aloof. I couldn’t help picturing her closing her door behind her after a meeting with Obiwan, or Yoda, still keeping her cool, and then freaking out just as she closes the door – COME ON COME ON COME ON, COME OOOOOON! – throwing clothes out of her bag, trying them out, fitting fake horn shaped buns to her hair, wrapping gold chains around her limbs and whatnot.

Anyway, while gathering reference for this illustration I had to re-watch all three prequels and make a database of all her outfits, which was part of the fun.
I also made two sketches with two different sets of clothes, and the Art Director clearly picked the one that was being used in the scene.

The illustrations is set when Padme addresses the senate the second time, if I remember correctly.

I had painted Padme Amidala once before, in a completely different context.

I have to confess I’m happier of the work I’ve done in Natural Talent, I think her likeness here is closer to Natalie Portman’s.
I’m not the best at doing portraits, sadly, and it always takes forever for me to get a face right.
I remember Padme was one of the most difficult ones for me, but she turned out fine in the end:).

by Paolo Puggioni

Star Wars – A Good Blaster At Your Side

A Good Blaster At Your Side is maybe the illustration I’m most fond of the bunch I made for Star Wars: Age of Rebellion by Fantasy Flight Games.

In fact, I’ve been waiting to post it for a very long time.

Also, the usual apologies: back in April I said I would post the Star Wars Destiny Illustrations I’ve done so far, and this is the first time I do it. Usual excuse: I’ve been busy. Nonetheless, here it is.

The reason I’m posting this now is that a couple of days ago I received one of the very appreciated emails by Fantasy Flight Games asking for address and other details so that they could ship one of the products I’ve worked on.

Usually I just go “yay!”, reply to the email and go on with my stuff.

The reason why I don’t give more thought to incoming shipments is that by the time a project starts we usually have temporary working titles. So you work for six months on, say, Palpatine Did Nothing Wrong, and what is eventually published is eventually Han Shot First.

This is true for Star Wars, Game of Thrones and other titles I’ve worked for, which means most times you have to wait for the physical copy to be sure of what we’re actually talking about.

I also have to add that I have the memory of Dory from Nemo, and by the time a project is released I’ve lost every recollection of what illustrations I’ve made for it.

This time, though, the name stuck, and when I read that I was about to receive Gadgets and Gear: The Essential Collection of Weapons and Equipment, I knew that A Good Blaster At Your Side was in it.

Now, the reason why I’m particularly fond of this illustration in that, well, it has Han Solo and Chewie in it, isn’t that enough?.

I’m happy of how it turned out, I have to admit (did you notice they picked it for the product page?:)), but mostly it’s because I had previously depicted Han and Chewie later in their life, in an illustration that had a completely different mood.

The Han in this image is the one everyone fell in love with: cocky, brash and confident.

Not that I didn’t like drawing his old and wise version, it’s just that this one had all those adventures ahead.

Anyway, at some point I had done a quick parallax animation to be included in my reel, so you even get to see 5 seconds of Han and Chewie moving slowly and doing nothing in particular.

And because I’ve become a meticulous illustrator, I also kept the sketch.

Ok, I started with A Good Blaster By Your Side, which is one of the last images I made for Star Wars, but I PROMISE that starting this week I’ll post all the others.

by Paolo Puggioni

Star Wars Destiny Is Finally Out

After a looong wait, Star Wars Destiny is finally out, and the best thing about it is that I made a whole bunch of artwork for it.

By “whole bunch” I mean that I’ve been working on various Star Wars Destiny packs since about 2017, so much so that I have a folder bursting with illustrations that I’ve been itching to show around for the better part of two years.

The second best thing about it is that Fantasy Flight Games always sends us the actual physical copies once they’re released. The other day I got my Star Wars Destiny box in the mail box, and it’s glorious.

I mean, look at it. Look at it!

This is the Obi Wan Kenobi Starter Set, for which I had the pleasure of drawing Obi Wan himself, depicted in the period of the Star Wars lore between the Clone Wars and A New Hope.

Yes, I’ll post the high res image soon, I’m still getting them all ready.

In the early stages of these projects we usually have a temporary working title, so I’m never sure of what actual releases my illustrations end up in.

For example, young Anakin chatting with Senator Palpatine in A Tale of Tragedy is included in Convergence, and I’m pretty sure I’ve made something for Star Wars Destiny Two-Player Game. However, since I haven’t yet received the physical copies of everything I’ve worked on, I wouldn’t swear on it.

For this reason, and since I’m kind of terrified of breaking my NDA with Fantasy Flight Games and Lucasfilms, I’ve scoured the Internet to double check that everything I’d like to show had actually been released in some form or another.

I’ve found a couple here (that’s my Padme right there!:)) and a few other in other websites, so in the next few days I’d be posting images and sketches of what has been released so far.

I can’t really describe how privileged I feel about having worked on anything even remotely related to Star Wars.
I believe this had been a dream of mine since I got out of the theater after I first saw Star Wars in 1977.
As a matter of fact, I remember nerdy 5 years old me did try to draw Luke Skywalker in the trash compactor back then, but he couldn’t manage anything better than a couple of stick figures.

So, when I was asked to work on the project I’d already been happy to draw a couple of blasters and a light saber. Instead I had the pleasure of drawing most of the main characters at different points of their story, including Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Padme Amidala, Obi Wan Kenobi and others.

Also, every single Fantasy Flight Games Art Director has been a pleasure to work with, which is a big plus on the already very positive assignment.

Long story short, I’ll post Star Wars Destiny artwork soon, and yes, I’ll be bragging about it a lot.

by Paolo Puggioni