I’ve recently made some artwork for Modiphius’ latest RPG, John Carter of Mars – Adventures on The Dying World of Barsoom, and since it has been already displayed on the company’s website, for once I won’t have to wait a couple of years to post it.

The Kickstarter campaign has gone live last Tuesday, and the goal was reached in a matter of minutes, which is beyond impressive.

Now, I have to confess that I was particularly happy to work on this project.
When I was a kid there was an awesome books market in my home town, where you could drop your used books and pick up new ones, pretty much by weight.
I used to go there with my dad – whose only activity while not working was pretty much just reading – and grab a bagful of new (well, used) books every Saturday morning.

It was pretty much the golden age of SciFi in Italy back then, with the Urania magazine being one of the best selling publications.
It’s thanks to that that I started reading the classics of Sci-fi and Fantasy, Arthur Clarke, Azimov, H.G.Wells and so on. Not to mention Conan, Captain Future, Flash Gordon and, of course, John Carter of Mars.
Hell, one of the first things I remember drawing is one of the covers by Frank Frazetta. I’d like to go back in time and tell 10yo me that all that copying was not for nothing.

Anyway, the illustration below is the first one I’ve made for the game, and it depicts Deja Thoris, one of the main characters, looking over the vast city of Ptarth.

Since I’ve started being diligent with backing up my stuff, I’ve also kept the sketches this time.

After the first couple of iterations, the art directors came to the conclusion that we needed a clearer idea of the visual language for ships and architecture. So I actually stopped working on this illustration for a while and draw a whole bunch of concepts for buildings and spaceships before I could move to the coloured version.

Actually I’ll ask them if I’m allowed to post them, eventually.

Anyway, John Carter of Mars looks awesome (look at the video!) and I hope I’ll be making more work for it.
Next time I’ll post more of what I’ve done so far.

by Paolo Puggioni