Art Thread: Menagerie RPG

Hope everyone is having a fun Tuesday. I got notice Ghost Girl isn’t the Menagerie member referenced in another SotM deck anymore. (Though Ghost Girl is also getting more, so we’ll see how many we can collect.)

Looks like Charade got roped into a federal agent’s off-the-books operation along with some other women known for shooting guns real good. (from left to right: Tango One, Charade, Hannah Tucker, and Expatriette)

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Nice.

Charade smirks. “So is this an ‘off-the-books’ as in disavowable, or ‘off-the-books’ as in they’ll shoot us themselves if they catch us? Just to know who to include in my field of fire.”

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So here is a thing I haven’t really done that much before: thumbnails. Given that I have spent (probably an underestimate if anything) a couple hundred hours working on card artwork, I decided to finally give thumbnailing a serious attempt to keep me from… say, drawing a piece of artwork, only to scrap it or find out after a card has been changed that it no longer fits the theme. Only hypotheticals, this has… never happened before.

Anyway, enjoy some Alycia thumbnails. Notes below.

  1. Totally stealing that concept from the Old Guard Dave recommended above. Might need to throw in some more Easter eggs, but functional.
  2. I figure Rusty, given who he is and his role in the Quill family, probably had a favorite gun. Given when he would have been in his “prime” I figured a Benelli combat shotgun from the turn of the Millennium was fitting, but I’m sure Dave has his own recommendations. And grabbing the mantle piece to fend off attackers is totally an Alycia move.
  3. When given the choice of referencing the iconic shot of Tony Stark working on the proto-Iron Man armor from the first movie in either Alycia, Jason, or Leo’s decks, Alycia won because it was the first one I did. :stuck_out_tongue:
  4. This is the “Hello Hero” card (it’s even the quote, though I could do with some recommendations about changing this up). The reason for the second thumbnail is that I am not totally sold on this concept, though I haven’t thought of a better one quite yet. Suggestions welcomed.
  5. (not shown) Hovercycle (I listed all the cards first and then came back to work on thumbnails, so skipping around at this point.) Probably just going to show this off in an AEGIS garage, but I will take more exciting suggestions.
  6. (not shown) Glorious Battle (Probably needs a better name, but I think I pulled it from something Dave wrote.) Planning on the artwork being Charade and Carbine facing off in a point blank gun fight. The alternative is showing Alycia with some battle damage but I feel I already have too many close up shots on Alycia already to keep the card distinct.
  7. As listed in the margins, a concept for upgraded armor mentioned in the Cable Gal story. Not completely hard shell like Link’s armor, but does take a couple cues from it.
  8. I definitely wanted Parker shown in one of the cards and this seemed like a good one (will make more sense with the quote text). Not 100% sure how to design the stun batons (currently just sort of boring movie Black Widow batons) but I figure a couple of passes will help here.
  9. (not shown) AG-64 Scions, have a good concept in mind for the look (drew them on the character card) but still mulling over how to present them.
  10. Given that Dave and I both enjoy the Matt Faction Hawkeye series, seemed like a perfect place to reference some of their fun, clip art-looking thought balloons showing how Alycia would plan out an escape from custody.
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These are great. Very few notes to add:

That’s fine. Given Rust’s role as a bodyguard, a shotgun is good close-action defense weapon. Alycia “prefers” a Dragunov sniper rifle, but any port in a storm. And, of course, if there’s a combat shotgun on the mantle in Act 1 …

I like it.

A Tarantinoesque point-blank thang sounds fun and, as noted, changes things up a bit.

Always fun. Feel free to throw in some percentage probabilities in there, if you need more business (though it’s probably already busy enough).

Very nifty stuff here. :smiley:

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I thought the percentages were a good idea and they add a little bit to the “thought process.” Plus they should still be readable at print size (based on my test) so a fine addition.

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I’m not sure what that final icon is to the right is, but this is tons of fun.

Are the percentages likelihood of occurrence, or likelihood of success?

Final icon on the right is the exit doors (implying just walking out the front door with a disguise).

As for the percentages, I figured they were a combination of likely to occur (like finding a gun or a keycard) or likely to work out.

I occurred to me that we almost committed the most heinous of crimes: charging off into season-ending danger without a unifying team symbol.


Crisis averted.

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If you ever think it worth time to do something more here, I definitely think doing some of the magitech glowing line highlights on the skull would be fitting. :slight_smile:

(I’d keep focusing on that Alycia work, though. Priorities! :smiley: )

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Still hard at work on card artwork, now with questionable canon.


This would have been Issue 48-49 right after the Time Tumble when Radiance and Concord stopped the Phoenix from crash landing and then Sablestar and Doctor Infinity’s drones showed up to attack the Menagerie before Baking with Jeff Goldblum.

So technically Radiance wouldn’t have had her full outfit yet… but I don’t really care. It looks cool and in the end, isn’t that all that really matters? (No, not really, but it does in this context.)

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The wings look more bat than butterfly. I think overall it’s fantastic :+1:

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I thought she dropped most of the butterfly design elements after the thing with Palomedes. If she kept the butterfly wings, that’ll be an easy fix to make (and something I really want to get right before doing her Wing card artwork).

I think the butterfly theme is too deeply ingrained to really give it up

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An easy enough edit before throwing the card together.

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More detail now that I’m thinking about it.

Summer proposed doing that, For Science, and that would have logically led into a story where Daph confronts Palamedes. That story never actually got told (as far as I know), but I sort of assume it got wrapped up somehow, letting Summer go back to her normal costume. So your memory was correct, and it’s now caught up with my own head-canon :smiley:

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Huh, for some reason I thought it had gotten told (or maybe it was just broad strokes “here’s what would probably happen”). I know it was the cause of Radiance switching over to a more Supergirl-inspired one-piece instead of her original outfit.

Not too worried one way or the other, just making sure I’m remembering things correctly as I try to transcribe them into words and images.

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I’m almost done with the cleanup of posts in the Roll20 forum import, and I came across what I think you’re referring to

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Goddammit, Doyce …




and





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Joke done entirely for the laughs. I think your minis look great, Dave. :+1:

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Thanks. I’m not happy with how Alycia’s face turned out – one of the few weaknesses of the tool, though, honestly, it could well be user error. I do know I found some additional proportion sliders after i had taken all the screen caps that I would likely modify A’s figure with.

Jason’s though – being able to turn magic effects into black swarms of nanobots was awesome.