The Art of Dungeon Lords
Dedicated to Human-Made Art
The Early Beginnings of Dungeon Lords Art
When you set out to write a book, the job of writing the book is such a huge, seemingly insurmountable feat that oftentimes you don’t even think about the process it takes AFTER the story is complete.
One of the biggest pieces a writer pushes to the back of their mind is how the visuals of the book will come about. Even if it’s just the cover, there are big decisions that need to be made as far as the look and feel of the story is concerned. One big decision in today’s world is whether or not you should use AI art. I knew early on that the best choice was to use human art, whether from myself or others, and surprisingly there are ways to still get human-made covers done decently cheap.
If you are writing fantasy like I am, your art may begin early as you begin to sketch things like your map and character concepts so you can wrap your brain around the things you are imaging in this brand new world.
My first concept for Dungeon Lords was to release it in smaller, almost magazine-sized editions that would feature mini-missions and shorter story arcs that ramped up to a kind of “season finale” of sorts before the next arc began.
Here you can see an early sketch I made of what I thought the cover of Volume 1 would be. On the sketch you can see Faro standing in the Graeton town square with some semblance of the characters Lena, Thora, Osric and Tobi (from left to right). Mathias wasn’t even in the picture yet as a main character, but he would later replace Osric in the adventuring party.
As I learned more about the process and my story took shape, the idea of many small “Volumes” was dropped, and I moved to two arcs of three books for a six book planned series.
An early sketch of Dungeon Lords when it was planned to be released in short volumes. From left to right: Lena, Faro, Thora, Osric, and Tobi standing in the Graeton main square.
Where in the World of Evania?
In fantasy it’s important to have a map. Whether you end up publishing that map in your book or on your site is up to you, but it’s important to know where characters are, and where they are headed (or could possibly head given the circumstances).
I watched many video on the best ways to create maps. A lot of the videos told me to throw rice on a page and draw around the shape to get the form of the land mass. In my case, I just drew two quick lines to mark off a sea on one side and an ocean on the other.
My map randomness came from another technique I learned: Throwing down dice on a page and seeing where they land to palce the kingdoms.
I knew I wanted twelve kingdoms, so took twelve Fate Core Dice and rolled them onto the page. Given my pre-planning with the story, I knew I needed two kingdoms really close to each other in the middle of the map, that Mt. Fluore would be on the bottom, and if others were to close I moved them slightly. A few landed in the water, so they were placed right at the closest point of land.
After that, I did the same thing with the small towns on the map. Evania is rather sparce considering the Scourge that wiped out most of the population shortly after Cosimir takes power, so I didn’t need to overcrowd it.
At the time that the short story “Volumes” was still the main idea for the story, I was also working hard on a Fate Core Version of the story that people could read my version of the story and play along with, or go on their own adventures across Evania!
I needed something for sale with the name “Dungeon Lords” on it in order the claim the trademark for the term, so I worked hard to get the game version out by studying Fate Core rules and working on the details of the kingdoms to “gamify” it.
That is how the different biomes of Evania were born. I wanted it to be one country, but to have vastly different settings no matter where the characters went to make the game and the story more fun.
I’ve had feedback that biomes wouldn’t happen so close together like that, especially with the eternal winter kingdom of Ecradum.
Don’t worry, there is method to all the madness that will be revealed throughout the series, and I’ve kept the biomes for the fun of the game and story, all while still fitting the rules of the world.
Once the rough sketch of the map was done, I set out to find an easy way to make it look better, but also still looked professional.
I settled on using Inkarnate. For the price it was a no-brainer to be able to create a professional looking map. I’ve seen a lot more maps come from Inkarnate that look a lot fuller and more professional than my version, but I think it suits my needs without overcrowding Evania.
The Art of the Fate Core RPG
As stated above, I was working on the Fate Core RPG book “The Dungeon Lords Guide” at the same time the early story was taking shape. I was working to get the trademark for the term “Dungeon Lords”, and wanted to get a product to market that I could submit for the trademark. And to be honest, the fact that my story was playable was one of my early hooks to pull people into the world.
I would consider my own artwork mid at best as I’m out of practice, so instead I turned to a FreePik subscription and stock images to get the art for the RPG book.
I chose FreePik because a quick search showed me they had a lot of the types of images I needed. They also had a filter to “Exlude AI”, so after checking that filter on, I set about to find the stock images that fit the book.
Admittedly, this gave me a ton of different art styles throughout the book and they clash a bit, but hey, I was able to put the final book together (writing excluded) in nine days with stock images and a few images of my own using my Fate Dice and my map.
This project is BEGGING to have a kickstarter in the future to be able to hire a real artist instead of using my mish-mash of stock images. Consistency and a major rewrite would make this a really great project, but my main focus is the main series of six books at this time.
Early seeds of Dungeon Lords notes written into a game book with stock images to make a Fate Core RPG book. You even get to see the original logo I designed myself before I outsourced it to professionals.
Art from the Books
One of the biggest obstacles of an author (besides writting the damn thing) is finding a way to get a good, eye-catching cover.
I was never under the guise that I could do the cover myself. I did some digital art in college, but by the time the opportunity to write Dungeon Lords came around, I was more than a decade out of practice.
After some research I landed on using GetCovers for the job. They were cheap, and they use real, human artists in their process. They also have a quick turnaround for basic covers, so I was willing to give them a try.
The first version I got back can be seen here, and while it’s not a bad cover (especially for the price and the three day turnaround), it wasn’t what I wanted.
I ended up paying they for custom character creation instead of the stock lion, and the version you know and love of Faro in his blue tunic holding his hammer was born.
It was well worth the money to get the custom character, and now I have a solid style and plan for the rest of the series.
This is the first version that GetCovers kicked back to me. It’s not bad at all, but it’s wasn’t my vision. It gives off “Greek lion god is space” vibes, and it just wasn’t it.
The first sketch of Faro I received back from GetCovers. It looks like him, but his signature weapon wasn’t there, and I wanted something more direct and in-your-face for the cover. This Faro is just fighting off to the side.
The next version I received after giving my feedback hit the nail right on the head, and we went with this version.
I don’t know what I was expecting based on the final sketch, but this exceeded my expectations big time. I wasn’t expecting this level of detail in the final version of Faro, so I was over the moon that they were able to create this for me.
The final cover spread for the paperback version of “The Lost Disciple”.
From there we went through several rounds of revisions on the final cover, mostly small tweaks to make it fit my vision perfectly.
The end result was the cover you see here. I was happy that GetCovers was able to work with me through several rounds of revisions and tweaks and took my feedback to bring it to life.
Now I have a template that fits the rest of the books, and a solid partner that uses human artists to get my covers without breaking the bank #notsponsored.
Using My Skills on a Cover
While I’m not well-versed in digital art anymore, i still mostly help on to my Photoshop skills throughout the years.
That said, when it came time to release “The Revenant’s Tale”, I was already over $10,000 in on launching book one and wasn’t ready to pay for another cover with a custom character at that time.
So instead, I was able to take the working files that GetCovers gave me from book one, combine it was a stock photo character from FreePik, and with a little background color changing and some blending, I was able to make my own cover for this short story without paying out anything extra.
It was a definite win in my book, and I was happy that I still had some skills that could help me out in the art department for a book.
The eBook cover for “The Revenant’s Tale” that I created using existing assets and a stock image from FreePik.
A Trip to the Past
As I was planning book two and the arc for the entire series, I wanted to make sure I was still keeping my writing skills sharp.
That’s where the idea for “Tahlari” was born. I planned a chapter outline for the entire book in a mad twenty-four hour flurry as I became very excited to explore Lena’s background more.
I wanted something fast-paced, and since it was a prequel I still had rules to live by, but it didn’t have to fit as closely in continuity as book two would, so I was able to plan it out in such a flurry.
Since Lena is one of the core five in the main series, I knew I had to go back to GetCovers and get another custom character created.
This time I asked for more steps in their process between sketch and final iteration, and they did not disappoint. You can see the steps in the process below.
The final cover for “Tahlari: A Dungeon Lords Tale”
The final approved sketch of Lena.
Base color added to the sketch.
This is the layer where the basic details were added.
Finer details in the Lean artwork.
The final version of Lena that was added to the cover.
The Artist’s Edition From Painted Dragon Studios
I was hanging out with my kids one day when I got a message from Aaron at Painted Dragon Studios. He said he had a surprise for me. I’d sent him an audiobook version of The Lost Disciple simply because I follow him on Facebook and he’s really big into the fantasy space.
Not sure what I was expecting when he wanted to call me. A simple sketch at most.
Instead when I got on a call with him he showed me the epic painting he made of Faro based on the inspiration he took while listening to the story.
He went on to show me the 3D mockup he made in Blender first, for positioning and layout reference. At the time I didn’t get to see the in-process painting steps, but you can see them in the video.
This was an amazing surprise, and I didn’t hesitate to pitch him on using it as a special artist’s edition of the book.
Watch the moment that Aaron at Painted Dragon Studios surprised me with the painting reveal!
The original painting of Faro by Painted Dragon Studios
The Cover of the Artist’s Edition of Dungeon Lords: The Lost Disciple
MORE TO COME!
As more books are created and more artists send me their Evania-insprired works, I’ll be sure to update this page! I think it’s fun to see how things are made, and I want to thank you so much for taking this deep-dive into the world of The Art of Evania with me!