[Art & Warcraft Stuff] December 2023

[jordangreywolf]

Holiday Biscotti
For one of the recipe illustrations, biscotti. Not that I would think of this as a holiday treat. Honestly, I didn't quite get the logic of what recipes were being chosen for any particular week. I tried making it look a bit more festive, holiday-season-appropriate, with some green and red candy sprinkles -- for "Winter's Veil," of course, not Christmas.



Holiday Lobster Tail
We got a special request from the editor to come up with a recipe that would be appropriate for Hannukah, but without it being expressly Hannukah. Somehow the recipe writer came up with lobster, which I'm pretty sure would NOT be a dish served on Hannukah. Whatever. I just draw what I'm told to.




Draenic Sufganiyot
A bit late for Hannukah, but I was asked to draw some sufganiyot ("Israeli donuts" as it says on one site), and to somehow make the scene look like this could be a Draenei recipe, and imply Hannukah, but not exactly. Or something. Because of course there's no Christmas and no Hannukah in World of Warcraft -- just Winter's Veil.



Kaldorei Fruitcake
The notorious Kaldorei fruitcake, which purportedly "lasts forever." The joke in World of Warcraft is that the recipe was lost millennia ago, and all the fruitcakes still around were baked at least that long ago. Well, for better or worse, the chef decided to try to replicate this infamous recipe for Winter's Veil.




New Year's Raspberry Chocolate Cake
There's nothing particularly New-Yearsy about raspberry chocolate cake, but I had actually drawn this cake nearly a year earlier (and I think I posted a version of this picture), but the recipe writer at the time had flaked out and never delivered the article it was supposed to accompany. The present recipe-writer was planning on "retiring" from the role at the end of the year, and I'd complained about how I'd drawn this cake and never got to use it, so he opted to finally use it for the last recipe article. I put in some balloons and fireworks to try to tie it in with the new year.



Birthday Bike T-Rex
One of my nieces is very easy to draw for. She likes T-rexes -- or at least, did a long time ago and has never bothered to tell me otherwise. So, for a birthday card design, I drew another crazy T-rex having fun. VROOM. Whee!



Ho Ho Ho - It's Sandy Claws!
There's a story behind this one, too. My mom has a social group/club in her neighborhood that calls itself the "Crabs." It has something to do with the golf carts they drive around, somehow. I got the oddball idea to do a crab-themed Christmas card. It's ... Sandy Claws. Har har har. The tree is supposed to be made out of seashells.



Wasteland Tractors
A couple of maybe-John-Deere (or Fallout-universe alt-history equivalent) tractors in the wasteland. I painted up a couple of Pixar Cars "tractor tipping" toy parts I found in a local thrift store. Every now and again I find these things -- typically loose in a junk toy bin -- and occasionally with batteries that haven't quite died yet, so if tipped back, the thing goes "MOOOOOO" in a very un-tractor-like way. My first step was to remove the "tractor-tipping" platform tab, and then to loosen the screws to get the batteries out (no more MOOOO), but also to get easier access to some of the recessed areas for painting. I also had a third one, though I just painted it up rusty and "generic." I'm putting together some "scene boxes" with terrain bits for different Fallout locales, with the idea that I might sort them in a way that the parts might be useful for particular locations. These I'm putting with a "wasteland farm" box, along with some assorted crops, etc.






Post-Apocalyptic Service Station
t's the United Power (UP) Service Station - open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, according to the sign, though the onset of the APOCALYPSE might affect actual hours. This started as a "Green Toys Fix-N-Fill Parking Garage" playset that I found at a thrift store shortly before my big house disaster, so it spent a lot of time sitting in storage. I eventually got back to this and removed the "Parking Garage" topper and lift, in order to transform the toy into a roughly 1:43 scale service-center for retro-futuristic electric vehicles. A 32-34mm "raider" mini from Fallout: Wasteland Warfare is shown for scale comparison. I figure this will be useful as a location for Fallout-themed post-apocalyptic RPG scenarios.


Horseman of the Post-Apocalypse
Interior of the "Tune-UP" bay with my United Power Service Station, with some Modiphius STL-printed furnishings. I was inspired by my dad's garage. (Not visible at this angle, but I stuck a couple of John Deere logos onto the sides of the rolling red tool chest.) This wastelander is apparently fixing up a super-turbo-charged deluxe version of Giddyup Buttercup as an alternative means of transportation.

The Halloween decorations are there on the notion that they've been there since the bombs dropped. (In the Fallout timeline, the Great War happened in October, just a week or so before Halloween, so it kind of makes sense for some early Halloween decorations to be out at a few locations.)



Post-Apoc Workshop
Interior view of the United Power Service Station with the roof/shell removed. The tool chest, bottle of car wax, and the hydraulic lift are all "bits" liberated from a broken Pixar Cars toy trailer that I also picked up at the thrift store to work with. The "Blue Zip" model is a 3D print, with some blister plastic from a deli tray container (it was already curved) used for a windshield insert.



C-C-C-C-Cazadores! RUN!
Nasty bug minis 3D-printed by a friend, painted up as those nasty FLYING DEATH MONSTERS thwarting my attempts to make a beeline (ha!) straight from Goodsprings to the Vegas Strip in Fallout: New Vegas. (I can see that tower in the distance, but can't reach it unless I want to deal with "You're feeling a bit woozy" followed by certain death.) They're fast, they're deadly, they're hard to target in VATS, they're hard to target out of VATS, and even if you can take out one of them, it just means there are more of them nearby and now they're all converging upon your location.




Scrapland Bazaar
A couple of merchant booths (modified from designs by M3Studios) in the middle of a scrapyard. I made some custom signs in Photoshop, and then dug through the bits box to find stuff to decorate the booths with. I used some tiny beads for fruits and veggies for the "Farm Fresh" food stand. The scrapyard tiles are from Secret Weapon Miniatures / Elrik's Hobbies.

The booth STLs are from M3Studios "Foggy Island" Kickstarter.

The Tablescapes "Scrapyard" tiles can be found at Elriks Hobbies.




Mojave Geckos - Godzilla Wannabes!
Is it just me, or were those geckos from Fallout: New Vegas kind of ADORABLE, if they weren't, y'know, trying to slaughter everyone in sight? These are a prime example of the tendency of the B-movie mutant animals in Fallout games tending toward B-movie "person-in-a-rubber-suit" humanoid forms even if there's no evidence of anything resembling intelligence in their behavior. (But then, it's not as if the NPC AI behavior in general is terribly smart for the humans, either.)

These were 3D-printed models painted up in acrylics and ArmyPainter SpeedPaints.



Last Unicorn Doodle of 2023
Actually, I think I might have posted this already, around that time. Anyway, here's how I finished off the year, doing a "pen-and-ink" retro doodle.