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New playlist all about world-building throughout the AE:GIS multiverse, starting with the humans, elves, and dwarves of the KEys & Kingdoms world and how we're adapting them to our D&D home game.

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A current project to illustrate the ten core peoples of the Keys & Kingdoms setting -- the realm of Cosmos, a world that combines traditional RPG high fantasy, with the sort of fantasy you'll find in a Disney fairytale musical.

What would YOU pick if we were rolling up some characters for a game of Keys & Kingdoms?

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Yesterday (when the create button was being a little screwy) was the two-year anniversary of our first big fiction project, "Better Yet?", an audio drama about mental health and depression. If you haven't already, be sure to take a look.

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Weekly updates from TAPAS? I'm shocked. SHOCKED. Gotta give full credit to Mason for conceiving of this series.

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It's a new movie-talking-about podcast with da boys! Join us for Popcorn Culture Podcast. In our first episode, we talk about the movie Speed Racer.

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At last, we have a second episode of Chit-Chat, being that we have a second thing to chit-chat about. My co-producers and I discuss the creation of the “Irregular Fantasy!” teaser and what might come next.

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The creators of "Better Yet?" bring you a teaser for a fantasy adventure substantially more irregular than any you've experienced before…

I'll admit I was really considering just abandoning the Tumblr not long after finishing that queue late last year… I just find the format a little frustrating. But I know it's beloved to a lot of people and I don't want to disappoint. So I'll keep the Tumblr just as active as everywhere else I post things. :) Which, historically, isn't very active, but, always trying to do better.

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And, okay, last thing in the queue, gonna be quiet here for a little while, but hopefully once this gets out I'll have promoted the Tumblr a little, and people will know! :3 The final queue, a re-release of the cast-and-character promos for "Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices"!

I haven't worked with Caleigh yet. Have only properly met her once. As the time approaches to finally record her song after she's been waiting in the wings almost two years... she may not have time. So we'll see. Hopefully we don't have to replace her. But these things happen.

The rest of the cast, they've at least recorded all their dialogue for the pilot and for a couple of pre-pilot teasers we're working on. After that, well, I can only hope. I'm a sentimental type who very much hopes to keep the same people around throughout a production, so I hope this cast stays stable.

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All right, keepin' the queue goin'! ...I don't know why I'm so committed to keeping it going every day, nobody's really watchin' yet, but I liked the automatic queue thingy, so, yeah, all the information I had to post, coming out daily... almost done.

A little promo of the talented cast of Irregular Fantasy! They've lent their voices to the teaser which I hope gets finished soon, and a number of promotional shorts which will follow before the big ol' pilot! The pilot's written and I'm just about to get started on really developing it.

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Here's another re-post, of the very first "Irregular Fantasy!" promo - the character renders atop the only background that will appear in the first teaser!

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All right, just kinda bloating the queue here now, here's just something we posted to Twitter once:

Put the official renders of the casts of both fantasy series... into group shots. Do you like it? I like it.

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And here's another logo! This one for "Irregular Fantasy!" - just a jazzed-up version of the original "Irregular Webcomic!" logo...

And this, knock on wood, is the Season 1 variant of the logo, bearing some imagery significant to the beginning of the story. So... yeah, hopefully someday there'll be another one of these.

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All right, now that we've wrapped up the whole Deities routine in the queue, here's some other stuff! The "Keys & Kingdoms" logo, with the subtitle of its first story, "The Choices"~

It was our own Sadie-melon who designed both components of this one, and I've discovered that she's here on Tumblr too! Here we go:

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The Deities Project: Part 10

An early notion for the Keys & Kingdoms universe was to divide its world into sections ruled by three pantheons, and those would be the historical pantheons of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology! As it turned out, the 3rd Edition D&D supplement “Deities & Demigods” included stats for those exact three pantheons, and I carefully studied that for guidance on how to reinterpret those legendary pantheons for use in a fantasy world.

And so began this project: drawing all 53 historical deities depicted in that book. Casey Gosselin drew their symbols and Stacy Lord drew the characters themselves. Neither saw the illustrations in the D&D book, but we stuck to what the book claimed as their symbol, their sacred weapon, and very general appearance. The big project lasted from October 2019 to August 2020. Since then, we’ve been putting more research into the real myths and other gods, but these will still form the foundation for the core members of the pantheons and what they’ll look like when the K&K universe begins.

This is an 11-part series presenting all the art anew and talking about the ideas behind it! Presented in the order in which they were done, which is approximately in the order of strongest to weakest according to their rankings in the D&D book. Don’t forget to check out Stacy and Casey’s own pages:

I’ve never once imagined that I could dare call this character “Heracles”. Nobody ever does. He is forever doomed to be the one Greek figure exclusively known by his Roman name because, guess the fuck what, people recognize the name “Hercules”.

His lion-head symbol was one of Casey’s favorites and my very favorite - that is one hella bitchin’ lion head. For the design of Hercules himself: his weapon of choice is of course a big heavy club, and he dresses in the impenetrable hide of the Nemean lion. I’m thinking his physique needs to be more exaggeratedly huge, and while I do love the long black hair and beard, I’m thinking… curlier. And put some tattoos on him. I thought he should be Polynesian, probably inspired by the fact that Dwayne Johnson had played him in a movie recently, and… yeah, I now figure he ought to have a few more Polynesian motifs.

I definitely subscribe to the theory that Freya and her husband Odur are just the pantheon’s royals Odin and Frigga under other names, I think them being separate characters was a mistranslation from a thousand years ago that’s kinda stuck with us. The D&D book acknowledges this by suggesting there are in-universe rumors that Odur, the guy who drives the sun chariot, is somehow just an aspect of Odin.

I went a bit deeper than that and figured him to be a Vanir and Freya’s valet, similar to Frey’s guy, Skirnir, who’s not cool enough to be a real god. Freya discovering that the Aesir don’t marry their own siblings, accepted that she couldn’t marry Frey and gladly chose Odur instead. As Frey and Freya appear as elves, he gave me the vibe of choosing to appear as a dwarf - though what dwarves really do look like in the K&K universe, we still haven’t hammered out, but we’ll get to it soon. We’ll be applying a bit of grit to the design of the dwarves from “Snow White”, since K&K’s purpose is to be a Disney-esque universe, while they will be more inherently supernatural than high-fantasy dwarves usually are, derived from the original version from Norse myth.

Hermod is the most minor of the true Asgardian gods - being a humble valet of Odin who gained enough notoriety to achieve demigod status after personally fetching dead Baldur’s soul from the underworld. Thus, his general design is meant to evoke that he is in essence a peasant, not a member of the Aesir royal family. Casey counts his symbol among her favorites; it’s a very nicely-detailed scroll and Casey is a fan of her own style of drawing wings!

Hermod the messenger god, any chance he’s just a rip-off of a fellow messenger god called Hermes? Probably the first bit I ever wrote for the gods of K&K was Zeus jokingly throwing that accusation at Odin, which Odin finds bewildering as Hermod is an actual guy, how can he be a rip-off of anyone…?

Sobek in the myths would seem to be just another one of the gods - a dude with a crocodile head. Derived from the D&D book, he’s said to be a deformed fiend, a full-on humanoid crocodile, leaving Nephthys horrified at what she’s given birth to. This wouldn’t seem to have any mythological basis, but I love it. I hope I don’t get too much flack for borrowing so heavily from “Deities & Demigods” - that’s what RPG sourcebooks are for, to help you tell a story of your very own, but those stories are generally supposed to remain around your own tabletop.

So, yeah, Sobek is no true Ennead but the first of the spawn of Set, who cannot father ordinary gods thanks to his longtime tampering with dark magic. His mother doesn’t hate him, and he’s just a guy trying to carve out a place for himself in the pantheon, having a pretty pitiful portfolio but, at least having enough influence to be a demigod.

The weakest of the gods in the book, with a divine rank of 1. Imhotep was a real person in history - a chancellor, scholar, high priest, architect, and doctor, who was gradually glorified as a deity over the course of the 3,000 years following his death! The D&D book interprets this as the guy having achieved apotheosis after death, becoming an actual god upon hitting the afterlife. Always a cool concept!

So, er, yeah, that’s all I’ve got. And that’s the end of the Deities Project! Thanks for reading all eleven pages of it, assuming you, you know, did that.

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The Deities Project: Part 9

An early notion for the Keys & Kingdoms universe was to divide its world into sections ruled by three pantheons, and those would be the historical pantheons of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology! As it turned out, the 3rd Edition D&D supplement “Deities & Demigods” included stats for those exact three pantheons, and I carefully studied that for guidance on how to reinterpret those legendary pantheons for use in a fantasy world.

And so began this project: drawing all 53 historical deities depicted in that book. Casey Gosselin drew their symbols and Stacy Lord drew the characters themselves. Neither saw the illustrations in the D&D book, but we stuck to what the book claimed as their symbol, their sacred weapon, and very general appearance. The big project lasted from October 2019 to August 2020. Since then, we’ve been putting more research into the real myths and other gods, but these will still form the foundation for the core members of the pantheons and what they’ll look like when the K&K universe begins.

This is an 11-part series presenting all the art anew and talking about the ideas behind it! Presented in the order in which they were done, which is approximately in the order of strongest to weakest according to their rankings in the D&D book. Don’t forget to check out Stacy and Casey’s own pages:

This is for sure a favorite design of  mine! The blue skin with the very pale hair looks awesome, the single-bladed greataxe, the proper bikini armor - and some actual muscles, to emphasize in her final design! Mm-hmm. Probably the most shoehorned a character’s symbol ever became… you can’t embroider fur, what the heck was I thinking?

Skadi’s got a funny backstory - a Jotun who wanted to defect to Asgard, she came seeking to marry Baldur. Odin didn’t want to just give Baldur away, so had her instead choose her husband from a lineup of various bachelor Asgardians while only able to see their feet. She hoped the cleanest pair of feet belonged to Baldur, but they turned out to be Njord’s. It seems she wasn’t happy with Njord, and they eventually divorced and Skadi ended up with Sif’s son Uller - I imagine she was happier there, as Skadi married to Uller seems a bit more “status quo”. Also, one of her domains is skiing. She is the goddess of skiing. People make fun of her for that.

Speaking of Uller, seems he’s on a similar power level to his wife. I believe mythically he’s Sif’s son and thus Thor’s stepson, but, eh, sometimes these tangled myths are worth simplifying, let’s say he’s Thor’s son as well. So… pretty good design, wearing a lot more layers than most, looks pretty adventurous and the colors are nice together. Basically, setting the standard for what more final designs ought to look like. And I love his extra-long silky hair!

Here we have my very favorite deity design in the whole collection! A lot of ideas together I wasn’t sure would work but sure as hell do - such as the animal-headed deities occasionally having human hair, his mace being golf club shaped, his sleepy red eyes, his condemning point, and overall slender frame. Really sweet. The symbol on his belt being the scales of life and death was another ad-lib from Stacy. Totally awesome. And the jackal head symbol is nice! Like Bast’s cat symbol, I figured it represents just a general jackal rather than Anubis himself, as evidenced by their different eye colors.

And we’re out of the lesser gods and into the demigods, in this case not meaning gods of partially mortal descent, but instead gods who have just the bare minimum amount of worshipers to be proper gods; deific beings without enough worshipers are called quasi-gods.

Nike is, er, sort of a Titan, I guess? She and her three siblings are more like embodiments of concepts - she is victory, and the most noteworthy beside her these days is Kratos, who embodies strength, because his name is now well-known as the protagonist of the God of War series… just his name, there wasn’t really much to the strength guy to borrow from.

Anyway, Nike. Kind of an angel of victory! I suppose there ought to be an explanation of some sort for why only a small handful of gods have wings… anyway, Casey and I both counted this among our favorite symbols, I like that sort of Christmas-angel version of her, and making it generally darker in color than her actual self, that feels legit. I specified a “trumpet-shaped mace”, and Stacy clearly didn’t know what that meant, as she made a flail with a trumpet-shaped handle, and I just didn’t say anything because I wanted to get through to the end of this thing, so, this is the other one besides Tyr that I really regret. But much less than him, because besides her weapon, her design is top-notch.

Apep! Sometimes called Apophis. Peppy, to his friends. This fiendish fiery serpent is the enemy to the Pharaonic gods - certainly a very different sort of deity to all the rest. Lots of novelty in his being totally non-humanoid. While usually depicted as a big python with some dragon-like traits, I thought making him a big thick cobra would be a fun new thing! Though since then I have seen him drawn as a cobra in one other place, a cool YouTube channel that explains lots of myths, been a valuable resource. Apep is important as we start out, since he will be the force behind the villains of “Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices”. So, yeah, I’m very happy he turned out this damn good!

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The Deities Project: Part 8

An early notion for the Keys & Kingdoms universe was to divide its world into sections ruled by three pantheons, and those would be the historical pantheons of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology! As it turned out, the 3rd Edition D&D supplement “Deities & Demigods” included stats for those exact three pantheons, and I carefully studied that for guidance on how to reinterpret those legendary pantheons for use in a fantasy world.

And so began this project: drawing all 53 historical deities depicted in that book. Casey Gosselin drew their symbols and Stacy Lord drew the characters themselves. Neither saw the illustrations in the D&D book, but we stuck to what the book claimed as their symbol, their sacred weapon, and very general appearance. The big project lasted from October 2019 to August 2020. Since then, we’ve been putting more research into the real myths and other gods, but these will still form the foundation for the core members of the pantheons and what they’ll look like when the K&K universe begins.

This is an 11-part series presenting all the art anew and talking about the ideas behind it! Presented in the order in which they were done, which is approximately in the order of strongest to weakest according to their rankings in the D&D book. Don’t forget to check out Stacy and Casey’s own pages:

What little research I’ve done on the Egyptian pantheon has brought forth one rather obvious conclusion: that the D&D version of Bast has a lot more in common with Sekhmet than Bast. Now, I don’t have any issue with combining the two catgirl deities together to streamline the pantheon, but why did they call her Bast when she was very much Sekhmet…? I do want to bring Sekhmet back into the story as an actual character. Lots of iconic deities in all three pantheons who were left out of the book, they can be minor characters in the K&K universe.

Her design isn’t quite what I had in mind… as a fuzzy kitty in this dress, she just looks a bit too domestic. I wanted her cat face to be gaunt and feral, and her dress to be… well, somehow more appropriate for a lady of war, there’s some intangible quality that makes the dress look more like that of a suburban mom instead; not sure what that quality is and how to change it. Keeping in mind that I am bringing Sekhmet into the K&K universe, Bast ought to be more domestic than Sekhmet, but… still, not by this much.

In the myths, Hathor does have a cow motif but not usually the actual head of a cow. Yes, it would seem the D&D folks took a lot of creative liberties with Hathor, making her the daughter of Horus and sister of Bast, and as mentioned the one they called Bast was really Sekhmet… both were actually the daughters of Ra and consorts of Horus… I mean, I’m all for making their family trees less tangled, the famously-entangled family trees of the Greek gods seemingly don’t have shit on the Egyptians.

Anyway, with her cow motif, I thus also gave her very mild Hindu motifs - again, not restricting these characters to the cultural motifs of where they actually come from, so they represent the whole world!

This was, perhaps, the only symbol I asked Casey to redo - her first attempt at a cow’s face looked too much like a sheep.

This obscure Titan was included in the D&D Greek pantheon, I assume, due to the need for one themed around trickery and luck. Always needing deities to fit every domain! And for similar reasons, Tyche later became the inspiration for the 4th Edition goddess Avandra.

Both Casey and Stacy count their work on Tyche among their least-favorite designs: Casey felt Tyche’s pentagram was lopsided and uneven, while Stacy thinks she got the perspective on her face all wrong. Neither are really a dealbreaker for me, I only recall my suggestion that she wear a cornucopia-shaped hat and then… having to figure out alongside Stacy what the heck that actually looks like. Good result!

Here’s a bit of world-building lore I decided on: while Gaia and most of her descendants qualify as Titans, the six children of Kronos and Rhea have a different nature and are Olympians - perhaps due to a prophecy that made Kronos paranoid they’d overthrow him. The six Olympians’ divine-born children are also Olympians, but their godly grandchildren, such as Pan here, have a lesser nature and are instead called Arcadians, so named for Pan setting up a fey sanctuary called Arcadia in this universe.

A favorite design of mine - largely due to the novelty of being the only god who appears as a satyr, when so many are human-looking it got a bit dull after a while. The general anatomy of a satyr in the K&K universe will need some work which results in changes to his design, but one particularly brilliant improvisation on Stacy’s part I absolutely adore - zoom in on his eyes and you’ll see he has horizontal, almost rectangular pupils, just like a real goat. That was awesome.

His syrinx, or panpipe, also needs some work. It’s the only weapon he carries and is also his symbol; Casey’s interpretation looked a bit more like a picket fence. I figure Pan invented the syrinx, hence it also being called a panpipe, and the one he carries and uses as his symbol was his prototype, so I figure it’s very primitive and held together with twigs and twine.

Bes in my research seems very different from the other Egyptian gods - there doesn’t seem to be any common iconography of him that most of the Egyptian gods have from the walls of tombs and stuff. Scholars suggest he was perhaps an import to Ancient Egypt from its less-famous southern neighbor, Nubia. And it would seem he wasn’t so much a deity as a good-luck charm, with many people having little stone statues of him in their home to ward off evil.

Regardless, before doing my actual research, I followed along with how the D&D book depicted him; as a hunchbacked dwarf or gnome, ugly but exceedingly cheerful; instead of the furry club tail he has in that book, I gave him more of a dinosaur tail, but still with the pigmentation of his own human skin for a slightly unsettling look.