Rick Hershey

Patronage Art Project

2010-03-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

For the last month I had discussed various methods of subscription based stock art and methods of making it work. Even though I kept the discussion open, I couldn't make the numbers work way before I even posted about it publicly. That said, something of interest that did come up was the idea of a Patronage project.

So, here we are now as I try the "Patronage" model out and see if it works or not.

Details: The first project will be for a set of creatures. The set will include 20 different creatures/monsters. Monstrous humanoids are allowed, but not standard humanoids. What does that mean? Well, and orc would be a monstrous humanoid, but a dwarf would not.
The set is for fantasy based monsters, although I'm sure many of them will be easily placed into any setting. All images will be 1/4 page in size and fully colored. Both B&W and Colored versions will be provided to patrons. All files will be 300dpi tiffs.
Images will be created at a rate of 2-3 per week. Images will start being created next week, patrons after that will receive all images predating their donations.

About the Artist: Rick Hershey is the owner and operator of Empty Room Studios. He has worked as a freelance artist for over 10 years for such clients as Wizards of the Coast, Green Ronin Publishing, Platinum Studios, Mongoose Publishing, and many more.

Patronage Levels: There will be two levels of Patronage, with different benefit.

$10.00 Patronage- The $10 Patron will receive all 20 images in B&W and Color. They will receive a license to use the pieces of artwork once in a single publication. The copyright to the illustration remains with the artist, who is granting permission to the patron to use the illustration once.

$25 Patronage- The $25 Patron will receive the above but will also be able to make a request on a single creature to be drawn. Give ideas, watch the sketch process, be a part of it's creation. For every $25 you contribute you will gain access to another creature to help create, as long as spots are available. You will also receive all 20 images in B&W and Color as mentioned above.
$25 Patrons are bound to the following License Agreement upon donating. please read and if you have any problems with the license, please do not participate. You can view the license here: http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/9835/licensestockart.jpg

$25 Patrons will be asked to join a private forum where they can interact with the artist and view work as it is produced.

$10 Patrons will be added to a mailing list and sent links to the images as they are completed.

Patrons send the Contributions to paypal: rick@emptyroomstudios.com

ATTENTION: If You sign up for the $25 Patron spot you will receive a bonus image this week only! Offer ends Sunday!.

Questions A few questions have come in, so I'll be answering the relevant ones here for everyone.

Will these Images be bundled and sold as stock art at a later date?
Answer: They will be sold as stock art, but will not be bundled. Each image will most likely be sold as a single product with a price range of $10-$15 each. So, to buy all of the images that way, it would cost you a minimum of $200

Are these just going to be generic creatures?
Answer: The $25 patrons might request more "generic" creatures if it suits their purposes, but overall, that's not the goal. What you most likely will see from me is new takes on generic creatures, brand new monsters, and possibly some popular monsters that never get drawn in stock art. But I'm creative guy and want to have fun making these.

What are the options for combining multiple images into one image? I.e., Let's say you do one image about a half page in size of a character lineup. Could you count that one image as "worth" 3 standard images, essentially instead of getting 3 images that week, you get only the one larger image?
Answer: All images will be of a single creature, full body. you are welcome to combine the characters yourself, but I will be providing single characters in all their glory- no short cuts.

Painted work

2010-03-21T15:47:00.000-07:00

Working on building more traditional fantasy images for my portfolio. This is ones of those. Quick sketch, everything else painted.

More pages for Six Gun Requiem

2010-03-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

Six Gun Requiem

2010-01-30T17:09:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago I got hired by the talented Gabriel Cassata to work as the artist on his vampire comic, Six Gun Requiem. It's a fun script with a lot of cinematic elements and I think my heavy blacks and gritty textures compliment the great writing. Anyways, Gabriel gave me the go head to post some pages. These are the 4 pages I've done this past week. I'll post again when I get more done.

Busy . . .

2010-01-28T18:45:00.000-08:00

Been busy this week. Started on a new comic for a client called "Six Gun Requiem" which has been fun so far. I'm 3 pages penciled and inked, should have another 1-2 done by Friday night. I'll see about posting samples here.

Also working on some figures for another client. Lots of war mechs it seems, and going a lot better then I would expect from myself.

I also have some upcoming work involving creature designs and am finishing up a bunch of monsters/robots/aliens for an App Rocky and I are creating. Lots of fun.

Art Order- Assassin Devil

2010-01-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

So, Jon Schindehette (D&D Senior AD) has a new challenge set up over at his blog: http://artorder.blogspot.com to do a redesign of a creature from the 4th Edition Monster Manual II, just based off the illo description, not the actual image used. Anyways, above is my initial sketch of the creature. It's just a rough concept at this point, but it gave me a lot of key ideas I wanted to explore with the design.

- The armor needs to have a demonic anatomical look to it, I want to push this more and not do the typical horns/spikes and skulls. I'd rather do shapes that look like bones and muscles. . . but metal.

- I think I'm also going to reference some Indonesian designs for the character, but in a different direction then the D&D Devas have gone.

- I'm going to look at more Wayne Reynolds work for inspiration. He has a way of adding detail and layers to a costume that makes it feel "real" and I want to start capturing that type of feel. I think it brings a sense of realism to the characters and what the represent.

So, that's about it for now. I have a lot of cool ideas and I just need to get them worked out and revised.

Robotika 2

2010-01-11T17:57:00.001-08:00

So, found some time to do another character for Alex Sheikman's Robotika. This is Cherokee Geisha, cool character, cool concept. I played a bit more with the clothes designs then I did with Niko. Anyways, I still got Bronski to do, hopefully I'll have time before some scheduled work starts pouring in.

Robotika

2010-01-05T20:40:00.000-08:00

Alex Sheikman does a wonderful comic called Robotika. I have the first graphic novel, which I enjoy both as a cool story and setting, and for it's stylistic art. I've wanted to do some fan art of these characters for awhile, just never had the time. Anyways, did this tonight as a sort of warm-up for myself. It was fun, and I might tackle some other characters.

You can check out Robotika updates and what other things Alex is working on at his blog:

black and white IIII

2010-01-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

black and white III

2010-01-01T16:35:00.000-08:00

black and white II

2010-01-01T16:31:00.000-08:00

black and white

2010-01-01T16:24:00.000-08:00

Color Misc

2010-01-01T08:46:00.000-08:00

Illustration Color

2010-01-01T08:24:00.001-08:00

Lineart Covers

2010-01-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

Sequentials IIII

2010-01-01T08:16:00.000-08:00

Writer: Nikola Jajic and Michael Czernaiwski
Penciler: Rick Hershey
Inker: Rick Hershey
Colorist: Ramiro Diaz Legaspe

Sequentials III

2010-01-01T08:08:00.000-08:00

Art: Rick Hershey
Writer: Alana Joli Abbott
Letters: Gene Kelly
Editor: Jeremy Mohler

Sequentials II

2010-01-01T07:21:00.001-08:00

Art: Rick Hershey
Writer: Alana Joli Abbott
Letters: Gene Kelly
Editor: Jeremy Mohler

Sequentials

2010-01-01T06:42:00.000-08:00

Writer: Nikola Jajic and Michael Czernaiwski
Penciler: Rick Hershey
Inker: Rick Hershey
Colorist: Ramiro Diaz Legaspe