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The purpose of this thread is for artists to share their work with the intent of finding clients, and for other members of the community to find and commission artists for custom artwork.

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Left: Bonnie the Celestial Druid played by my wife

Middle: Mighto the Path of the Muscle Wizard Barbarian played by boyfriend of highschool friend

Right: Mavy the Light Domain Cleric of Waukeen played by my long time highschool friend

Ran lost mines of Phandelver before but this group was such a blast to play with! Two of them never played a D&D campaign before. I have added two more fans of this game to our community ✌️ doing the community a service hahaha

Context: This is a relatively new group. A few months ago a coworker of mine wanted to run a homebrew campaign set in the Neverwinter Wood for a couple of his friends who had never played before. I brought in another friend of mine who I have been playing with for years. My friend and I decided to play two halflings in a trench coat and be the party’s rogue/muscle/slapstick routine. The new players’ characters were a dogfolk druid and a half-elf bard. This was maybe the 6th or 7th session we’ve played.

We found an ancient moon elf tomb underground, and after killing the spirit who haunted the place, decided to investigate the area for any secrets. One room was magically sealed off behind an elven statue, and the other contained a sarcophagus where the ghosts’ remains sat, surrounded by ancient elven silver. As we walked into the other room, the NPC we were escorting reminded us not to touch any silver or we would be cursed.

Being the troublemakers we are, of course we couldn’t resist scooping up as much silver as we could. There was what looked like hundreds of gold’s worth. The bard tried to cast a sleep spell to stop us, but it only worked on me, and not my halfling twin brother. Sure enough, after we left the room, the Druid cast a spell and discovered that we, indeed, had been cursed. I sincerely thought this would be the most unexpected event of the session.

While the halflings bickered with the irritated NPC who was just trying to rescue his wife, the bard and druid discovered they were able to bypass whatever magical seal was on the other door from the tomb, and entered. They walked about 10 minutes through an expansive cave network, until they came to a cliff’s edge. In the massive cavern, 1000 feet below, was a giant, magical tree, which looked to be rotting from the roots.

The bard and the Druid sat, contemplating their next move. The bard pulled out his lyre and plucked a soothing tune. Were they supposed to save the tree? How would they get down? Was it surrounded by magic?

And without further explanation, the dog folk Druid stood up, handed the bard his prized “vanilla truffle,” and stepped off the ledge, arms outstretched. The bard sat there in absolute shock, not understanding what he just witnessed.

The DM let him roll a dexterity check, then described him falling through the canopy of the tree, smacking branches and getting scratched up along the way, and then free falling another 500 feet to the base of the cavern. He died instantly.

I’m not sure what the player was thinking, I think he was trying to somehow save the rot from the tree? Maybe he was just bored. Either way, it was one of the most memorable player deaths I’ve ever witnessed. I will never forget the spontaneous suicide of Screaming Beagle.

TLDR; during a dungeon crawl, a new player decided to throw himself off the ledge of an underground ravine towards a magical tree for seemingly no reason.

My son found out there was an after-school D&D program at his school. He was excited because the D&D club at his previous school was full of cliques, and he only got to watch but never play. I even bought the 2014 5th-edition books for him, since they were required by the club. He never got to use them.

Day 1, and he comes home dejected. While the program is welcoming, there aren't enough DMs. The program is staffed by one teacher and a parent volunteer, neither of whom is familiar with the game. There is a single student DM, but the poor kid has his hands full with eight players, leaving 11 players who mostly just stare at the kids who get to participate.

History wasn't going to repeat itself. I hadn't played since The Player's Handbook had the cover with the huge red demon statue on it, but I figured I could create something quick and entertain a group of kids for an hour and 15 minutes on Friday afternoons. The hope was that my participation would inspire another student to take the mantle of DM, and I could go back to being just a parent.

So over the weekend, I gave myself a crash course on 5th edition D&D. Ow. That was hard.

It wasn't that the premise was unfamiliar. As a DM, you set the scene, set up challenges, and the party tells you how they react. But the rules had changed quite a bit. I discovered I was quite the D&D fossil. Back in the day, initiative was rolled with a d6, armor class ranged from 10 to -10, and rounds lasted 1 minute (not 6 seconds as they are now). Most of the struggle was in unlearning old habits and discovering that the mechanics of spells like shield and bless now worked differently.

I didn't want to go into the program unprepared, so I created an outline of an adventure that I had used decades before. I'm not familiar enough with the Forgotten Realms, so I placed the adventurers in the Shield Lands, on the borders of Iuz on Oerth (Greyhawk setting). This choice proved to be fortuitous. While the players had never heard of Iuz, they had heard (via Stranger Things) of one of Iuz's implacable enemies, Vecna. Being in a setting where they could possibly meet Vecna tickled their fancy considerably.

What I didn't account for is that the modern D&D game is quite different than the dungeon crawls of my youth. I've seen Critical Role before, but hadn't anticipated how much influence it had on the game. It gives you pause when an 11-year-old looks you straight in the eyes and asks what their character's motivation is.

This emphasis on story actually made things a lot easier. Instead of having to prep elaborate battle maps and set up challenging fights, we spent some afternoons haggling with a potion seller, rolling to see if a giant rat could be tamed (which made the game feel like Pokémon for a while), and divvying up loot, which mostly consisted of low-value, non-magical trinkets.

There were some surprises. The current generation of kids has extremely low attention spans. Getting them to focus on the scene in front of them took constant urging and reminders. Literacy was also pretty poor. The kids struggled to spell words like dagger, chaotic, and platinum. Blame this on the prevalence of phones or the interruption of their education by COVID. I gained a healthy appreciation of what teachers put up with.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. It's motivated me to learn more about the hobby and perhaps continue to DM my kiddo and a few of his close friends.

Sylvie Wyldhart grew up as Daughter and Heir to a famous family of ranchers and spent most of her childhood with all kinds of animals, learning to understand and train them from very early on. As she grew older the Bronze Dragon Lord decided to offer her entry into their knights, where she became a squire at first, eventually graduating to a fully-fledged knight. Then one day, as an early forebearer of the Calamity to come, most of the cattle in the capital fell ill and died. The Wyldhart family was blamed and was to be executed. As her parents were about to be incinerated by Dragonfire, Sylvie lept from the rafters, taking the burst of fire for herself and fainted.

The next thing she can remember is her waking up in a field, far from her home. She was disfigured, burnt and had no idea where she was. And if she even still had a home. She wandered for a few days, before finding a small village that offered to take her in. She decided to hide her old life and fabricated a story of who she was, calling herself Pyre and keeping herself as hidden as possible. But as opposing forces are attacking the small village in the wake of a worldwide calamity, they decide to take up arms for the only home they have right now…

She is a human with an athletic, female build. They are in their late twenties. They wear a lofty, white button-up blouse below a green cloth vest with their families crest on it. They wear brown cloth pants and a brown leather belt as well as black leather boots. Their clothing is ripped and burnt in some places due to the dragonfire blast and their time in the wilderness over the last few days. On top of the clothing they also wear a bronze scale mail shirt, fixed with leather straps and bronze pauldrons. The armor is adorned with a knights emblem, showing a dragons head. The armor is charred and sooted, but not torn.

Almost their entire body bears burn marks, with only their right arm from the shoulder down and the right side of their head being mostly unaffected. The left side of their scalp is scarred and the hair is burnt away, their left eye has gone white and almost blind, their left ear is deformed and the left side of their lips looks cracked. Their hair on the right side of their head is a hazel-ish brown and goes down to about the height of their armpits, their right eye color is brown. They wear their hair straight down.

For equipment they carry an assortment of pouches and pockets on their belt, with herbs and bandages for immediate medical attention. They also carry a small worn out handaxe, a carving knife and a rusted, sharpened metal pole as a spear. The weapons all look like theyre highly improvised and are not made for combat.

I've just released my giant d20 dice on my website. I've been prototyping these for about half a year and now they're done! I'll be giving away 3 of the dice out of my first batch.

They're made from a 2 part 3D printed core with laser-cut wood faces inset. Available in 6 colours: red, green, blue, purple, grey, and black. Also with custom 1 and 20 face options!

They're available on my site with free international shipping: jackandevey.com/products/giant-d20-dice

Giveaway info:

3 winners will be selected to receive a giant D20 in a colour of their choice (depending on what is left of the first batch)

Leave a top level comment to enter

Reddit Raffler will be used to draw the winners

Giveaway ends in 7 days [9/06/2026 2pm GMT+10]

Is anyone else excited for Legend of Avantris' Neon Odyssey campaign to be released? If so, what races/classes are you most interested in so far?

I saw the sea of worldbuilding applications available today and had three major complaints: Too complicated, no immersion, and subscription fees. Now before you go anywhere, I know there is a lot of worldbuilding software options, so I've decided to create something that, with time and your belief in me, doesn't just match up to the others, but could eventually solve every problem that every other software aims to solve whilst still being completely free (forever) and local/offline. I'm certainly willing to put in the work. I even created my own proprietary cyberpunk interface API to streamline the process of the development and expansion.

For me its really hard to stay motivated to write large lorebases for my projects with other tools, so I have fixed that problem by taking us back to the days of interactive software with a number of reactive cyberpunk and retro-futurist styles. I've spent 4 months straight, 12 hours a day on this, so I hope it reaches your expectations. The majority of the future features planned for this software are centered around its use by Dungeon Masters, so I would love some feedback from this community going forward. (Thank you to the mods for approving my post.)

It is available for Windows, Linux, MacOS, and will be on Android very soon.

If there are any bugs or suggestions you have, I couldn't tell you how valuable that information would be to me. Anyway, thanks for checking out my software. Have a nice day.

Get it here: Itch.io

Edit: This is a crazy amount of people seeing this! One person even spent money on it! (Thank you, kind stranger) Hi! :) Please don't hesitate to tell me if I've missed any features, or you feel something can be improved. I want this one to be everything we need, and ill work as long as I have to to make that happen. I can tell one of my first priorities needs to be the ability to import from Obsidian. Also, I will need to release a hotfix tomorrow to address the reported issue with tags/categories not being selectable.

All of your kind words are enough to motivate me for another ten years. Thank you for giving this a chance. :)

I asked one of the two artists I have creating character portraits to do a write up on his process. As a non-artist, I found it really interesting. Thought folks here would find it interesting.

For some reason, reddit decided I didn't own the artwork I was attempting to post in the body here, so if you want to read the article with more examples in context, you can see it here.

Salutations, adventurers! Today we’ll talk about the art behind the portraits of Revenge of the Firstborn. My name is Heitor Queiroz, also known as The Lizard Soup. I’m the artist responsible for bringing the bestiary’s visuals to life, helping adventurers like you identify the monsters you’ll face in battle and plan your strategy against them.

Portraits are a fundamental part of the game’s UI. They carry much of each character’s personality, allowing the player to read their health points and identify who is performing an action, whether ally or enemy. My challenge as an artist is to amplify the immersion of the game’s 3d creatures’ models through their portraits, making them truly feel like part of the world. Because of that, I always place great importance on theatrical expressions, gesture, atmosphere, and storytelling. Without sacrificing the visual clarity required for UI design, I strive to create striking silhouettes and compositions, using value and color contrasts to guide readability and make each encounter memorable.

The next question that naturally comes to mind is: how are these portraits created?

With over 125 monsters in the game, it was critical to find a balance between quality, consistency and production time. Given that I’m the only artist working on monster portraits, working efficiently is critical. My digital workflow takes place entirely within using Clip Studio Paint.

I draw a great deal of inspiration from the old-school art styles of franchises such as Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and Warcraft. I’m particularly fascinated by the balance between realism and the sometimes almost cartoonish exaggeration found in comic art. Among my greatest influences are Frank Frazetta, Bernie Wrightson, Alex Horley, Wayne Reynolds, Justin Gerard, and Jim Murray. What I admire most in their work is the way each of them, in their own unique manner, creates striking silhouettes, theatricality, and a deep sense of atmosphere.

The challenge of every 2D artist is translating a 3D object into a 2D medium while still creating the illusion of depth and volume, especially when working with realism. All of the art work I create for the bestiary is based off of existing 3D models, so the first thing I do is conduct deeper research on each monster based on screenshots, 3d model viewers in asset stores and the like. Once the research is done, I move on to the sketch phase. My focus is on the core concept: exploring gesture, searching for a dominant and striking shape that highlights the character and makes it instantly recognizable. This kind of planning is fundamental in any artwork, but especially important here, since the portraits appear at a relatively small scale in the game, meaning the visual readability needs to be extremely clear. With that in mind, I explore the character’s expression, whether it behaves aggressively, whether it’s a mysterious magical creature, or a brawling bruiser. Experimenting with several quick sketches lets the developers and me align on a pose and angle that reads well to the player and instantly helps them understand what they’re up against.

The next stage is blocking out the main shape and shadows in a greyscale image. This helps define what areas should carry the most visual interest and ensure the composition feels harmonious with the feel of the character as determined in the sketch process.

The next step is refining the greyscale image. My workflow for this used to rely on highly detailed lineart, similar to inking in comic books to refine anatomy, composition and expression. More recently, I’ve shifted to a more direct penciling approach, reworking the existing sketch until it becomes solid and consistent with the end goal being the same – to refine anatomy, composition and expression.

I build volume directly with a brush that simulates graphite, which introduces grayscale transitions, form and depth in a much more immediate way. This not only saves time, but creates a dirtiness, noise and grittiness that works beautifully for more deformed or organic monsters, giving it a textured feeling.

The final step before any color is applied is refining the shadow areas and expanding the grayscale structure. This process ensures that the gray of the teeth does not behave the same way as the gray on skin or hair.

The grayscale work can be thought of as the foundation for the whole piece. If the underlying drawing and value structure are weak, reaching a strong final painting becomes extremely difficult, so most artists prefer this sort of step-by-step approach before any color is applied.

Finally, it’s time for color. I usually begin by blocking in the base colors already present in the 3D model. Then comes my favorite part of the entire process: thinking about atmosphere and the relationship between light and material. One recurring characteristic of the Revenge of the Firstborn portraits is the constant contrast between the temperatures of light and shadow.

To handle this colorization process, I work extensively with blending mode. The atmosphere is planned very carefully so I can build two harmonious palette variations: one with warm shadows and cool lighting, and another with the opposite approach. For example, a warm key light cast over green skin can easily make it appear too yellowish, so balancing these color relationships requires a great deal of attention.

The background color is very simple to avoid visual clutter given how small these portraits usually appear on screen. I spend time testing different colors for the background, either by creating contrast, usually through complementary colors opposing the character’s dominant palette, or by integrating the character more directly into the scene through repeated or analogous colors.

Next comes the rendering stage, by far the most time-consuming part of the process. This is where everything comes together, and where extra life is added to the piece. Rendering is the stage where the drawing is transformed into a finished image, defining the relationships between volume, light, color, and texture so that everything feels believable and solid.

In 3D, rendering refers to the software automatically calculating the final image. In 2D, however, the artist performs this process manually. This where I soften or sharpen the image and where additional lighting and shadow unfold. It involves defining effects such as reflected light, occlusion, shadow intensity and specular highlights. This helps ensure, for instance, that an ordinary tooth will not shine more intensely than a polished piece of armor.

This process becomes a constant push and pull; refining certain areas, simplifying others, and making adjustments until the portrait finally reaches its finished state. This is achieved using a variety of techniques and blending layers. It’s important to keep the brushes and special effects to a minimum to avoid ending up with a cluttered look or obsessing over details that ultimately make little difference. Because of their small size in-game, silhouette, expression, gesture, and the initial shading structure matter far more than rendering alone. Rendering serves to reinforce and elevate the image, adding another layer of realism. It enhances the already-existing work done long before rendering is started.

Working on everything from decaying undead to scaly demons to metallic automatons, it’s been important to keep in mind that the portrait must be recognizable as the 3D model, but should be striking, expressing and visual compelling on its own.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this deep dive into the artistic process behind the portraits for the game and I hope they enhance your playing experience!