I’m in progress on the write-up of Cap’n No-Beard, including a stat block for her eyeless grimlock crew. Here, again, I’m confronted with the problem of devising suitable artwork.

I’m still using Jeff Preston’s “terrible character portraits,” though of course he saw fit to include eyes on almost all of them (the exceptions being robots). No matter! I began with his “TCP Troll 5.” I’m going to need to erase both the horn and the eyes, which is easy. Then, though, I need to patch over the profile where the horn used to be, with a nice smooth curve of matching line weight. This convinces me to do it in Inkscape, so I can work in vector format. There’s no way I’m going to freehand that curve with a mouse, and the alternative of printing out the image and editing with actual inks gives me the willies.

I’m pretty pleased with the results. It’s interesting to note that the ridge that used to surround the horn has completely flipped the depth cue it’s delivering. It previously suggested a fleshy ring around the base of the horn, making the brows look flat by comparison; now it does the opposite.

Writing about this got me looking again at “TCP Troll 9,” which I previously used for Slatescratch the imp. I never entirely decided whether that was supposed to be him in imp form, or goblin form, though an imp should really have little devil horns. Sooooo… hey, if I can edit out that horn on the other portrait, maybe I can steal a horn from somewhere and try that out. Editing out those shocks of hair and patching over the curve of the skull should me more or less the job I just did on the grimlock, right?

So, a few minutes later, I’ve got an alternate version of Slatescratch, most definitely looking like a little devil. Yeah, the horns are strangely symmetrical if you care to notice it, but not half bad. I wonder which one I like better? Thanks as usual to Jeff Preston (images used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License).

Still to do: in-game stat blocks for the grimlock sailors, and of course for Cap’n No-Beard herself.