SAMURAI, ONI, DEMON CATS AND OTHER THINGS FROM EAST OF SENSIBLE

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Eastern Collection 1 is a broad Asian-inspired pulp and fantasy assortment rather than an attempt at historical or ethnographic purity.

That distinction is worth making at the outset.

Inside are samurai, oni, serpent people, naga, supernatural cats, martial artists and pieces drawing upon Japanese, Chinese and Southeast Asian imagery. Then Brad wanders cheerfully off the map into techno-ninjas, noir, giant dinosaurs, pulp villains and material considerably more at home in a lurid paperback or role-playing supplement than an academic monograph.

Good.

That is what the collection is for.

The official contact sheet contains 25 image files representing 23 distinct illustrations, suitable for role-playing games, adventures, bestiaries, pulp fantasy, supernatural horror, martial-arts games, Asian-inspired fantasy settings and any project where the phrase “the samurai confronts the oni” sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to begin a paragraph.

THE VERIFIED CONTENTS

The contact sheet shows:

• Blood and Entrails

• Sexy Street Samurai

• Dragon Lady

• Techno-Ninja

• Sinister Mask – colour

• Haunted Japan

• Giant Dinosaur

• Jade Unicorn

• Oni

• Hentai Horror

• Punk Naga

• Fu Manchu

• Fu Manchu – greyscale

• Pagan Goddess Statue

• Noir Nightmare

• Serpent Man

• Samurai and Oni

• Chi Powers

• Japanese Demon Cats

• Naga

• Panther

• Female Samurai

• Martial Arts

• Penangallen – colour

• Penangallen – greyscale

That is 25 files and 23 different subjects.

The two repeated pieces are Fu Manchu, supplied in standard and greyscale versions, and Penangallen, supplied in colour and greyscale treatments.

There are 23 TIFF files and 2 PNG files. The PNGs are Punk Naga and Pagan Goddess Statue.

Some of the filenames are very obviously products of pulp, exploitation and older genre terminology. They are reproduced here so you know what is actually in the folder, not because your finished project is required to use them.

A filename is not scholarship.

JAPAN, OR SOMETHING APPROXIMATING IT

A sizeable chunk of the pack points towards Japanese-inspired gaming.

There is a Female Samurai, Sexy Street Samurai, Techno-Ninja, Haunted Japan, Samurai and Oni, Chi Powers, Japanese Demon Cats and the standalone Oni.

That gives you a surprisingly wide spread.

The Female Samurai can be used for historical fantasy, samurai adventure or a more conventional warrior character. The contact sheet presents her as a distinct black-and-white figure rather than a variant of the Street Samurai.

The Sexy Street Samurai is more modern or genre-bending: useful for cyberpunk, urban fantasy, pulp action or a setting where blades and contemporary fashion have arrived at an accommodation.

Then there is the Techno-Ninja, who has stopped pretending this is historical altogether.

That piece belongs comfortably in science fantasy, cyberpunk, anime-influenced gaming, supers, urban fantasy or anything involving ninjas who have discovered that technology can make an already unreasonable profession even less fair.

The fact that all three can sit in the same folder tells you what kind of collection this is.

It is not trying to recreate one specific century.

It is giving you toys.

SAMURAI AND ONI

Samurai and Oni is one of the most immediately useful pieces because it depicts an encounter rather than a solitary character.

A warrior faces a supernatural threat.

There is already conflict.

You can put the image beside:

• An adventure opening

• A monster encounter

• A yōkai section

• A samurai campaign

• A mythic-history chapter

• Rules for supernatural combat

• The point where an otherwise historical game stops being entirely historical

The standalone Oni gives you the creature on its own as well, useful for a bestiary or NPC entry.

The term oni carries actual Japanese folkloric baggage, of course, and anyone using the image in a project claiming historical or mythological accuracy should do the corresponding research.

For broader fantasy, you can simply use the creature as a demon, ogre, spirit or supernatural brute.

The art provides a broad visual.

Your text decides what it means.

HAUNTED JAPAN

The file called Haunted Japan appears to show a Japanese interior with a supernatural presence.

That makes it particularly handy for ghost stories, cursed houses, yūrei material, historical horror or any adventure in which entering the building has turned out to be the mistake everyone suspected it was.

The filename remains deliberately broad.

It does not identify a specific spirit, historical incident or tradition, so there is no point inventing one and presenting it as fact.

Use it as atmosphere.

A haunted inn.

A family home with a problem.

A room nobody opens after sunset.

A shrine where something has begun appearing in the window.

The image gets you through the door.

What waits inside is your problem.

DEMON CATS

Japanese Demon Cats may be the most practically irresistible file in the set.

Japanese folklore has no shortage of supernatural cats, but the filename does not tell us whether Brad intended a specific folkloric creature. Treat the piece accordingly.

It could be used for bakeneko, nekomata-inspired monsters, generic yōkai cats, transformed familiars or entirely original supernatural felines.

More importantly, it depicts demonic cats.

Anyone who has actually owned a cat will understand that the supernatural element requires remarkably little suspension of disbelief.

Give them magic and the only real change is that the furniture begins screaming too.

CHI POWERS AND MARTIAL ARTS

The Chi Powers and Martial Arts pieces move into overt action-fantasy territory.

The Chi Powers illustration appears to show martial artists with visible supernatural energy. It is well suited to wuxia, martial-arts fantasy, supernatural combat systems or games where internal energy is a literal mechanical resource rather than something left to philosophical discussion.

Martial Arts is broader.

Use it for combat training, unarmed fighters, schools, techniques, character options or chapter art.

These two pieces can sit beside one another nicely: one grounded in physical technique, the other showing that technique carried into the openly supernatural.

Depending upon your setting, chi may be mystical, metaphorical or entirely measurable.

If somebody can throw it across the room, the debate has probably moved on.

THE NAGA DEPARTMENT

There are two distinct naga-related images:

Punk Naga

and

Naga.

They are not alternate treatments of the same illustration.

The Punk Naga is a modernised, subcultural or fantasy-punk take on the serpent-person concept. It suits urban fantasy, gonzo fantasy, supernatural street settings and worlds where non-human peoples have developed precisely the same taste for rebellious fashion as everyone else.

The separate Naga is a more traditional-looking serpent figure.

Neither needs to conform to one real-world mythological tradition unless your project specifically intends it to. Naga occur across several South and Southeast Asian religious and folkloric traditions, and those traditions are not interchangeable.

For generic fantasy, call them serpent people and carry on.

For a culturally specific setting, do the homework.

That is a much safer arrangement than expecting a TIFF filename to have completed comparative mythology on your behalf.

PENANGALLEN

The contact sheet contains two versions of a subject named Penangallen: colour and greyscale.

The filename appears to be a variant spelling or rendering of the Southeast Asian supernatural creature commonly known in English as the penanggalan, but I would retain the supplied filename when describing what is literally in the archive rather than silently “correcting” the artist's catalogue.

Visually, the piece is clearly horror-oriented.

It can be used for a flying vampiric creature, grotesque spirit, witch-monster or supernatural predator.

If you use it specifically as a penanggalan in Malaysian or related folklore, research the relevant tradition rather than treating all Southeast Asian supernatural material as one large monster cupboard.

If you just need something horrible coming through the window, the picture has already done most of the work.

SERPENT MAN

The Serpent Man is another straightforwardly reusable fantasy figure.

Temple guardian.

Ancient priest.

Member of a subterranean civilisation.

Sorcerer.

Assassin.

Completely ordinary citizen of a serpent kingdom who is becoming increasingly tired of humans calling everybody a monster.

Its usefulness comes from being readable without being overly specific.

You can put him into fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, lost-world pulp or supernatural adventure without having to redesign the surrounding world to accommodate the illustration.

JADE UNICORN

The Jade Unicorn is one of the more unusual colour pieces.

The contact sheet shows a green, highly stylised unicorn-like creature with a somewhat draconic quality.

That could become:

• A magical beast

• An imperial heraldic creature

• A guardian spirit

• A dragon-unicorn hybrid

• A celestial animal

• A unique supernatural patron

There is no need to force it into European unicorn lore simply because the filename uses the word.

The colour and design make it distinctive enough to become something entirely its own.

Give it a name.

Make local people extremely respectful towards it.

Then let the adventurers discover that somebody has stolen one of its horns.

That should occupy them.

THE GIANT DINOSAUR

Why is there a Giant Dinosaur in the Eastern collection?

Because pulp.

That is sufficient.

Lost valleys, prehistoric islands, sorcerous wildernesses, kaiju adventures and ancient lands that time forgot all have room for a large reptile.

It could be a conventional dinosaur, dragon stand-in, primordial monster or creature from a mythic age which never went away.

There is something admirable about a stock-art collection willing to move directly from haunted Japanese interiors to giant dinosaurs without wasting time on explanations.

You are allowed to be strange.

Role-playing games are better for it.

THE PANTHER

The Panther is a separate black-and-white animal piece.

It can remain exactly that: a dangerous predator.

Or it can become a familiar, shapeshifter, guardian beast, supernatural hunter or animal companion.

Wildlife art is useful because it crosses genres very easily. The same panther might appear in jungle adventure, fantasy, historical pulp or supernatural horror.

It does not know what genre it is in.

Neither does the person it is stalking.

PAGAN GODDESS STATUE

The Pagan Goddess Statue is one of the two PNG files.

The filename is broad and does not establish a particular real-world religion, so there is no reason to invent one.

It can become a temple image, magical artefact, archaeological treasure, cult object or statue from a vanished civilisation.

It might be valuable because it is sacred.

It might be sacred because it is valuable.

It might contain something.

That last possibility is generally where the adventure begins.

PULP LABELS: FU MANCHU AND DRAGON LADY

Two filenames come directly from the vocabulary of older Western pulp fiction: Fu Manchu and Dragon Lady.

Those terms carry a great deal of stereotyped baggage.

The art remains useful.

The labels do not need to.

The Fu Manchu portrait is supplied in standard and greyscale treatments. Use the figure as a sorcerer, noble, criminal mastermind, court adviser, scholar or whatever else suits your setting.

Give him a name.

Preferably his own.

Likewise, the Dragon Lady illustration can become a villain, ruler, occultist, adventurer or dangerous political figure without importing the old stereotype intact.

Stock collections often outlive the vocabulary used to catalogue them.

There is no prize for preserving every filename in amber.

HENTAI HORROR

One file is labelled Hentai Horror.

The contact sheet shows a grotesque, sexualised horror illustration.

That makes the piece suited to adult fantasy, exploitation horror, tentacular weirdness and publications that are deliberately working in a transgressive or erotic-horror register.

There is no need to pretend it is something else.

Use it where appropriate.

Do not use it where it is not.

Simple.

The existence of an adult image in the folder does not make the entire collection adult-only in tone, but publishers should obviously select artwork according to the intended audience of the finished project.

BLOOD AND ENTRAILS

The collection begins with a piece called Blood and Entrails.

Again: not subtle.

It can serve as gore, sacrifice aftermath, battlefield dressing, monster feeding, dungeon evidence or the answer to the question, “What happened to the previous party?”

Sometimes a spot illustration exists simply to make a page nastier.

This one appears to understand the assignment.

NOIR NIGHTMARE

Noir Nightmare is another genre-crosser.

It belongs as comfortably beside occult detective fiction and urban fantasy as traditional fantasy.

Use it for dream sequences, psychic horror, noir, cursed visions or any campaign where trench coats and supernatural unpleasantness have achieved a working relationship.

A stock-art collection does not need every piece to occupy the same century.

In fact, it is often better when it does not.

SINISTER MASK

The Sinister Mask is supplied as a colour TIFF.

Masks are wonderfully reusable.

Theatrical object.

Ritual face.

Cursed artefact.

Assassin's disguise.

Spirit vessel.

Evidence.

Put it on a treasure page and it is an item.

Put it over a face and it is a character.

Put it on a wall and make it change position between visits and it becomes the reason nobody wants to sleep in that room.

WHAT THIS PACK IS ACTUALLY GOOD FOR

Eastern Collection 1 works best when treated as a pulp and fantasy toolkit built around Asian-inspired imagery, rather than as a culturally coherent historical pack.

That is a strength if you know what you are buying.

You have material for samurai adventures, supernatural horror, martial-arts fantasy, modern action, yōkai encounters, serpent peoples, occult artefacts and outright pulp weirdness.

A conventional historical book would use only part of it.

A gonzo campaign could use nearly everything.

A samurai confronts an oni in a haunted house. Demon cats know why the haunting began. A masked sorcerer has stolen a goddess statue. The trail leads through a serpent cult to a martial-arts school where somebody has learned to manifest chi physically.

Then the dinosaur arrives.

Do not ask me.

Ask the Games Master.

EXACT FILE BREAKDOWN

The official contact sheet contains:

25 image files

representing

23 distinct illustrations.

The format split is:

• 23 TIFF files

• 2 PNG files

The two PNG files are:

• Punk Naga

• Pagan Goddess Statue

Two subjects appear twice:

• Fu Manchu: standard and greyscale TIFF versions

• Penangallen: colour and greyscale TIFF versions

The remaining 21 subjects are individual illustrations.

This corrects the shorter count previously shown in the product text; the contact sheet itself is the more complete inventory.

Some pieces may also appear in other Brad McDevitt stock-art collections where they fit several genres.

LICENCE

The artwork may be used in personal and professional projects, subject to the terms of the licence included with the collection.

Read the licence before publication and check its requirements concerning attribution, alteration and redistribution.

Use the artwork inside finished books, games, adventures, fiction or other licensed projects. Do not simply repackage the source images and sell them as another stock-art collection after changing Techno-Ninja to Cyber Shinobi and hoping nobody notices.

More Brad McDevitt artwork can be found in the wider Brad McDevitt Stock Art range.

A very broad slice of Asia-inspired pulp, folklore, fantasy and horror, with enough samurai, spirits, monsters and general strangeness to keep an art folder useful for a long time.