WHEN THE UNICORN LOOKS JADED, THINGS HAVE GONE TOO FAR

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Fantasy Collection 2 is a gloriously mixed bag of fantasy trouble.

There are witches, a lich, a minotaur overlord and a headless horseman. Wizards summon nature spirits while giantesses go to war. A dwarf has brought his pet. A rogue has found time to relax. There is a scarlet sorceress, a siren, a troll and something identified simply as Monster Gator, which is really all the warning one ought to require.

And then there is the jaded unicorn.

The collection contains 25 TIFF image files representing 23 distinct illustrations, with a strong old-school fantasy and pulp sensibility. Most of the artwork is black and white, with several colour pieces mixed through the set and two subjects also supplied as greyscale alternatives.

It is broad enough for bestiaries, adventures, campaign settings, character material and fantasy-horror crossovers, without feeling as though all twenty-five files came from the same encounter.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY IN THE COLLECTION

The official contact sheet shows:

• Tough Guy 1

• Prophet

• Giantess War

• Lich

• Rogue Relaxing

• Witches Trio

• Alien Female

• Giant Dinosaur

• Scarlet Sorceress

• Jaded Unicorn

• NSFW Jaded Warrior

• Sexy and Sinister Siren

• Warehouse Death

• Wizard Summoning Nature Spirit

• Talismanic Shaman

• Generic Evil Frogman – colour

• Generic Evil Frogman – greyscale

• Evil Faerie – colour

• Evil Faerie – greyscale

• Fiery Phantasm

• Evil Dwarf with Pet

• Minotaur Overlord

• Headless Horseman

• Troll

• Monster Gator

That gives you 25 TIFF files and 23 genuinely different subjects.

The only repeated illustrations are:

Generic Evil Frogman, supplied in colour and greyscale.

Evil Faerie, likewise supplied in colour and greyscale.

Everything else is its own piece of artwork.

The names above have been cleaned for spacing and capitalisation, but otherwise follow the actual filenames rather than inventing more elaborate titles after the fact.

A FANTASY PACK THAT DOESN'T ALL LOOK THE SAME

One of the practical strengths here is variety.

The folder contains individual character portraits, full scenes, monsters, supernatural manifestations and straightforward fantasy archetypes. That matters when the artwork is going into an actual book rather than being admired as a contact sheet.

Twenty-five variations on “warrior standing there” might technically be twenty-five pieces of art, but the resulting layout would become monotonous very quickly.

Fantasy Collection 2 gives you different visual jobs.

Rogue Relaxing is a character at rest.

Giantess War and Warehouse Death are scenes.

Fiery Phantasm is supernatural spectacle.

Monster Gator, Troll and Minotaur Overlord can carry creature entries.

Prophet, Talismanic Shaman and Wizard Summoning Nature Spirit fit magic, religion and occult material.

The pieces do not have to belong to the same world. In most cases they will probably be more useful scattered across several projects.

That is exactly what a stock-art library is for.

THE WIZARD HAS SUMMONED SOMETHING

Wizard Summoning Nature Spirit gives you magic in progress.

That is inherently more interesting on a page than another static wizard holding a staff.

The image could illustrate summoning, elemental magic, druidic rites, spirit-working or an encounter where somebody is attempting to contact the local supernatural population and hoping the correct entity answers.

The “Nature Spirit” part of the filename is descriptive rather than restrictive. It could represent a forest spirit, elemental being, faerie presence, ancestral manifestation or whatever your own magical system requires.

The wizard may be in control.

The wizard may merely believe he is in control.

Fantasy has traditionally derived quite a lot of entertainment from the difference.

THE TALISMANIC SHAMAN AND THE PROPHET

The Talismanic Shaman and Prophet are useful pieces for anyone building religion or supernatural belief into a setting.

A prophet may be a recognised holy figure, wandering preacher, visionary, madman or elderly nuisance who keeps predicting disasters until one finally turns up.

The Talismanic Shaman can serve as healer, ritual specialist, spirit-worker, occultist or keeper of protective objects and traditions.

Neither needs to function as a conventional fantasy spellcaster.

That gives you room for different kinds of supernatural authority: people whose power comes from knowledge, belief, spirits, ritual or simply being the one person who understands why everyone should stop touching the standing stones.

These are good NPC pictures because they imply conversation before combat.

Players may still start combat.

That is a separate problem.

THREE WITCHES ARE NEVER JUST THREE WITCHES

Witches Trio depicts a group rather than a lone practitioner.

Instantly, you have relationships.

Who leads?

Are they sisters?

A coven?

Three completely unrelated witches forced to cooperate because somebody has annoyed all of them at once?

Group art is useful because it can establish a faction without consuming three separate illustrations.

They might be antagonists, advisers, local wise women or supernatural powers who meet at particular times of year.

They may even disagree with one another.

This is healthy.

Fantasy villains should be allowed office politics too.

A LICH WITH NOTHING LEFT TO PROVE

The Lich is a particularly dark, imposing piece and can carry a major antagonist entry without difficulty.

Call it a lich, necromancer, undead priest, revenant king or preserved sorcerer. The important visual information is that this thing died and has not allowed the experience to become an obstacle.

A lich works especially well as somebody with history.

Centuries of it.

Old alliances. Old betrayals. Old enemies whose descendants have forgotten why their families still nail iron over the doors.

A good lich is not merely a skeleton with spells.

It is unfinished business that acquired tenure.

Pair the illustration with the Headless Horseman, Fiery Phantasm or Witches Trio and there is plenty of gothic material available before you even reach the more conventional monsters.

GIANTESS WAR

Giantess War gives the collection scale.

The piece appears to depict a large female figure amidst battle, making it suitable for a giantess attack, mythic warfare, divine conflict or any encounter where ordinary troops have discovered that the opposition is tall enough to treat fortifications as furniture.

A giant should change how an encounter works.

Walls stop being reliable.

Upper floors stop being safe.

Large rocks acquire tactical significance.

The artwork could introduce a siege, battlefield chapter or larger-than-life antagonist. It could equally represent a legendary event from the setting's past rather than something happening in the present.

Fantasy art does not have to depict the precise second the player characters arrive.

Sometimes it shows why the ruins are there.

THE MINOTAUR OVERLORD

The Minotaur Overlord has considerably greater ambitions than merely standing at the centre of a maze.

Good for him.

A minotaur ruler immediately suggests a culture, army or domain rather than an isolated dungeon monster.

He could be:

• A warlord

• A king

• A gladiatorial champion

• Commander of a monstrous army

• Lord of a labyrinthine city

• A mercenary ruler who seized territory and discovered administration was harder than conquest

The “Overlord” label is useful flavour, but it need not be literal. He might be a powerful warrior, noble or chieftain.

Still, if you have a minotaur picture that looks like it owns something, give it something to own.

THE EVIL DWARF HAS A PET

Evil Dwarf with Pet is another image that begins suggesting an NPC before you have written one.

Perhaps he is a villainous noble.

A dungeon keeper.

A beast-master.

A merchant with unusually aggressive security.

The pet may be companion, familiar, monster or simply the reason nobody else sits at that end of the tavern.

The “evil” in the filename can be discarded just as easily. A severe-looking dwarf with an unusual animal companion could become a player character, eccentric ranger, underground aristocrat or monster-handler.

Stock filenames are prompts.

They are not alignment restrictions.

THE Jaded UNICORN

There really is a file called Jaded Unicorn.

It appears to depict a green, somewhat draconic-looking unicorn head, and the title gives it precisely the right air of having seen far too much.

Perhaps it is an ancient faerie creature.

Perhaps unicorns become increasingly reptilian with age.

Perhaps this one has spent three thousand years watching adventurers claim to be pure of heart and is no longer willing to take anybody's word for it.

It might be used as a heraldic beast, faerie lord, magical creature, transformed dragon or simply a peculiar regional variety of unicorn.

The important point is that it is memorable.

Nobody is going to confuse it with the forty-third heroic swordsman in their stock-art folder.

EVIL FAERIE

The Evil Faerie is provided in both colour and greyscale.

It is a useful antidote to the modern tendency to turn the Fair Folk into glittery woodland friends.

Folklore knew better.

Faeries steal children, sour food, curse households, lead travellers into bogs and become lethally offended by breaches of etiquette nobody realised existed.

This one could be a malicious sprite, faerie assassin, supernatural thief or simply a member of a non-human court whose interests are incompatible with ours.

The paired treatments make the illustration easy to fit into either colour or monochrome interiors.

The creature remains unpleasant in both.

THE GENERIC EVIL FROGMAN

Also supplied in colour and greyscale is the wonderfully straightforward Generic Evil Frogman.

No mystery.

No pretension.

Frogman. Evil. Generic.

Job done.

Of course, your own frogman does not actually have to be evil.

He could be a swamp-dweller, amphibious adventurer, tribal warrior, river guide or citizen of an aquatic civilisation whose diplomatic reputation has been badly damaged by human naming conventions.

As with many monster images, the art becomes more useful when treated as a visual starting point rather than a taxonomy.

If your setting needs a toad-man instead, nobody is going to summon the stock-art police.

THE FIERY PHANTASM

Fiery Phantasm is a vivid supernatural piece which could represent a ghost, spirit, elemental, magical manifestation or something somebody has accidentally called into existence.

It is a useful illustration for moments when magic becomes visible.

Put it beside hauntings.

Summonings.

Curses.

Elemental magic.

The aftermath of a wizard confidently saying, “I know what I'm doing.”

The exact nature of the phantasm can remain unexplained until the adventure needs an explanation.

And occasionally even afterwards.

HEADLESS HORSEMAN

The Headless Horseman brings instant folklore and gothic fantasy.

It can be an undead rider, cursed knight, spectral executioner or recurring omen.

The image is immediately readable, which makes it useful for adventures where the mystery lies in why the horseman is appearing rather than what the players are looking at.

Perhaps he rides the same road each night.

Perhaps he is hunting a particular bloodline.

Perhaps he is not the villain at all but a warning that something worse is following.

The missing head is already doing a lot of narrative work.

Make use of it.

TROLL, MONSTER GATOR AND GIANT DINOSAUR

Some creatures do not require dissertations.

The Troll is a troll.

The Giant Dinosaur is a very large dinosaur.

Monster Gator is an alligator or crocodilian monster with enough spikes and attitude to make exact zoological classification a secondary concern.

These are good encounter pieces.

Drop the troll beneath a bridge, into a ruin or behind a tax desk.

Put the dinosaur in a lost valley, prehistoric wilderness or wizard's menagerie.

Monster Gator belongs in swamps, sewers, ruined cities and anywhere else the water is opaque enough for the Games Master to say, “You see something move.”

The players will immediately throw something into it.

This is useful information for the monster.

ROGUE RELAXING

Rogue Relaxing is a welcome change of pace.

Characters do occasionally sit down.

A lounging rogue can illustrate a tavern, camp, thieves' guild, character class or simply the bit between dangerous activities.

The figure might be a thief, scout, pirate, mercenary or adventurer who has achieved the rare fantasy feat of finding a chair nobody has trapped.

Images like this help settings feel inhabited.

Everyone permanently posed with a weapon looks less like a world and more like a convention photograph.

THE SCARLET SORCERESS, SIREN AND ALIEN FEMALE

Several of the colour character pieces push towards pulp and sword-and-sorcery.

The Scarlet Sorceress can become a villain, adventurer, court magician or occult temptress.

The Sexy and Sinister Siren might be aquatic, supernatural or simply a dangerous woman given an aggressively pulpy filename.

Alien Female crosses comfortably between fantasy, planetary romance and science fantasy. She could be a demon, extraplanar visitor, exotic humanoid or genuinely extraterrestrial character depending upon the project.

Their strength is precisely that they are colourful and distinctive.

Not every fantasy publication wants restrained historical realism.

Sometimes you want somebody purple.

THE NSFW JADED WARRIOR

The NSFW Jaded Warrior is a separate illustration from the Jaded Unicorn despite the shared catalogue number visible in the filenames.

It appears to depict a scantily clad armed female warrior, suitable for adult fantasy, pulp sword-and-sorcery or products that are entirely comfortable with that aesthetic.

There is no need for coyness about it.

Use it where it fits.

Do not use it where it doesn't.

The existence of sexy fantasy art is considerably less complicated than decades of discourse have attempted to make it.

WAREHOUSE DEATH

Warehouse Death is the collection's odd genre traveller.

It can fit fantasy easily enough as a storeroom, dockside building, guild warehouse or crime scene. It also crosses naturally into horror, pulp and historical projects.

A body discovered among cargo immediately suggests smuggling, murder, theft or something arriving inside a crate that was not on the manifest.

That makes the illustration potentially useful well beyond this one collection.

Which is one of the advantages of broad stock art in the first place.

TWENTY-FIVE FILES THAT ACTUALLY GIVE YOU OPTIONS

Fantasy Collection 2 has a better spread than the current abbreviated product description suggests.

The 25 TIFF files include:

• Character portraits

• Major monsters

• Supernatural beings

• Magical scenes

• Combat and aftermath scenes

• Pulp fantasy characters

• Folkloric material

• Colour and greyscale options for two subjects

Only two illustrations are repeated as alternate treatments.

That leaves 23 distinct subjects to put to work.

A fantasy adventure could easily pull the Prophet, Witches Trio, Lich, Headless Horseman and Fiery Phantasm into one supernatural plot while leaving the frogman, dinosaur, minotaur, siren and jaded unicorn for completely different releases.

You do not have to justify why they all know one another.

Though I would quite like to attend whatever gathering resulted in that guest list.

EXACT FILE BREAKDOWN

The official contact sheet shows:

25 TIFF files

representing

23 distinct illustrations.

Two subjects are supplied in two treatments:

• Generic Evil Frogman: colour and greyscale

• Evil Faerie: colour and greyscale

The remaining 21 illustrations are unique files.

All visible filenames use the .tif format.

Some individual pieces may also appear in other Brad McDevitt collections where they suit more than one genre.

LICENCE

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

Read those terms before publication, particularly the sections covering attribution, modification and redistribution.

The files are there to become part of your finished book, adventure, game or other project. They are not there to be repackaged as somebody else's stock-art archive with the catalogue numbers removed and an ambitious theory about fair use.

More monsters, characters and questionable magical decisions can be found in the wider Brad McDevitt Stock Art range.

Twenty-three distinct illustrations, a good spread of subjects, and a unicorn that appears to have become thoroughly sick of fantasy adventurers.

Hard to blame it.