CRIME, HORROR AND TROUBLE AFTER DARK

Dead bodies in walls.

Armed street warriors.

Sinister nightclubs.

Mad scientists, mysterious prisoners and a medical professional whose bedside manner appears to involve experimental surgery.

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – Modern Collection 1 provides 25 distinct modern-themed illustrations in TIFF format for publishers, writers, game designers and Games Masters who need strong, characterful artwork without commissioning every image separately.

The collection mixes contemporary crime, investigation, horror, urban fantasy, cyberpunk and adult material. It includes character portraits, action scenes, atmospheric locations and grisly discoveries suitable for anything from a short modern adventure to an entire campaign of conspiracy, violence and extremely suspicious nightlife.

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

INSIDE THE COLLECTION

The 25 supplied illustrations are:

• Bond Girl

• Modern Mummy

• Sexy Street Samurai

• Modern Fantasy Tactical-Team Girl

• Malevolent Modern Temptress

• Amerindian Modern Shaman

• Walled-Up Body

• Bloody Shakespeare Bust

• Prisoners

• Seductive Blonde

• Tough Guy 1

• Tough Guy 4

• Corpse on Table

• Gun Backfire

• Dumpster Discovery

• Kneeling Nude

• Interrogation

• NSFW Gang Member

• Dire Wolf

• Grey Surgeon – colourised

• Film Noir Nightclub

• Mad Scientist

• Bad-News Biker

• Nightclub Girl

• Cyberpunk Street Scene

That gives you investigators, fighters, criminals, occult figures, victims, corpses, monsters, locations and several people who ought to be questioned before they are allowed to leave the building.

MODERN CHARACTERS WITH PERSONALITY

Contemporary role-playing games require more than anonymous figures wearing business suits and holding mobile phones.

They need people with attitude.

The Bond Girl, Sexy Street Samurai, Modern Fantasy Tactical-Team Girl, Tough Guys, Bad-News Biker and NSFW Gang Member offer characterful figures for:

• Modern action

• Espionage

• Crime

• Cyberpunk

• Urban fantasy

• Military and paramilitary games

• Post-apocalyptic adventures

• Street-level campaigns

• Player-character portraits

• Allies, rivals and professional troublemakers

The Bond Girl might be an agent, adventurer, social infiltrator or dangerous operator whose appearance encourages people to underestimate her.

The Street Samurai and Tactical-Team Girl can serve as mercenaries, bodyguards, corporate enforcers or characters who have already concluded that subtlety is unlikely to survive the evening.

The two Tough Guys provide adaptable portraits for criminals, investigators, veterans, hired muscle or anyone else who has learned to communicate through meaningful silence and occasional violence.

Use the figures exactly as their filenames suggest—or ignore the filenames entirely and make them your own.

CRIME SCENES AND GRISLY DISCOVERIES

Modern investigations need evidence.

Unfortunately for the people involved, that evidence is frequently a body.

The collection includes:

• Walled-Up Body

• Corpse on Table

• Dumpster Discovery

• Interrogation

• Prisoners

• Gun Backfire

These pieces can illustrate:

• Murder mysteries

• Police investigations

• Serial-killer scenarios

• Criminal conspiracies

• Hostage situations

• Forensic horror

• Urban adventures

• Espionage

• Campaigns in which the authorities have already decided the characters are responsible

The Walled-Up Body can begin an entire investigation.

Who put it there?

How long has it been hidden?

Why was the wall recently disturbed?

Why does the corpse appear to be wearing something manufactured only last year?

The Dumpster Discovery provides another immediate opening. Somebody has found something unpleasant among the rubbish, and the player characters are about to become involved whether they possess any relevant qualifications or not.

The Corpse on Table might belong in a morgue, laboratory, basement or improvised operating theatre.

The Interrogation scene can represent police procedure, criminal questioning or the exact moment when somebody’s carefully rehearsed story collapses.

A good crime-scene image does not merely decorate the adventure.

It tells the players that something has happened—and invites them to discover how much worse the truth will be.

MAD SCIENCE AND MEDICAL HORROR

The Mad Scientist and colourised Grey Surgeon provide ready-made figures for scientific conspiracy, medical horror, cyberpunk and modern pulp adventure.

They might be:

• Brilliant but unethical researchers

• Underground surgeons

• Cybernetic specialists

• Creators of artificial life

• Government scientists

• Corporate experimenters

• Occult physicians

• People whose professional accreditation has been withdrawn for excellent reasons

The Mad Scientist belongs in laboratories filled with unfinished experiments, stolen equipment and projects repeatedly described as misunderstood.

The Grey Surgeon could be an alien doctor, mutant specialist, underground body-modifier or something merely impersonating a member of the medical profession.

Pair either figure with the Corpse on Table, Modern Mummy or prisoners to suggest an entire programme of experimentation.

What is being created?

Who is funding the work?

Why have the test subjects begun disappearing?

What escaped from the laboratory?

Science may be neutral.

Scientists remain people.

This is where the trouble begins.

HORROR IN THE MODERN WORLD

The collection crosses naturally into contemporary horror and urban fantasy.

The Modern Mummy, Malevolent Modern Temptress, Modern Shaman, Dire Wolf, Bloody Shakespeare Bust and several of the crime-scene pieces can support:

• Supernatural investigation

• Urban fantasy

• Occult horror

• Modern gothic games

• Shapeshifter stories

• Curses and hauntings

• Hidden supernatural communities

• Artefacts with unpleasant histories

• Campaigns where ordinary explanations have stopped working

The Modern Mummy might be an ancient creature wearing contemporary clothes, a ritual victim, an immortal or somebody whose preservation has continued long after it became medically advisable.

The Malevolent Modern Temptress could be human, demonic, vampiric or something less easily classified.

The Modern Shaman can become an occult adviser, spiritual practitioner, antagonist or intermediary between ordinary life and whatever is hiding beneath it.

The Dire Wolf may be a supernatural predator, shapeshifter, escaped experiment or simply an enormous animal encountered somewhere it has no reasonable business being.

The Bloody Shakespeare Bust is particularly useful as a strange object, murder weapon, occult artefact or the centrepiece of a theatrical mystery that has become far too literal.

Modern horror works by corrupting familiar surroundings.

The monsters do not remain in distant castles.

They visit nightclubs, use public transport and occasionally leave bodies behind the plasterboard.

NIGHTCLUBS, SEDUCTION AND THE ADULT WORLD

The Film Noir Nightclub, Nightclub Girl, Seductive Blonde, Malevolent Modern Temptress, Kneeling Nude and NSFW Gang Member provide material for mature and adult-oriented projects.

They can support settings involving:

• Nightlife

• Vice

• Espionage

• Seduction

• Criminal subcultures

• Adult urban fantasy

• Erotic horror

• Cyberpunk clubs

• Noir investigations

• Games that acknowledge humanity did not lose interest in sex when somebody invented automatic weapons

The Film Noir Nightclub offers an atmospheric setting for meetings, betrayals, performances and investigations conducted beneath flattering lighting.

The Nightclub Girl can become a performer, witness, contact, suspect or somebody who has seen exactly the wrong person enter the private rooms.

The Seductive Blonde and Malevolent Modern Temptress can represent social operators, supernatural predators, dangerous clients or characters entirely aware of the assumptions other people make about them.

The Kneeling Nude offers explicitly adult artwork for publications requiring material beyond the usual mainstream range.

Use the pieces appropriate to your audience, tone and project.

Stock art is a toolbox.

You are not required to empty the entire toolbox onto every page.

CYBERPUNK AND NEAR-FUTURE TROUBLE

The Sexy Street Samurai, Modern Fantasy Tactical-Team Girl, NSFW Gang Member, Grey Surgeon and Cyberpunk Street Scene make the collection useful for cyberpunk and near-future projects as well as present-day material.

The Cyberpunk Street Scene can establish:

• A dangerous neighbourhood

• A corporate district

• A criminal marketplace

• A night-time encounter

• A futuristic city campaign

• A chapter devoted to street life

• Somewhere the characters have been warned not to visit

Add the street warriors and tactical characters to populate the scene.

Introduce the Grey Surgeon as an underground augmentation specialist.

Use the nightclub material for the local entertainment district.

Place a corpse in the rubbish.

The foundations of a scenario are already present.

Cyberpunk is not merely technology and neon.

It is power, poverty, crime and human bodies altered to meet the needs of systems that regard people as replaceable components.

The artwork here provides people who look as though they actually live in that world.

ART THAT CREATES ADVENTURES

The best stock art does more than occupy an empty rectangle.

It asks questions.

Who is the Bond Girl working for?

What happened to the Modern Mummy?

Why is the body inside the wall?

Who are the prisoners?

What caused the gun to backfire?

What has the Mad Scientist created?

Why is the Grey Surgeon colourised when almost everyone else is not?

What was discovered in the dumpster?

Who is being interrogated?

What happened at the nightclub?

Why is the Dire Wolf in the city?

Who covered Shakespeare in blood?

Choose an image.

Decide what the subject wants.

Place something inconvenient in the way.

Connect the resulting trouble to the player characters.

That is often enough to begin an encounter, investigation or complete adventure.

PROFESSIONAL ART FOR INDEPENDENT CREATORS

Commissioning bespoke artwork remains the best way to obtain precisely the image a project requires.

It is also expensive.

Independent publishers must generally divide limited funds between writing, editing, layout, promotion, printing and the increasingly radical ambition of paying themselves.

Stock art provides a practical alternative.

This collection can help you:

• Illustrate characters, locations and incidents

• Break up dense sections of text

• Establish atmosphere

• Complete adventures and sourcebooks

• Add impact to chapter openings

• Create case files and player handouts

• Populate supporting-character sections

• Build a reusable library for future publications

• Reserve commission funds for essential bespoke pieces

• Replace every remaining box labelled ART GOES HERE

One strong image can transform a page.

Twenty-five distinct illustrations can provide the cast, locations and evidence for a considerable amount of modern trouble.

FILES AND CONTENTS

The collection contains 25 distinct TIFF illustrations, with no duplicate colour or greyscale variants apparent in the preview.

The selection includes:

• Modern and near-future characters

• Crime and interrogation scenes

• Bodies and grisly discoveries

• Nightlife and adult imagery

• Occult and supernatural figures

• A mad scientist and sinister surgeon

• Cyberpunk material

• Monsters and atmospheric locations

Most pieces are presented in black and white, with selected colour artwork included.

READ THE LICENCE

The artwork is supplied for personal and professional use under the terms of the attached licence.

Read the licence before publication and ensure that your intended use, alterations and attribution comply with its requirements.

Some pieces may also appear in other Brad McDevitt collections where they suit more than one genre. Modern material naturally overlaps with horror, science fiction, cyberpunk and urban fantasy.

You can explore the complete Brad McDevitt Stock Art range.

The corpse has been discovered.

The prisoners are refusing to talk.

The nightclub is about to open.

Your manuscript still needs pictures.

Solve the manageable problem first.