THE FUTURE IS ARMED, MUTATED AND BADLY SUPERVISED

Humanity has reached the stars.

Unfortunately, we brought mercenaries, derelicts, murderous robots, haunted houses, heavily tattooed hard cases and whatever caused the space-station calamity along with us.

Brad McDevitt Stock Art – SciFi 3 provides 25 science-fiction TIFF files representing 20 distinct subjects, ready for use by publishers, writers, game designers and Games Masters.

The collection ranges from astronauts, robots and distant space stations to cyberpunk drifters, psychic investigators, mutants, scavengers and street-level characters. It is particularly useful for gritty science fiction, space opera, cyberpunk, science-fantasy, post-apocalyptic gaming and horror among the stars.

Several illustrations are supplied in alternate versions, providing greater flexibility for different projects and layouts.

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

INSIDE THE COLLECTION

The supplied files include:

• Astronaut K

• Auto Warriors

• Battle Robot

• Commando

• Deep Space Station and Black Hole

• Derelict

• Drifter

• Haunted House

• Modern Troll

• Panther

• Punk Psychic Investigator

• Scarred Mercenary

• Five versions of Scavenger Babe

• Space

• Space Station Calamity

• Two versions of Tattooed Bad-Ass

• Tough Biker Chica

• Trucker in Bar

• Aliens

• Astronaut Adrift

The five Scavenger Babe files provide alternate versions of the same central illustration, including clothed, barely clothed, topless and nude presentations.

Tattooed Bad-Ass is supplied in two versions, including a greyscale alternative.

Together, the collection provides characters, creatures, robots, locations and atmospheric scenes suitable for illustrating anything from a short adventure to an entire science-fiction game line.

SOLDIERS, MERCENARIES AND PEOPLE WITH GUNS

Science-fiction heroes rarely travel alone.

They travel with commandos, mercenaries, scavengers, drifters and people whose names have been replaced by descriptions such as Tattooed Bad-Ass because further explanation would only waste valuable ammunition.

The collection provides artwork suitable for:

• Player characters

• Mercenaries and hired muscle

• Soldiers and commandos

• Bounty hunters

• Scavengers

• Spaceport criminals

• Post-apocalyptic survivors

• Corporate enforcers

• Rebels and resistance fighters

• Supporting characters of uncertain loyalty

The Commando, Scarred Mercenary, Drifter, Tattooed Bad-Ass and Tough Biker Chica can populate military units, criminal gangs, frontier settlements or the sort of drinking establishment where removing your weapons at the door would be considered dangerously eccentric.

Use them as allies, enemies, employers or people standing between the characters and the last functioning spacecraft.

A good character illustration can suggest an attitude before the reader encounters a single statistic.

A weapon, scar or expression may provide the beginning of a history.

Sometimes the artwork completes a character you have already written.

Sometimes it tells you who the character ought to be.

MACHINES BUILT FOR WAR

The Auto Warriors and Battle Robot provide material for military science fiction, cyberpunk security forces, post-apocalyptic war machines and technological disasters that have continued functioning long after anyone remembers how to switch them off.

They might represent:

• Autonomous soldiers

• Corporate security machines

• Relics of an earlier war

• Robotic player characters

• Gladiatorial combat units

• Experimental military hardware

• Machines defending abandoned installations

• Artificial intelligences pursuing obsolete orders

• The first indication that peace negotiations have failed

A robot need not be evil to become dangerous.

It may simply be obeying instructions written by someone who died two centuries ago.

Perhaps the machines are guarding something.

Perhaps they are searching for someone.

Perhaps they have concluded that the war never ended.

The characters may need to destroy them, reprogram them or convince them that they possess the correct paperwork.

Only one of these options is likely to involve less shooting.

SCAVENGERS OF THE FUTURE

The Scavenger Babe illustration is supplied in five different versions, allowing publishers to select the presentation best suited to their project.

The available files include:

• Duct-tape clothing

• A more revealing duct-tape version

• A topless version

• A topless and bottomless version

• A safer shirted version

This makes the illustration usable across projects with very different tones and intended audiences, from mainstream science-fiction gaming to adult-oriented or deliberately transgressive work.

The character might be:

• A survivor of a ruined colony

• A wasteland scavenger

• A pirate or smuggler

• A resourceful mechanic

• A post-apocalyptic warrior

• A mercenary living from one salvage job to the next

• A player character

• Someone who has constructed an outfit from whatever remained after civilisation collapsed

Alternate versions of stock art are particularly useful when publishing related material for different platforms or markets.

Choose the image that suits your book rather than rewriting the entire book to justify the image.

OUT IN THE VOID

Not every useful science-fiction illustration is a character portrait.

Deep Space Station and Black Hole, Space, Space Station Calamity, Astronaut K and Astronaut Adrift provide artwork for the enormous, hostile environment beyond the atmosphere.

These images can accompany:

• Space-station sourcebooks

• Deep-space expeditions

• Derelict-vessel adventures

• Orbital disasters

• Rescue missions

• Alien encounters

• Lost astronauts

• Cosmic mysteries

• Space-opera campaigns

• Science-fiction horror

The Deep Space Station and Black Hole can become the destination of an expedition, the centre of an isolated campaign or the last inhabited structure before the edge of something humanity does not understand.

The Space Station Calamity can introduce sabotage, structural failure, invasion or the aftermath of an experiment that received approval despite several strongly worded objections.

Astronaut Adrift needs little explanation.

Somewhere in the void, somebody has become separated from their ship.

The remaining questions are how, why and whether the thing drifting towards them is responding to the distress signal.

DERELICTS AND HAUNTED PLACES

The filenames include both a Derelict and a Haunted House, allowing the collection to cross from conventional science fiction into supernatural, post-apocalyptic or science-fiction horror.

A derelict may be:

• An abandoned colony ship

• A ruined settlement

• A crashed vessel

• A decaying station

• A survivor of some forgotten catastrophe

• The home of something that does not appear upon the original manifest

A haunted house can be placed within a cyberpunk sprawl, abandoned colony or artificial environment.

Perhaps the haunting is supernatural.

Perhaps it is caused by malfunctioning holograms, recorded personalities, psychic contamination or an artificial intelligence recreating its former inhabitants.

Perhaps the characters spend several hours developing a sophisticated technological explanation before discovering that it really is a ghost.

Science fiction does not prevent the dead from returning.

It merely provides them with better communications equipment.

PSYCHICS, MUTANTS AND ALIEN CREATURES

The Punk Psychic Investigator, Modern Troll, Panther and Aliens provide material for settings where science fiction overlaps with fantasy, mutation, psychic powers or the genuinely extraterrestrial.

The Punk Psychic Investigator can serve as:

• A player-character portrait

• A paranormal detective

• A reluctant medium

• A psychic bounty hunter

• A specialist hired to investigate alien phenomena

• A witness who sees things conventional instruments cannot detect

• The only person aboard the station who knows the dead have not left

The Modern Troll might represent a mutant, alien, genetically engineered species or science-fantasy creature attempting to survive in a contemporary or futuristic environment.

The Panther can become an alien predator, altered animal, experimental organism or emblematic creature for a faction or character.

The Aliens illustration provides something less easily classified and can be used wherever the project needs creatures that are visibly not human.

The future may contain intelligent life.

There is no guarantee it will be friendly, attractive or interested in joining a federation.

BARS, TRUCKERS AND ORDINARY FUTURE PEOPLE

Grand science-fiction events still require ordinary locations and supporting characters.

The Trucker in Bar provides a useful figure for frontier settlements, orbital truck stops, mining colonies and the interstellar equivalent of a motorway services at three in the morning.

He might be:

• A freight pilot

• A convoy driver

• A prospector

• A smuggler

• A witness

• A source of rumours

• A retired mercenary

• The last person to see a missing ship

• Someone who insists the thing attached to his cargo vessel was not present when he left

Characters such as this help make a setting feel inhabited.

Not everyone in the future is an admiral, assassin or genetically engineered superhuman.

Somebody still has to move the cargo, repair the engines and complain about the price of drinks.

Those people often know more about what is really happening than anyone in authority.

SCIENCE FICTION, CYBERPUNK AND SCIENCE-FANTASY

The breadth of the collection makes it useful across several related genres.

It can support:

• Space opera

• Cyberpunk

• Post-apocalyptic role-playing

• Military science fiction

• Science-fiction horror

• Psychic investigation

• Science-fantasy

• Dystopian settings

• Galactic crime campaigns

• Alien-contact scenarios

• Independent gaming magazines and ’zines

• Fiction and digital publications

The Modern Troll or Haunted House can pull a setting towards science-fantasy.

The Auto Warriors and Commando suit military gaming.

The Drifter, Scavenger Babe and Tough Biker Chica fit cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic projects.

The stations, astronauts and deep-space material can anchor a more traditional space-opera campaign.

Use the whole collection together or take individual pieces wherever they prove useful.

Stock art is a toolbox.

Nobody sensible buys a toolbox and insists upon using every implement upon the same machine.

PROFESSIONAL ART FOR INDEPENDENT CREATORS

Commissioning original artwork remains the best way to obtain precisely the image a project needs.

It also costs money.

Independent creators must usually divide their budgets between writing, editing, layout, printing, promotion and the faintly unreasonable ambition of being paid for their own labour.

Stock art provides a practical alternative.

It can help you:

• Illustrate characters and locations

• Break up dense areas of text

• Establish a consistent atmosphere

• Complete adventures and supplements

• Improve chapter openings

• Populate a bestiary or character section

• Create player handouts

• Build a library for future projects

• Reserve commission budgets for essential bespoke pieces

• Remove the last remaining boxes marked ART NEEDED

One strong image can transform a page.

Twenty distinct subjects can transform a substantial portion of a book.

ART THAT CREATES STORIES

Stock art does not have to be mere decoration.

Each illustration can become an adventure seed.

Why is the astronaut adrift?

What destroyed the space station?

Who built the Battle Robot?

What do the Auto Warriors believe they are protecting?

Why is the mercenary scarred?

What is haunting the house?

What does the psychic investigator know?

Where did the Modern Troll come from?

What is approaching the deep-space station?

Who left the Drifter for dead?

Why has the Trucker stopped at this particular bar?

Choose an illustration.

Decide what the subject wants.

Place an obstacle in their way.

Connect the resulting trouble to the player characters.

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

FILES AND ALTERNATE VERSIONS

The collection contains 25 TIFF files representing 20 distinct subjects.

Five files present alternate versions of Scavenger Babe, while Tattooed Bad-Ass is supplied in two versions.

This gives publishers options for different layouts, tones and publication requirements without falsely inflating the number of unique illustrations.

The remaining files cover characters, robots, creatures, spacecraft, stations and atmospheric science-fiction scenes.

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. Science fiction naturally overlaps with horror, fantasy, modern gaming and urban fantasy, so certain images may reasonably belong in several themed packs.

You can explore the complete Brad McDevitt Stock Art range or browse the other science-fiction collections.

The station is failing.

The robots remain operational.

The astronaut has lost contact.

Your layout still has three empty spaces.

Solve the easiest problem first.