So I decided that I would like a reference place for myself of all the kickstarters that I was involved with for 2025. With the idea that it might be of interest to some of you, I thought I would share that info here.

January

In January, and after our successful Kickstarter Gone Fishin', we decided to do monthly thematic one-shots for D&D.

So the first up was January's Gone Snowballin'. In short: a snowball battle for your D&D group.

February

For February, the obvious theme was romance, given Valentine's Day, so we built out a 'speed dating' one shot (Gone Speed Datin'), and I had a bit of fun with one of the NPCs who might wind up across the table from your character (above) while the cover art was a bit more... tame.

March

Gone Pub Crawlin' was inspired by Saint Patty's Day. We used some art I did a while back for the teaser. I really kinda love that little dwarf. Goes way back to an early post in my Patreon.

Here again, the final cover art was pretty solidly different, but I like these characters, and it feels like they're crawlin from pub to pub, so...

April

April was antiquing themed. I've no idea how / why April is associated with antiquing. 

Fun Fact: The character in the cover art for this one was originally something I started sketching up as another NPC for Gone Speed Datin'. I thought his open shirt, machismo laden body language, and cock eyed smirk made him perfect for lining up across from in a speed dating scenario. But when the guys saw it, they said we had to keep hold of him for Antiquin'. I still don't fully understand why, but was just happy he would find a home.

May

May was Gone Bee Keepin'. I went... a little different with this one. I really worked hard at using shapes to construct the image rather than lines. That's pretty solidly against my normal process and I found it challenging. While I'm not in love with the resulting image, I did learn a lot, and feel certain I could do something much better next time. I also did a bit of homework to figure out what sort of protective equipment medieval beekeepers wore and that's reflected in the final art. 

June

June was the first Wayward Pages bundle. Brad and I have been doing the Location Lexicon for some time now, and we decided to try bundling together  some of them and presenting them to the Kickstarter audience. They seemed to like it, though, in hindsight, we didn't do nearly enough promotional work to make it a real success. More learning as we go. Still, it was nice to see characters and art that I'd been working on for so long actually see the light of day.

It also worked out perfectly because the crew I normally work with on Kickstarter projects was taking the month off for personal reasons.

July

July was Gone Surfin'. I went a little nutty with the cover character's pose, but it was fun, and it seemed to play well with folks. As with most of these, I could tweak this endlessly.

September

September was a busy month Gone Foragin', with the regular crew, and then Matt (the writer / designer of these) did his own separate KS for Beyond the Mycelium.

For Gone Foragin', I again stuck to using shapes far more than lines, and I definitely like the results more than I did for Beekeepin'. Rapid artistic growth for the win!

For Mycelium, I did a whole painted cover, and really enjoyed the process - especially creating characters in a scene that are supposed to be mushrooms.

October

Obviously, October was Gone Scarin'.

Another fun one for me to create, and honestly, I was finally starting to feel like I had the process down for this one. It's a little... open? to me now, but it once again felt like a solid step in the right direction for me as an illustrator.

The large, blank banner eventually held the title of the book.

November

November was Gone Huntin' - with characters in competition to bring in the biggest / best game. Of course, there's a bit of a twist...

I had to hurry through the cover art for this one for 'life reasons', but overall I'm pretty happy with it, and once again I learned a bit that I will be able to use going forward.

December

December was Gone Sleighin' - a snowy race in sleighs pulled by various creatures.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this one was both fun and educational. It felt like my composition and layout game was on point, and I like our elf friend in the front. I made the forest of trees a bit 'generic' in order to make sure they didn't detract from the rest, but looking back, I wish I'd made them a little more unique.

...and that wraps up the Kickstarter work that I did in 2025. That wasn't all of the art that I did in 2025, but this seemed like it warranted it's own separate post / archive.

What's your favorite? What would you like me to have done that I didn't?

Potential Work

So a friend directed another friend to me. The third party is offering (what sounds like) real money for the project - between $1k and $2k.

They sent me an early edition of the book. It's a collection of magic items. Between 3 and 4 / page. There's about 100 pages. And they would like a full color illustration for the front cover.

So the math breaks down to about $6.66 dollars / image if I assume only 3 images / page AND they go the full $2k.

And that's without a cover illustration.

*le sigh*

I (sincerely) appreciate that laying out a couple grand out of your own pocket feels like a lot. Hell, it is a lot. But the amount of work he's asking for...

More info as I have it.

In the meantime, the gooder news:

Caravan!

I'm working pretty hard at a game I'm creating and I'm currently calling Caravan! The idea behind it is really pretty simple:

Create a simple character, who agrees to join a caravan that's going on a 30 (or 31) day trek to provide support of some kind. Use random tables to determine a daily prompt and then write ~1,667 words on that prompt. Do that every day for a month. It's like a hybrid of NaNoWriMo and some of the journaling games I've been seeing that seem popular right now.

It all evolved from my efforts during the NaNoWriMo of 2022.

I'm pretty stoked about it. It's a very simple concept, but I feel like it has a lot of potential flavor without a lot of crunch. I'm not a crunch guy.

How about you guys - what are you working on?

Working on this month's Kickstarter book cover. Gone Sleighin' will be a cozy side quest / one shot where your party can take part in a sleigh race with different kinds of animals pulling for fun and prizes.

ETA: Related question - what do you guys think - with snow (light blue) or without?

I can't make a living doing these characters. Or, if that's possible, it's certainly not probable. Not by a long shot.

So what would I like to work on that does seem like it would be more reasonable to make a modicum of moolah on?

Crests. For clubs and groups. I feel like this is an untapped thing. Like, if more folks realized that they could get something like this done, they might. I've even seen more 'official' types doing this based on family lineage and whatnot. I wouldn't try to put on airs like that. I would just assemble cool symbols for things your into. Or if your D&D group has a certain collection of character types and items that might be assembled into a crest in a cool way....

I really would like to work on labels for a distillery. Heck - those crests mentioned above would work for this. Something fantasy or viking theme, obviously would be ideal, but really, as long as they understand my style and aren't looking for an anime artist (because we're all the same, you know), I'm game.

Oh, who am I kidding? I would absolutely draw anime if that's what they really wanted.

Beer labels would work too.

I'd like to do some more tattoo designs (see some previous work here). That's unlikely though because most tattoo artists will do the design for free (or nearly so) and if you've done your homework on the artist in question - you know - because they're going to put their art into your flesh forever - you presumably already like their style.

What else?

Pet portraits or portraits of real people. Especially if it's a mashup of fantasy and reality. "My buddy as a barbarian." That kinda stuff. I'm admittedly not amazing at likenesses, but I can make it work, and honestly, it's an area I could use more work in to get better.

I've started doing tee shirt designs, but I'm really an amature. I've got a buddy who does a lot of graphic design work for cannabis companies and he gave me some great feedback on the existing designs in my merch shop. That said, it also made it very clear how far I have to go before I'm, you know, good.

The folks at gmbinder.com are kinda brilliant. They've built a website that makes it easy for any old schmo like me build a PDF with all the formatting of a Wizards of the Coast Official 5e Dungeons & Dragons manual.

You enter simple markdown into one window, the website interperets the markdown, and uses CSS to spit the content back out in a second window with all the formatting done for you. No need to learn about different fonts or spacing or... whatever.

I've seen a couple different incarnations of this kind of thing, but GMBinder seems to be the best of them - at least that I've been able to find. And it's 100% free - at least currently.

So when I first came across one of their competitors, the idea occured to me: "This would be a great way to promote dragonbones.net and my illustration services. I'll make a short "D&D Book" that is filled with my art and talks about how to hire me to create the art for your D&D book!" It's kinda meta, and I think folks would like that. I've never heard of it being done before, and the name of the game when selling anything is 'stand out from the crowd'. So if I do this right, I can stand out from the crowd while demonstrating just how perfectly I fit in with the crowd.

Oh shut it, Westley - it makes sense to me, and that's what matters.

Anyway - if any of you would like to have a look, you can find it here.

The cover is just a rough sketch, but all the art in it is my work, and I'm already working on a revision which will expand the book, provide more samples, etc. But with that said, I would love any and all criticisms / feedback / reviews / etc. Please - beat it up. :)

I just had a rather fantastic encounter at my local coffee shop (Peet’s). I had settled in to do some catch up work on art stuff. I had just finished a commission for my buddy Krishna. His wife asked his daughter the age old ‘If you could have a super power, what would it be?’ thing. When they heard the result (a modification of Elsa, of course) K commissioned me to draw it up. The result is above.

Anyway - so I’d just finished up the image, and a family came in with a little boy who can’t be older than 8. I noticed the printer paper in front of him with... are those comic panels? And pencil drawings? Why yes. Yes, they are.

”Are you drawing a comic?” I asked.

He was a bit shy with the big hairy stranger, but with a glance at his mom (grandma?) sitting next to him, he said “Yeah.”

”Well that’s awesome! This is what I just finished!” at which point I turned the iPad to face him and clicked the play button on the time lapse video for the image.

His jaw dropped and his mom started Oooh-ing.

We proceeded to have a conversation about art and comics and I introduced them to software he could get for his iPad and of the very concept of ashcan comic books. He’d said that he was doing them and keeping them to himself. I explained that (if he wanted to) ash cans would let him keep the originals and still share copies with his friends.

The whole family seemed delighted.

For a while now, I have been in seventh heaven listening to the sounds of the little boy quietly narrating his comics to himself as he works. Both dialogue and (far better) sound effects keep coming while he’s drawing.

He’s not playing on an iPhone. He doesn’t have his own laptop here. He’s not watching Youtube. He’s drawing. With pencil and pen on paper.

That. Was. Me. When I was a kid, and it’s just so very good to see as an adult.

* * * * *

In case anyone’s curious, this is the text for the commission:

"Here is what M told me she said: "If she could pick any magic power she would pick being the princess of ice and snow mountains and being in control of fire. And she hopes one eye was clear and white and one eye was red and orange"."

And here’s a link to the time lapse video of the process - https://photos.app.goo.gl/YQEXkK1kQEe4DHw47

I'm home. I'm slacking.

I got mah hairs did, but I really should have taken care of updating my drivers license today, and I just didn't. Stalled until it would have taken forever and then just didn't. Tomorrow. That's the first thing.

Now? I'm sitting in a diner (not the HamFam - I didn't have the heart since it's not Mike's anymore). I had the perfect opportunity to end the evening, and as I rolled down the road, and should have turned to head to my folks' place, I just... didn't. The air is cool, and it's supposed to rain, but it isn't yet, so there's that electricity in the air that happens before storms, and it's making me feel...

What? Well, it makes me feel like I'm a teenager again and I want to gather my friends and go sneaking around the neighborhood again if I'm honest.

Except that I'm half way through my 40s. My friends are grown and have families of their own. None of the others sneak through neighborhoods anymore. (I still do, but only as a means of getting from one place to another, and fairly infrequently.)

So I turned to that old comfort: a building filled with chrome, mirrors, and greasy spoons dropped into mugs of bad coffee. It's Home - even when it's not.

Fuck it. I should get to bed. I want to make stuff happen tomorrow. I just really don't wanna dammit.

Here's the dude I was working during my travels yesterday. He's a work in progress and needs a LOT of work. I feel like the art tidal wave is slowing down. Don't want that.