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RobotJam In reply to jhubert [2005-05-11 08:05:09 +0000 UTC]

Thanks, and thanks for the fave. Been looking at your website, some very nice stuff on there.

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jhubert In reply to RobotJam [2005-05-11 08:56:20 +0000 UTC]

Some of the art on the website comes from people who featured their art at ENWorld whom I asked nicely. Other pieces come from ClipArt.Com , which has a very nice collection of historical art pieces I found appropriate.

But I still need some more art for Urbis that portrays the more fantastic elements - and since I'm not good at drawing things, I'm currently trying to save up the money to commission some artists...

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RobotJam In reply to jhubert [2005-05-11 12:44:59 +0000 UTC]

Hi Jurgen,what sort of fantastic elements are you after, I fancy doing a few more city pics and I could do with a litttle project, let me know what you're after ? I wasn't looking at your main site, just the photo blog thing. I had a look at the Urbis pages, rather massive amount of work you have been doing !

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jhubert In reply to RobotJam [2005-05-11 13:34:45 +0000 UTC]

(First, a standard disclaimer - neccessary because I have heard too many horror stories about gaming companies and unpaid artists: You are very welcome to create pictures of Urbis at this point, but please understand that this doesn't represent an "official commission" by me. All I will do at this stage is put the images on my website with your name and a link to your gallery. You will retain all rights, and I will remove the images from my website as soon as you ask for it. I will only ask for commissions once I feel that the project has advanced sufficiently - which, while I hope it might happen soon, might take a while - and I have accumulated enough money to actually pay for the art. Not before. All you can get for now is my undying gratitude... )


Well, the architecture should be loosely based on that of our own Age of Industrialization - the 19th century - with an even bigger propensity for megalomania in building design. The most notable fantasy element are Nexus Towers - extremely tall towers which conduct and store magical powers, and in emergencies can work in concert with other towers in the same city to create truly spectacular magical effects (and thus they should always have a clear line-of-sight to other towers). You can also try to get inspiration from individual city descriptions on the Urbis website - I've tried to give each an unique personality and it might help you find inspiration for architectonical details.

Another good source of inspiraction are the "Obscure Cities", a setting for the Belgian comic book authors Peeters and Schuiten. You can see some image galleries of their works here .

Finally, the world of Urbis uses magic as technology - and to be specific, the magic of the d20 system (D&D, basically). If you are not familiar with them, you can take a look at the d20 System Reference Document . Any magical effects (and creature) can be found in Urbis (though some of them will be rarer than others).

Apart from that, I must say that your "Future Retro City" already comes fairly close to how I envision some of the cities of Urbis. The skyscrabers would have to be replaced with something with a more gothic architecture (that many smooth surfaces and glass fronts aren't appropriate), and the lanterns would have to be more ornamental, with perhaps a more obviously magical light source, but apart from that, I must say that I really like the look of the picture a lot!

Oh, and about the size of Urbis: I've written about 60,000 words already, and I am aiming for 100,000 or so...

Thanks for asking! And if you have more questions, don't hesitate to ask them, too!

I hope this helps for s

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RobotJam In reply to jhubert [2005-05-11 14:04:45 +0000 UTC]

Hi Jurgen,

thanks for the info, I'll probably have a go at doing something over the next week or so. Depends on how much I have on. I'll contact you again in a bit,

cya, Rob.

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RobotJam In reply to evilelfcompany [2005-05-06 09:54:39 +0000 UTC]

yeah, I've done a full tutorial on this at [link]

cheers, rob.

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RobotJam In reply to sevenofeleven [2005-05-06 06:24:46 +0000 UTC]

The original pic is from a sketch I did in water colours. The buildings are a few real life ones mixed together. The tower is telecoms tower, and the building at the back is based on the sony tower in toyko.

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