Hey Everyone!

I’m Marshall Short, the artist who did all of the miniatures, walls, props, map tiles, etc art for the Vault of Mini Things. I’m also the creator and artist behind Printable Heroes which is an online catalog of free print-ready paper miniatures and terrain that I’m constantly adding to thanks to the amazing support of my patrons through Patreon. 

The Vault of Mini Things is many things and (a big) one of them is a summation of the last 5+ years of my work, so the TinkerHouse team thought it might be fun to have me take the wheel on today’s update and write a bit about myself, my art process, and tease some of what I’m currently working on for the Vault of Mini Things. Little did they know that art isn’t just something I do, but rather something I do specifically to avoid doing other more difficult things like writing so let's see how long I can keep this car on the road XD


A Little About Me

I grew up in a tiny fishing village on a small island in southeast Alaska. My best friend got me into Dungeons and Dragons when we were kids and I’ve been drawing monsters and dragons ever since. I spent my teen and early adult years working on fishing boats and I’ve spent the rest of my life just being glad I’m not working on fishing boats. After college I worked for a game art production company (video game companies hired us to make their art for ‘em) leading a wonderful team of 2d artists that worked on everything from FarmVille and Hungry Shark to Halo and Borderlands.

Then in 2014 I picked up D&D again with the new 5th Edition, started making paper miniatures for my home game, and releasing them for free online as a fun side project. In 2015 I figuratively won the lottery when my son was born, and then shortly thereafter it felt like I’d won it again when in 2018 I was able to quit my day job and start drawing little paper people for TTRPG games full time. 

 

I really strive to keep my art accessible. I want it to be detailed and mature enough where it can carry serious stories, but also vibrant and fun enough that it still feels appropriate when GMs/Players want to be more silly and/or play with their kids.

While I might work digitally I am constantly scribbling out ideas and I recommend to anyone who wants to create anything that they keep paper to scribble on nearby - it doesn’t have to make any sense to anyone else as long as it helps you clarify for yourself whatever it is you’re making!

The scribbling usually continues digitally, I’ll rough out an idea, draw over it, hone/refine it a bit with each pass - on a good day it only takes one pass, on a bad day I might refine and hone something nine times over before I’m comfortable to goto the Line Art phase. This process of iteration and refinement really highlights that just like Spider-man, anyone can be an artist, you can be an artist. Forget talent and embrace raw stubborn persistence.

Once I’m happy with the front view line art I’ll sketch out the back view over the top to ensure the silhouette lines up perfectly, then ink it. When I first started doing this it was a bit of a mind-breaker trying to mentally extrapolate out how a form/shape will look rotated front-to-back, but it’s amazing what humans can get used to. 

From here I move onto filling in the highlights and shading. To keep things simple (both for me creating them and visually on the tabletop) I work with 3 tone shading; the Base Color, a Shadow, and a Highlight. I’ll also tag on some rimlights to help the miniature pop against the black border.

I like to set up my files so all of the different elements are masked out with their own color fill so I can fairly efficiently go back and make lots of different color options.

Here’s a quick and dirty gif that highlights the process (rather than a sketch phase this example is starting from a very old Orc mini of mine that I was repurposing to work for a Hobgoblin Archer).

 

 

 

I use the same process on the Walls, Map tiles and Props which keeps everything visually consistent.

Work In Progress Previews

As we were putting together the Terrain Trays we knew we wanted to include some more thematic props that I just didn’t have time to design before the campaign went alive. Among them were some Spooky Trees and Coffin props for the Graveyard Terrain Tray.

In addition to trying to sneak a few more props in, I’m also working on the map tiles. We previewed it a bit with a previous Update but I wanted to take a moment to highlight it here since it’s something I’m really excited about.

Map Tile variations! With the map tiles being double sided we have a lot of real estate to play with. You always want to have a fair amount of more or less open map tiles as it doesn’t pigeon hole how they’re used; nice open grid of dungeon cobblestones - it could be a dungeon, could be a castle corridor, could be a noble’s expensive wine cellar! - however, since we have the space I’m really excited about including some more unique variations - especially in the themed Terrain Trays. Think crumbled pillars and cobweb covered rubble in the Ruins set, or dug up graves and broken crypts for the Graveyard set, or trambled earth clearings and forest ponds in the Wilderness set, etc. 

Here’s a couple examples of WIP tiles using the dungeon cobblestone texture as a base. The one on the left is more open with just a few small details of scattered debris, while the one on the right presents opportunities to effect gameplay - is the fallen pillar difficult terrain to traverse, does it provide partial cover, will it slow down the hulking ogre currently chasing the party?

Even something as simple as a sewer grate tile can add fun narrative and strategic options.

I just love this kind of stuff. There are just so many cool things you can add to a map tile to inspire creative gameplay and/or just add neat visual interest/variety.

I suppose that’s it for now, thanks everyone for your support with this project! I know it’s going to be an incredible resource for folks and I am really looking forward to continuing to build upon what we’ve started here.

Cheers!
-Marshall 

It’s the FINAL WEEK of the crowdfunding campaign for The Vault of Mini Things! Together, we’ve blown past our stretch goal and unlocked EIGHT Community Achievements! At the time of this writing, we’re tantalizingly close to stretch goal 8 (“Fiend Friends”, discussed in the previous update) and Stretch oal 11 (“Field Promotion”, discussed below). Huzzah!

But we need your help for the other Community Achievement introduced last week, “Village People.” This is a true Community Achievement in that it only unlocks by broadening the community of people who are aware of this campaign: it unlocks at 500 Facebook shares. Facebook may be lame, but it remains a very effective platform for sharing with friends and family. It’s often the first place people go when they wake up, and the last thing they look at before falling asleep. We need your help getting the campaign in front of more people via that little F button on the campaign main page.

500 shares is a lofty goal. But we can get there, together. As of the time of this writing we just hit 666 Backers. If every Backer shares once, we’ll hit this goal. But we can get these another way too: through your friends and family. Consider posting a little note with something like “hey fam, I backed this project and think it’s cool. And it can get even better if it’s shared on FB. So even if it’s not for you, you can help by clicking the F icon and sharing. Thank you!” If you’re a Dungeon Master, consider awarding Inspiration to the character of every player who shares the campaign. Your powers are vast! Use them to help the community hit that goal!

Speaking of community, let’s briefly talk about the final two Community Achievements. 

We call updated 11 “Field Promotion” because it makes your tabletop battlefields better. 20+ additional map tiles. 20+ additional props. More variety and flavor for you and your table to enjoy. This goal unlocks at $120,000. See below for a small glimpse!

Keeping with the theme of improvement; our final stretch goal “Heroic Hues” jazzes things up with over 20 alternate color schemes for heroes included within the Vault. This goal will unlock at $130,000. 

We made a long post Sunday with some clarifications inspired by community member DessieD, and we’ll repost that below to raise visibility. Click the link to see the original Discussion post.

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@DessieD This is some amazing analysis and it has prompted us to provide some extra explanation of the products. As a crowdfunding effort we want to show you as much as possible to get the full sense of what we are doing, and sometimes that is difficult to do when our plans include artwork that is not 100% complete. 

For the terrain we planned on shipping the Vault with enough terrain for you to create some basic adventures in Dungeon, Wilderness, and Village. While the Trays are meant to provide more expansive terrain for more involved scenarios. The Terrain Trays will have some shared elements with the Vault, but will also include unique map tiles and wall art variations, and props not featured in the Vault to bring more options and excitement to your encounters. The sum of the two makes a better whole rather than just more of the same. Our intent here is to allow the Trays of Terrain to function as stand alone products as well.

The same goes for the Pouches of Mini Things! While there may be more bandits, guards, bards, etc… These additions will oftentimes include alternate color themes or different artwork to create greater variation. While you can certainly become a Printable Heroes Patron here (https://printableheroes.com/minis) to download and print variations of your own to add to the Vault (there is extra room in there to do that and/or include some other 2D minis) our intent is to provide a quality of 2D standee print that you couldn’t get from a home printer.

All this being said we have plans moving forward to release additional standees and terrain in these same formats to add depth and dimension to your roleplaying experience. So while we are not going to dissuade you from going the 2 Vaults direction, we wanted to make sure you understood that the add-ons were not simply more of the same.

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Again, thank you for the support. Everyone over here believes the Vault will be a gateway to a world of pure imagination, and with your help we can bring it forth!

Sincerely,

Mike, Lane, Chris, and Marshall.