So now I’ve got a stack of gorgeous Hell for Leather Targets (which are being yummed up by the Deluxe Bundle pre-order customers). I’m pretty excited. Here are some pictures of the delivery!

Imagine this fella printed on 12pt, gloss laminated card stock. Oooh, I’m getting shivers of pleasure.

Interestingly, Tazio Bettin sent me some artwork inspired by the zombie session.

This week’s image will be used to illustrate the standard CO-OP end game (aka the Finale). Unlike the Deathmatch, mentioned last week, the Finale involves collaboration to overcome certain death and escape the Network.

This aim of the Finale is to get out alive, live to fight another day, and all that. However this is Hell for Leather and if you go up against the Network it’s going to do everything it can to end your existence in a brutal and undignified way. You may be the greatest player but when the dice start stacking you’re going to make a mistake and once you do, you’re out. The beauty of it is that your sacrifice may not be in vain as your death will give your brothers in arms a little breathing space before the Network crashes down upon them again.

In this scene the player has walked head first into an ambush, has failed his roll, collapsed the stack and must end his days in a glorified manner while his friends watch in disgust.

You are trying to tug me back into the elevator, but I ignore you, screaming like the devil. I feel cold metal press against my temple, but before I realise what’s going on it’s too late. There is a bang as my blood spatters the elevator door . Now Adolf Hitler steps forward with a bloody grimace.

For this piece I was given the brief along with the tag: “Point Blank”. I wanted to use this image to give you some sense of idea of how tense and excruciating it can get when you’re in the Finale. You’ve got to throw some dice and stack others impossibly high knowing one mistake means certain death.

I started once again with some simple lines and a rough composition. I wanted the hand to feel strong and the face to feel upset and terrified. A juxtaposition of the power of the Network and the futility of the Player. Once happy with the composition I worked into the face. I found it difficult to draw the hand from imagination so I drew my hand in the mirror using pens and erasers wrapped together to form the rough shape of a gun. It only came together at the end once I worked into the background quickly adding splashes of grey to add movement.

Next week you will witness how I’ve used an image to help illustrate Scene Setting. See you then. J Out.

This week’s image will be used to illustrate one of the many ways your character suffers in Hell for Leather. When you slip up there’s a bunch of ways you can be punished, my favourite being when you get a TRAUMA. This is not a mishap or a wound that can accumulate into something grander, this is something that’s going to make the rest of your character’s life miserable. It’s your moment to shine—where you get to be as brutally bloodthirsty as you like!

In this example the character has tried to confront a guard and disarm him. He decides he has messed up and got wounded in the struggle:

The guard shouts “Hey you, you little shit, come out where I can see you?” I start to go into a rage, mouthing off obscenities. “You wanna say that to my face you ape-faced mother—” CRACK! A steel baton shatters my cheek. I feel the blood spilling out of my mouth like warm tea and I collapse to the floor blacking out.

I knew I wanted to get a bloody mess into this image. Something utterly cruel and violent. I started with a simple sketch to get my composition. It was important to get a lot of movement early on. Once I’d picked my final composition I worked on getting the face to be kind of half way between intense pain and knocked out. I pushed the expression as far as possible and then splashed some blood about.

If you like splashing blood then come back next week for some more Art of Hell for Leather. J Out.

This week’s image will be used to illustrate the wonderful Deathmatch (player versus player) end game. The normal ending involves collaboration between the players to overcome certain death and escape the Network. The PvP option ensures that there is only one survivor who will achieve victory by killing his team mates one by one in a deadly show down.

The choice of weapon by one of the characters in the example scene was an over sized hand held Gatling cannon.

Charging up the massive Gatling cannon as bullets from Uzis hurtle toward him, he dives for cover into one of the putrid prison cells. His assailant comes running after and as he turns the corner bullets shred his face in a blaze of light and noise.

I wanted to get across the chaotic madness of using a gun for an attack helicopter in close quarter combat without describing too much of the scene. I felt a weighty character would fit in nicely with the “normal guy is forced to turn psychotic” thumb rule I have for myself for creating characters for Hell for Leather.

I started with some simple lines and worked into the drawing without spending much time on details. I wanted to keep it loose all the way until the finished product so I worked fast. My final step was to create a kind of flaming, splashing maelstrom in the bottom corner to give some kind of sense of speed and confusion that you might expect in this bloody situation.

See you next week for some more black and white hyper violence. J Out.

If you click the image below, it will bring you to the Hell for Leather page where you can download the high-res PDFs in assorted colours. Ooooh, assorted.

Nail Girl as promised. The brief was to sex things up with all the trashiness that you would expect from this pulp masterpiece. We talked about pushing things as far as possible and in the end had a proposal which involved a car crash and a sexy woman with her breasts pressed up like two large air bags against the windscreen mid collision..

Needless to say that idea was left to brew and we stuck with our second choice.. A sexy builder/librarian woman shooting a nail/staple gun into some poor unfortunate male’s face/neck. Ok.. I drifted a little off topic and decided to leave her in post-coital contemplation after gunning down the nearest male.

Watch the “magical” process unfold before your eyes. Also note that while the woman is clearly the centre piece it is worth admiring the bloody sketchy mess that I left in the back ground.

Please leave comments and suggestions of more art work you’d like to see in game. If you’re suggestions are inspiring enough they might make it in to the final print!

I’ve selected Cutthroat for this week.

The brief for this was “Woman slashing the throat of a shop keeper” which I kind of interpreted as “Mad pretty lady violently taking a hostage with a carving knife”.

Since we’re working in black and white for the interior, I don’t have to worry about colour, just light and composition.

I got some reference for screaming women and knives and started to paint away. I wanted a Chiara Scura style with a dark background and lit foreground figures. I was happy enough with the initial basic composition but I didn’t like the pose and I thought the woman looked a bit too psychopathic. Later I reverted to the psychopathic version over the teenager as she was more fun. Once I had blocked out the clothes and hair on the woman and changed the head of the man back to the smaller version I thought I was pretty much finished and I left it for a couple of days.

I came back to it today and decided to change everything. The pose on the lady was odd and her neck was too long and the butcher looked “already dead”. I pushed his expression as well as bringing the head of the woman closer and scaling it. At this stage I was asked to sex it up a little so I changed the girl’s pose so we could see some cleavage. I also wasn’t happy with the impact of the hand in the foreground so I altered the thumb to add more drama.

There was a big jump next where I continued to add detail like her clothes, stronger light and hair. This was finally starting to look finished. After a quick show around I was asked to clarify the action as it was a bit ambiguous. I refined the woman’s hand and re-added the knife, knocked back the cartoon-ish victim’s head and added some blood. Finally I re-added some lighter areas to push the characters off the back ground.

Next week I hope to finish Nail girl. See you then.

I’m pretty sure this will be cropped in the print version.