The Republic of Darokin
- THE REPUBLIC OF DAROKIN - A black ink and gray color pencil drawings on an 11 x 14 size vellum paper.
This is a sample of the artwork that I did for "TSR," the "Dungeons & Dragons" game producing company, during the 1980s. The drawings were used in the instruction manuals and sometimes on the faces of cards that came with the games.
Everything was fine for a while, the stories and the characters I illustrated were all part of the fantasy-adventure genre; Heroic warriors, beautiful maidens, wicked rulers of evil empires, magicians, elves, dragons, and even some stories based on early American history. Doing these drawings for TSR was fun and the pay was great; They paid me thousands of dollars per assignment compared to the hundreds I was earning from science fiction book and magazine assignments . . .
Until TSR started to send me game stories to illustrate that involved every kind of horrible and depraved characters imaginable, Ghouls, Zombies . . . I hated doing these ugly drawings and remember stopping one time, getting up from the chair in anguish, shouting at myself, "what the hell are you doing?" . . . I wanted to illustrate science fiction stories, not this crap!
So the next time TSR editor Peggy Cooper phoned, offering me another game project, it also involved drawing more depraved "walking Dead!" So even though it probably meant losing more than half my income, I told her I just couldn't do it any more . . .
But thankfully, Peggy understood and asked if, instead, I would like to illustrate some heroic-fantasy stories for TSR's "Dragon" magazine, and for a new line of fantasy-adventure paperbacks that TSR was about to publish. Which I immediately agreed to do, and once again, Peggy Cooper made my life easier to deal with.
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