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This month we have two newcomers to Inspirational Art, Michael Tumey (Gamerprinter) and Tomáš Kopecký (flyboj). They are new to the Outsider, but
regulars on TalkGraphics may have seen their work - indeed the first two images are from the most popular thread ever on TalkGraphics, with an
amazing 107,000+ views at the time of writing.
In both cases we strongly recommend you read the TalkGraphics threads because we are only showing a couple of representative images from the many
that Gamerprinter and Flyboj posted.
Michael Tumey (Gamerprinter on TalkGraphics)
Michael Tumey is a professional fantasy cartographer - that is he creates fictional maps for games, novels and the like (he is currently on Los Angeles
working on the maps for a major video game release in the US, I can say no more!). He has been using Xara software since Xara X (v1) and has posted
some pretty amazing maps created in various Xara versions in this epic thread on TalkGraphics. The maps often include elements that are hand drawn
and then scanned and imported into Photo & Graphic Designer for further work, typically adding colors, shadows, bevels or other special effects. Some
of the maps in the thread also include 3D elements that Michael created in other products.
This first image is a Map of Duat, and it’s the most recent post in the thread (as of today). Duat is ‘the capital of Anubia and the Gnollean Empire’
(think ancient Eygptian desert based city) and according to the post Michael spent about 12 hours across 3 days creating it. You can actually see the
map taking shape on Michael’s G+ page here, starting with the religious center in the middle and moving outwards through the slave market, military
and religious quarters and so on - which certainly helps you apprciate the amazing attention to detail.
Tomáš Kopecký (flyboj on TalkGraphics)
And now for something completely different! Tomáš Kopecký is a professional illustrator, graphic designer and animator based in the Czech Republic,
and like Michael he has been using Xara since the very early days (CorelXARA in fact). We first saw his work in this thread on TalkGraphics - check out
the post because you’ll see a great selection of his distinctive and accomplished work (don’t miss the second selection at post 9).
This first example is called ‘Living on the Edge’, and actually comes from Tomáš’ Behance portfolio (it was inspired by another artist’s pitch to Disney -
you can see where he’s coming from!).
That’s it for this month. If you have enjoyed these images then all Likes, Shares, +1s, re-tweets etc are most welcome!
This second map comes from the other end of the thread, one of the very first maps posted. This is the Village of Tomme, commissioned for a print
newsletter. The top right insert shows interior views of a tavern that features in the story, the bottom right insert is a zoomed out overview of the
village.
And this is one of the images from the TalkGraphics thread, called Pirate Job, which Tomáš describes as ‘an illustration for my own pleasure’ - which
sounds like a pretty good reason to us!