Moving Brick and Mortar

by Richard Luschek

For the recent HarnQuest release for Columbia Games, I had to color a very old illustration of Kiban. I believe this was first published in the original HarnView in 1983. Wow, 30 years ago!

Here is the original image as it appeared then.

Kiban  Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc.

I had to color the image and update it for the recent expansion of this Harnic Castle. The original is by Eric Hotz and I believe the inspiration is taken from a real world castle in England called Bodiam Castle. 

Along  the way, a map was drawn for the fictional Harnic version. As I started updating the image, I realized that the mapped castle and the image did not quite match up. So I started tweaking it. Also I thought some of the castle above looked a bit like a building in ruins rather than a living breathing fortress.

Kiban  Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc.

If you compare you can see, towers were moved and adjusted. The tops of the castle were cleaned up, and a lot of the windows had to be shifted around to match the floor plans in the article. Once everyone agreed on the adjustments I started in on color. I try to use digital coloring like water colors, doing washes over the line work- well, technically in photoshop, the color is done under the line layer.

Kiban  Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc.

I usually erase any lines in the sky and just paint the clouds in. After I was done one of the writers pointed out that the front window was still wrong. It was not one big single window on the floor plan, but two smaller ones.

The same eagle eyed writer also commented that on the map the bar of land in front of the castle was mostly stone and would not have grass on it. I of course ignored this comment as we all know rocks in a stream can and will accumulate silt and allow river plants to grow at the edges of the rocks- So Shut The Hell Up!

But in order to try to appease I offered this image as a possible solution. The knight covered the window and takes care of the grass.

Kiban  Copyright © 2013, Columbia Games, Inc.

This image was rejected for some reason by Tom at Columbia Games as being “inaccurate”.