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This page shows some sample wargame art (mostly counters) I've done in recent years. I use Adobe Illustrator for 95% of the work, and Adobe Photoshop for the other 5%. Unless otherwise specified, the counters shown were never part of any actual game project, only for the fun of it. In some cases, the counters were made up as part of a DTP design experiment of my own which never went anywhere (as seems to happen with all my amateur game design efforts).

There are a lot of graphics on this page, so please be patient while all the images download. My apologies to those of you without broadband, but I have not yet had the time to make thumbnails of everything.

 

18th - 19th Century counters: The silhouettes here were borrowed from Avalon Hill's War and Peace. I made these counters at the request of a poster on ConsimWorld who asked for ideas for 18th century units. Note how the typeface chosen for the combat data can contribute to the "feel" of the counters. This is especially noticeable with the medieval counters further down.

 

Third Reich counters: I thought it might be fun to come up with silhouette versions of all the counters from Avalon Hill's classic The Rise and Decline of the Third Reich while retaining the overall minimalist look of the originals.

 

Medieval period counters: These were for a DTP game on the battle of Agincourt that I was toying with designing. You can see the refinement of the crossbow, knight, and light horse units as well as the casualties marker as I received feedback from ConsimWorld. These units were heavily influenced and inspired by the stunning counter artwork Craig Grando did for the premier issue of Against the Odds magazine.

 

20th Century Modern Warfare: Here is an example of color experimentation. Three sets of the same four counters representing various modern 20th century combat assets, each utilizing a slightly different coloration scheme. The first and second rows differ only in that the silhouettes in the top row are variants of the background color while the second row uses black and white silhouettes for greater contrast. The second and third rows differ only in that the third row's combat data is made to match the silhouette color for maximum overall contrast.

 

Arab-Israeli wars counters: In the wake of 9/11 I became fascinated by the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 20th century and designed these counters. Coloration and symbology of units is based on the colors of each nation's flag.

 

WWII Tanks: I wanted to experiment with moving beyond simple NATO symbols or monochrome silhouettes and made up a few WWII tank counters using full-color scanned images massaged slightly in Adobe Photoshop.

 

WWII East Front 1: These counter designs were heavily influenced by L2 Design's 3rd edition update of the classic wargame Streets of Stalingrad. Below the counters is an example of how they might look set up for part of a Barbarossa scenario. The map was a quickie playtest map whipped up in a couple of days.

 

WWII East Front 2: Here's a case where the counters were made specifically for a game design I was working on for my own amusement. An example of these counters in actual play shows that only the higher echelon units move around on the main map while all the combat action takes place between the component counters on off-map holding boxes. The map was another quick playtest map that I whipped up in a few days using the classic terrain tiles I made up (available for download here).

 

NGW/IJW counters: Darrin Kellogg is designing an ambitious strategic WWII wargame covering all theaters of the war, tentatively split into two titles named Nazi Germany's War and Imperial Japan's War. He asked me if I would do the counter artwork for him, and I happily agreed to. You can see a larger sample by clicking on the graphic below.

 

Moscow Attacked!: With Lou Coatney's permission, I created full-color counters for his free wargame Moscow Attacked!. Links to these counters and the game can be found on my main Gaming page.

The Russian Portfolio: Again, with Lou Coatney's permission, I created full-color counters for his free wargame The Russian Portfolio. Links to these counters and the game can be found on my main Gaming page.

 

Starship Troopers: Chester Hendrix is heading up an effort to update Avalon Hill's 1976 classic wargame Starship Troopers using many of the variant rules that came out of The General over the years, but cleaned up and streamlined. He asked if I would be interested in doing the counter artwork and I enthusiastically agreed.

What you see below is the result of applying a new technique to wargame counter artwork creation. I used LightWave3D, a professional 3D modeling and animation software package, to model all the figures, vehicles, and ordnance in 3D and then used a cel-shading technique to give them all a 2D hand illustrated look.