Female Wizard Hero (custom sculpt)

I've always wished for a female wizard to join my party of heroes. One project of mine was to completely re-write the Wizards of Morcar expansion turning it into my own Wizard Quest Pack (since the original pack was never released) and featuring a female hero as it happened with the released Barbarian and Elf Quest Packs. This project was then shelved (but not abandoned) as the real drafts for the two unreleased Wizard Quest Pack and Dwarf Quest Pack came to light recently thanks to one of the original designers who shared them with LucaPaschi (which is one of the greatest HeroQuest collectors I know) and Luca involved me with the process of "restoring" them.

 

 

So, let's go back in topic! This miniature was originally inspired by a drawing from Luis Octavio NB - link here but modified a lot of times during the sculpting process.
Then I was sitting together with my friend Valentina Conte aka Valevidart and she started to sculpt the miniature, at first following the sketch, but then we tried to include elements to recall the male wizard too. The intent was to have a mini which could immediately remind to the official HeroQuest wizard and looking as a model coming from the 90's. I have to say I am not easy on liking something so this mini was subjected to several revisions and the whole process was quite long but in the end I am very satisfied with the achieved result.
Instead of using a solid base, I preferred the miniature to feature a slotta base, removable, so it could be used both as a HeroQuest mini and as a Warhammer mini. Valentina sculpted a classic lipped, rectangular, HeroQuest base which is removable and the slotta tab under the wizard's feet allows the miniature to be mounted on its original base or over any standard base (squared or rounded).

Nature Spells: UPGRADED!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Featured Artist: Staz Johnson (Legacy of Sorasil)

HeroQuest II - "Legacy of Sorasil" was the sequel for the HeroQuest videogame.
It was published in 1994 only as a videogame for the Commodore Amiga and Amiga CD32 by Gremlin - link here. No official boardgame was ever released as a sequel or with this title, so I don't know if this was a Gremlin only project or if it was involving someone else from Hasbro staff but then remained an unreleased expansion as the Wizard and the Dwarf Quest Packs did.

The game box had a stunning cover artwork painted by artist Staz Johnson, featuring the four classic heroes from the original boardgame, Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf (with a new haircut) and Wizard plus four new entries, Knight, Ranger, Cleric and Mystic (last two are female characters).

(more of Staz Johnson art on DeviantArt or ArtStation)

Gremlin Archive website stores high quality scans of the individual artworks for four of the characters: Barbarian, Ranger, Knight and Wizard - link here
I dropped a couple of comments there asking if they could upload more but seems they are lost somewhere. It is possible if more peole ask them for updates, they will find the time to perform a new search and eventually upload the missing ones. These individual artworks were also painted by Staz Johnson.

The rear of the box featured individual artworks for all the characters but the Mystic was missing. While looking at this character in the game and her line art inside the rulebook of the game I noticed she is only dressed with a chainmail bikini and a cloak, so I guessed she may have been removed because of censorship.

Going deeply into this, I contacted artist Staz Johnson asking if he also drawn an artwork for the Mystic and if he could remember if any kind of censorship was affecting her. Staz Johnson was s o kind to reply me and his answer was very interesting:

"Hi, yes I did do an individual painting of the female barbarian. She was the cause of a lot of problems, in the initial layout for the Sorasil cover she was right at the front of the group in her chain-mail bikini. However, it was felt that her look might offend a lot of potential Muslim buyers so she was moved to the back of the group with her back facing toward the viewer, however this still wasn't good enough because her butt was on display, so I was asked to add the blue cape to cover her completely. This is probably why she was left off the cover, because the individual painting I did of her was from the front."

 

characters line arts

Chaos Spell & Witch Lord Spell Cards

I finally managed to retire some of the custom cards I sent for the print! I made two different decks to try how they will look when professionally printed: the Chaos Spell in their Italian incarnation and the Witch Lord Spells (brand new set, I will present in another post). I love the vibrant colors on these ones.
Card size is the same of the European 1989 version, mm 54x80.
I wanted these cards to look very close to the style of the Wizards of Morcar cards so for the Chaos Spells are also using a custom artwork; the background recalls the original one from the American cards while the Chaos Sorcerer has a color scheme inspired by the Chaos Tokens featured in Against the Ogre Horde pack. The Chaos Sorcerer is also represented in the same pose of the Wizard Hero on the Legacy of Sorasil cover art.
The cover artworks are made by Luis Octavio NB and since I didn't want to use anything from the original stuff, the title banners at the bottom were also re-drawn (by spevna_studio) but still matching the original vibes of the 1989-1990 version of the game.
The photos below will show you better the final result; these are the Italian version of the cards, I made an English version for the WL spells too:

Featured Artist: Wyrmwalk and his Zombie Barbarian

Zombie Attack! Just found this supercool Zombie Barbarian art painted by Wyrmwalk on a 11x14 wood panel as a tribute piece to the great Les Edwards Heroquest box art.
He wrote he was a great Les Edwards fan and idolized him when he was a kid.
Wyrmwalk is a lover of all things sci-fi, fantasy, horror, heavy metal, and 70s prog.
We hope to see more of this in the future.
Visit his website for more great art or follow him on Instagram at @wyrmwalk to like the picture.
This picture will fit good as a cover art for a Zombie theme questbook.

Featured Artist: Daniel Smith

A cool HeroQuest image drawn by UK artist Daniel Smith (IG: @daniellesmithart ).
He was so kind to share the image.
If you have an Instagram account don't forget to click on the link and support him.