Feature – Black Chantry Productions

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle artist in focus: Edward Beard Jr.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and for the set commemorating this released earlier this year, we reached out to some of the card artists who were creating for the game in the very beginning. One of the most prolific contributors is the talented Edward Beard Jr. Let’s talk with him!

Ed, how are you doing today?
– Ready to embrace the madness at all times with a zest for the next benchmark, so I guess “driven” is the word. The life of a self-employed artist is ALWAYS “organized chaos”. You must be ready to do battle with the gauntlet of creative energies and whatever life throws at you.

How about you background as an artist – how did it all start out for you?
– I was kicked out of art class in 9th grade, told that fantasy, horror and sci-fi were not true art and mere commercial by default. After multiple “Failing grades” for daring to stick a dragon or gargoyle hidden within the boring fruit bowl and watching my teacher hang my work up at the school shows with all the A graded work so she could receive accolades from my work while giving me a failing grade, I brought her before the superintendent and called her out for her hypocrisy. That got me permanently banned from art for the remaining of my schooling. As such I was self taught.

What kind of illustrator assignments do you usually prefer?
– The ones that require me to be challenged to capture a pinnacle moment or concept that most exemplifies what the clients’ desires and most of the time do not even know what that is.

What artistic techniques do you prefer?
– I generally work in black/white and color tangible mediums such as graphite and acrylic paint. I use a combination of mixed media and base that decision on whatever the subject demands to achieve the best effect. I don’t try to force every subject into a standard medium.

We guess many who read this have seen your work for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. What else have you worked with?
– I illustrated about 126 cards for Magic: The Gathering over my time with them from 1993-2005. I also did some work for Dungeons & Dragons. My largest body of works come from my licensing art done for over 1 000 different products over my 42 years in fantasy and non-fiction art for companies products like calendars for Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, Borders, cell phone covers, throw blankets, posters for many companies like Hot Topic and Spencer Gifts retail chain stores.

You did some work for the very first sets of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, including the iconic Pulled Fangs one that is reprinted in the 30th Anniversary. What can you tell us about that one piece, or in general about those early times?
– I always loved gothic horror and vampires so when the chance to create some cool vampire related art came up with Vampire: The Eternal Struggle I jumped at it. I also created a self portrait of myself in that set on the card Praxis Seizure: Boston. Since I lived close to Boston, I thought it to be the perfect opportunity to sneak me into the set since I had not created a self portrait since the 1970’s.

– The most memorable experience I can remember was in 1994-95 when I was informed that the Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” TV show was condemning Vampire: The Masquerade role playing and card games along with other “evil products”. Evidently, he might have featured my work and several other cards on a segment condemning the set due to its anti-religious and what Pat deemed satanic evil nature. I was informed by multiple fans that the specific card that he deemed most offensive was Telepathic Misdirection, that I created, due to the repelling of the cross. His commentary focused on how in the set the vampires are stronger than God and can repel the power of God as featured in my art. Evidently Pat never heard of “make believe” and Hollywood. All I know is, it was a huge explosion for my website at that time and earned me thousands of fans of my art.

What other work do you have upcoming?
– I am very excited to be working on game art for the first time since 2005 on the newly released card game Sorcery: Contested Realm. I was reached out to by the creator Erik Olofsson who was a fan of my work when he was young playing Magic: The Gathering. He asked me to create my own “mini set” featuring dragons. The reason I agreed was because ALL of the art for the entire game is always 100% hand painted, something we have not seen in the game illustration world since 1993.

Thanks Ed for this interview. To learn more about his work, check out www.edbeardjr.com and www.airbrushbybeard.com, and follow him on Youtube (Fantasy Artist Ed Beard Jr), Facebook (Ed Beard Jr, Fantasy Artist), Instagram (Ed Beard Jr), X (Ed Beard Jr) and Tiktok (Artist Ed Beard Jr).

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle 30th Anniversary

The 30th Anniversary set for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle is available in your favorite store and also from our own webshop. It consists of a powerful 100 card Toreador preconstructed deck we call “The Endless Dance”, plus an extra 20 cards, including new Camarilla Justicars and nice reprints. For full deck list and previews, check out the product page.

Copyright © 2024 Paradox Interactive AB. www.paradoxinteractive.com. All rights reserved. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and Vampire: The Masquerade® are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB. All rights reserved.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle artist in focus: Lawrence Snelly

It is the 30th Anniversary of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, and for the recently released celebration set we got in touch with some artists that have been with the game for a looong time to once again grace some cards with their illustrations. One of the most productive VTES artists is the great Lawrence “Larry” Snelly, working with the game since the very first set back in 1994. Let´s have a chat with him!

Hello Larry, thanks for taking your time. How are things in your life today?

Things are good in southern California and I’m between jobs at the moment so that means a lot of collage work and cleaning is getting done.

You have a long and varied career by now, but how did it start. Are you an educated or self-taught?

I went to art school and have a Bachelor in Fine Art.

What kind of assignments do you prefer the most?

Collage and illustration assignments are my favs, but nothing beats working on your own ideas with no oversight.

You have used a bunch of different styles for VTES over the years. What artistic techniques do you prefer?

I like a combination of Photoshop and hand-made collage pieces using found paper.

Could you tell us about this, your favorite process?

The first step is finding printed source material, like vintage tabloids, muscle magazines, crime rags, comics books and old paper ephemera. I frequent Ebay and shop used book stores whenever I travel. I prefer material from the 1960-70s and the more damaged, the better.

I then take the pieces and scan them using a desktop scanner. I keep the resolution high (800-1200 dpi) and once scanned, I archive them into specific folders.

The next step is sketching out an idea and begin looking through my scans to see what images will work best. This is the most important stage of the process.

I bring those scans into Photoshop (as smart objects) and begin layering images one on top of another. This is where I re-size, duplicate, mask and utilize filters and effects to build the image.

Once I’m satisfied, I’ll print the image out on photo paper and wheat paste that to a canvas or plywood backing. I then paint or print on top of the photo, seal the piece with polyurethane and get it ready to hang. Sometimes, I have my work printed as a transparency and mounted on a back-lit frame for an illuminated piece.

Do you also work with models?

I only use models when I do illustration work that I photograph myself.

We guess many who read this have seen your work for VTES. What else have you worked with? What of your work are you most proud of?

Once I moved out to Los Angeles, I worked for Mattel, Disney, Hulu and other big corporations but prefer the work I do with smaller organizations like design studios and individual commissions.

You did some work for VTES 30th Anniversary. What can you tell us about those pieces?

It was fun to update the Donal O’Connor art since the photo reference is a great Irish guy I worked with at Ral Partha named Dave Summers. Vampire cards will always be a favorite and I’m grateful to have been asked to contribute.

What other work do you have upcoming?

I’ve been working in collage and decollage for the last few years and you can view my art at larrysnelly.com.

Thanks for those words Larry Snelly, and thanks for all the fantastic card art all these years!

Lost in the shadows?

Do you need some guidance with your brand new Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition Lasombra preconstructed deck? No worries! Just like for our other Fifth Edition decks, there´s a practical 1-page strategy guide free for download at blackchantry.com > Utilities > Helpsheets. Check it out!

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle artist in focus: Randy Gallegos

We love our artists and love to spotlight them. Above you can see new fantastic art by Randy Gallegos for the 30th Anniversary version of the classic Vampire: The Eternal Struggle card Third Tradition: Progeny. Randy has been illustrating for the game since the very beginning, back in 1994, so we felt it was a must to ask him if he would like to return and contribute for the 30 year celebration. He said yes, and he also agreed to a interview:

Hello Randy, thanks for taking your time to talk to us. How are you today?

I am a bit stressed as I am leaving today for an event in Washington state for the weekend. However I hit some hard deadlines I had to meet before leaving, so that’s good. I had to clear the schedule so my wife and I could take a vacation for our 26th anniversary straight after the event – illustration deadlines don’t really move for those kinds of things, so you have to work around them!

9 x 12″ figure study for Third Tradition: Progeny, acrylic and pencil on paper.

Tell us a bit about your background as an artist? Are you educated or self-taught?

I studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland 1991–1994. I was a Drawing major. With regards to painting however I had to teach myself that since the painting department there was full of abstract and other gallery artists who couldn’t draw or paint very well.

You have been illustrating for games a long time now. What kind of assignments do you prefer these days?

In recent years, owing to a series of traditional landscapes I’ve worked on, I’ve been commissioned a good number of fantasy landscapes as assignments. That’s fine, but I prefer figurative, contemplative or moody/surreal types of work. But I like imaginative art generally, so it’s pretty much all fine. I tend to shy away from aggro violence, dark/occultic imagery or highly sexualized themes, though.

Randy Gallegos VTES Wake with Evening's Freshness — Wake with Evening’s Freshness.

Atonement VTES Randy Gallegos — Atonement.

What artistic techniques do you prefer? It seems your style has changed since the 1990s.

Most of my work is still painted traditionally, although in recent years there have been times I’ve worked entirely digitally or a mix, depending on a client’s requirements or deadline since digital is much faster than paint. While I began my career as an acrylic painter, in the late 90s I transitioned to oils. Most of my painted work starts in acrylic and then is completed in oil.

For my Vampire: The Eternal Struggle 30th Anniversary illustrations, I painted the figure for “Business Pressure”, in acrylic, then scanned it and put it into the digital composition and finished it there.

For “Third Tradition: Progeny” I rendered it out in pencil and acrylic, scanned that and then overpainted it digitally.

Business Pressure VTES Randy Gallegos — 6 x 9″ figure study for Business Pressure, acrylic and pencil on paper.

When I was just starting out, working on Vampire: The Eternal Struggle as my first project at the age of 19, and for the first few years of my career, there was a wide disparity in the quality of my work – there were stretches where I produced illustrations from thumbnail to finish every two workdays. That was bad practice, but also fees were much lower then for the many card games back in the 90s, so that was certainly one strategy to earn a living back then. So sit was evident which pieces caught my interest particularly, as I tended to slow down for them.

Over time I took the hit of scheduling less work and focusing more on quality, and hoping it would eventually get me out of the pit that that practice was digging for me as well as the financial hit that stopping that practice meant for a few years while I got back to creating the kind of work I wanted to do when I was in art school – back then paintings were typically larger, more highly referenced and with more time spent. There were professional pieces in that early era that embodied the kind of artist I knew I was and could be, and I knew I was short-changing myself by not giving every piece that kind of effort.

VTES Randy Gallegos — “Spring 1994. *Cloak the Gathering* is complete and visible and I am working on a piece for a card that was cut from the set before release and thus unused.

How do you work with models and photos?

When appropriate and schedule/fee allows, I’ll use models. If there’s a good amount of time and I know a friend I can rope in, I’ll do that. If time/fee allows and I need a look outside of what I can get from my immediate circle, I’ll hire a model. Particularly within my circle, often I’ll use a model for the general body type and pose/lighting, while changing the look/features.

We guess many who read this have seen your art for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. What else have you worked with?

Certainly my 30-year association with Magic: The Gathering is my best-known and largest body of work. While I tended to devote more time to early Magic work than other projects – and this showed – I also had to redouble my efforts to stay relevant there, among a growing and quickly improving stable of fellow artists who moved the quality in that game forward aggressively. So in terms of what I am most proud of, it has been making the changes and improvements necessary to stay relevant to that game over the entirety of my career.

Outside of Magic, I’ve worked with a slew of games that have come and gone, some children’s book stuff, YA covers and the like. Outside of illustration, my series “Hearts for Hardware” is an ongoing series of traditional still life paintings dedicated to the history of video game hardware. Of my personal work, it’s the work that I am most excited about.

Body Flare VTES Randy Gallegos — Body Flare.

Alicia Barrows VTES Randy Gallegos — Alicia Barrows.

What other work do you have upcoming?

The vast majority of my illustration is in Magic: The Gathering these days, so that’s the main place you’ll find me. It’s unusual now for me to take on work with other clients, but the 30th anniversary of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle was special to me as it was the game I started this career on and Black Chantry was great to work with. I also have some art in Brotherwise Games’ upcoming The Stormlight Archive RPG series of books which will Kickstart this summer.

Big thanks to Randy Gallegos for this chat, and thanks for your lovely art!

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle turns 30 – welcome to the ball!

Some words from Ben Peal, Product Director of Black Chantry Productions:

Hey, everyone! The 30th anniversary of Vampire: the Eternal Struggle is coming up soon – August 16th! – and I wanted to talk a bit about the 30th Anniversary set we’ve created to celebrate the occasion.

We wanted to do something like the Stanislava deck we made for the 25th Anniversary Set, and the Toreador AAA (Anson, Anneke, Alexandra) archetype came to mind as it’s another classic archetype. But with the banning of Anthelios and with the design direction moving away from multiple master phase actions, that archetype is less viable in today’s meta and we felt a different approach was needed than recycling Toreador Grand Ball. We also wanted to give the Camarilla and politics a boost, as our preconstructed decks for Fifth Edition have tended towards stealth-bleed, intercept walls, and combat.

What we came up with is a deck we call “The Endless Dance”: a Toreador political deck that still centers around Toreador Grand Ball, but also uses a new action modifier called Loup (French for “eye mask”) to help get its actions to succeed. We took inspiration from the Ishtarri card Uncontrolled Impulse – we felt that the Toreador could really use a card like that. Giving it a feel of a masquerade ball, where you’re not certain of anyone’s identity, it’s an action modifier that gives all Toreador +1 stealth until the end of the turn or until a Toreador successfully performs an action. So if your first acting Toreador is blocked, each subsequent Toreador will get the +1 stealth until one of them succeeds at an action that turn.

We can’t have a deck without a crypt, so we have an assortment of all-new Toreador crypt cards for the deck. Looking through the Camarilla sourcebook for Fifth Edition Vampire: The Masquerade, we were thrilled to see our old friend François Villon still in charge of his domain in Paris. We chose to anchor the deck around him and newcomer Justicar Diana Iadanza. François Villon’s disciplines needed to be adjusted to account for the changes in Fifth Edition, so he has Animalism instead of Chimerstry. We carried over his +1 bleed to his new Group 6 version, and we’ve given him a new special to represent his skills of manipulation.

Another thing Vampire: The Eternal Struggle has needed is new Justicars for Group 7, representing the recently appointed clan Justicars in the Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition canon. They didn’t quite fit into the preconstructed decks in the Fifth Edition boxed set or in the respective New Blood decks as they’d increase the average capacity of the crypt cards in those decks for minimal benefit – deck effectiveness won out in that regard. However, with the Toreador Justicar Diana Iadanza being in the Endless Dance deck and with some extra space left in the 30th Anniversary bundle, this seemed the ideal time to get all of the new Justicars printed.

The official release date of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle 30th Anniversary is July 20. Full content list and all previews is at the 30th Anniversary product page.