manikus DC is a site dedicated to showcasing my artwork for Dungeon Craft. I'm an amateur artist and gaming hobbyist who found himself thinking more and more, "gosh, that image is pretty cool looking, I wonder if I could do that..." Here are my better attempts so far. I use a lot of differentt programs to achieve the various types of art, including but not limited to Poser DAZ|Studio, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, Carrerra, Terragen and Bryce - just to name a few.

News:

04-13-11: (manikus)

Here's the latest batch of orc small pictures. There are 11 images in this update, a half dozen of which are of female orcs outfitted for battle, a pair of images of a mutant orc getting ready to go on a rampage, a picture of a couple dressed in armor and two of orc riders atop scaled, horned mounts (called Triceratox). The male and female orc models (Orkz and She-Orkz by Sixus1) and the mount (Triceratox), are part of a line of figures, some of which I've used already for the small pictures of the dwarves (Dwarvez by Sixus1) in cluding their ursine mount, and the male and female ogres (Ogrez and Ogrette by Sixus1). Still to come are the goblin hordes (Goblinz by Sixus1) and their mount, a worg (Whargz). And sometime soon their will be new elves, but the models are not released yet (Elvez by Sixus1). All of these figures constitute a line of models called 'Racez' and are part of a mythos created by the modeler that is kind of an amalgam of AD&D, Warhammer, and his own creation. I expect to create a design for DC that will be set in this mythos because I think it is pretty cool and I love the art he's made. Expect lots of battles. I likely will do a more "traditional" AD&D orc and goblin at some point in the future, though aside from being overly-muscled, there is nothing that precludes these images from fitting that mold.

If you're interested in learning more about Sixus1 Media feel free to follow the link to their store. They also maintain a forum. Or feel free to drop me a note as I would love to talk more about this and have been acquainted with them for some time now. If you would like to see more of their models rendered, let me know. I own most of what has been produced. Other figures that I've rendered that are models by Sixus1 are the mind flayer and Cthulhu on the portraits and small pics page. I can show you more if you are interested in working with this style of art and would like me to do some for you - just ask.

04-11-11: (manikus)

How time flies when you're having fun. The effort to finish DC has been taking up much of my time, but I have managed to do some more small pics and portraits. Some of these have been finished for a while, but my desire to post here more often has not proven a fact... I'm adding 10 new images today, three are portraits of a human female paladin (which I previewed in FRUA Community forums), while the other seven are small pics of more orcs, introducing a second warlord and a female orc. There will be more female orcs in the future (some of the renders are done, but I have not yet created DC art work out of them). I hope to start work soon on some large pics of orcs in action and maybe even an orc army. And with the orcs will come some unique mounts...you'll have to tune in later to see what I mean. And after the orc armies, will come the goblin hordes.

03-03-11: (manikus)

I've not been updating the site as much as I would like, partly due to computer issues (some bad, some good and therefore distracting in their own right), and partly due to being busy posting walls in the FRUA Community forum (see previous entry). But, I've still been working on art, doing small pics of opponents for the PCs to face mostly. So, without further ado, I offer up 8 new small pics: 2 of a male ogre, and 6 of male orcs. I expect to be offering more orcs in the future with various armor and weapons options. I also think that when I get some other opponents out of the way, I will come back to all the small pics (and portraits) I've been doing and make some icons to go along with them.

02-18-11: (manikus)

I've been motivated to create some more walls for Dungeon Craft. Over the last week or two I have been converting all of the Dungeon Craft 640x480 walls that I can find to be in the hyper-wall format. I've also converted over 100 walls for the 1024x768 resolution to work in the 640x480 resolution (and of course put them in the hyper-wall format). The effort is to have all the walls, doors and overlays in the same format so that designers can mix and match any of them they would like to create the perfect combination for their design. So, through a thread on the FRUA Community Forums, I've been posting everything I've done. It's also been a bit of a roll call of DC artists, with many well-known (at least in the DC community) showing up - over 400 walls from Harri Polsa, over 200 from Steve McDonald, over 100 by Jorg Weber, over 100 by yours truly, as well as some of Dinonykos walls (he has many more on his site), and nice bunches from Uatu, Ziroc, Kevin Wyllie and Sigrid Elias. Every time I work with the great art of the DC community I'm motivated to create some of my own, and when I have worked with this much of it (over 1,000 walls/doors/overlays in the thread), I had to take a break to create this batch of 18 walls, including 5 two-story walls. You can expect to see some combat walls being made from some of these, particularly from Steve McDonald's walls and from my own.

02-17-11: (manikus)

I have posted my first "advanced" tutorial. Like all of the tutorials, I was inspired by discussion in one of the DC forums. This time the challenge was to create a "Solo Combat", by which I mean a player chooses one member of their party to compete in a combat event. It's quite a nifty little trick, if I do say so myself. What makes this advanced? It is more involved than the intermediate tutorials - more events are involved and the GPDL scripting is a little more advanced, requiring the use of "$WHILE" functions. I think it is pretty straight forward. It should be fairly easy for a designer to adapt this to her own purposes - such as choosing a particular character automatically, whether by race or class or name. Visit the tutorials section for this and other tutorials for Dungeon Craft, or download the Solo Combat tutorial directly.

02-15-11: (manikus)

Today's update is all about bears and devils, but no devil-bears (now there's an idea). There are small pics and icons for a brown bear and a dire bear (dire meaning big and angry). These are for a project that I'm working on, but that won't be released for a while and seem generic enough, AD&D enough for others to use. There will be some other usable animal icons from this project and maybe even a dragon or two (maybe not).
The devil icons are part of the effort by Uatu and myself to create icons for all of the non-unique devils. uatu has done the lion's share of the work, but I've got an update of my Styx Devil and a new one, a Spined Devil which I tried to do in Uatu's style. I may release some recolors of the latter at a later point (especially is someone requests one).

02-08-11: (manikus)

Today I have added four combat walls that are based on my walls: Building, Stucco1, Stucco2 and Wood. As I hadn't posted all of these walls on the site yet (they've been posted in the forums and on the old site) I went ahead and added them as well. I also decided to move all of the Hero Craft walls, doors and overlays to this site since they are not copyrighted material (and I need more room over there).

The two stucco combat walls were a request, and I am happy to accept requests for combat walls based on any walls for Dungeon Craft, whether by me or any other artist. Just send me an email, or a Private Message through the FRUA Community forum. Just let me know which wall, and what you would like the floor to look like. For that matter, I'm happy to accept requests for wall art as well, including doors and overlays. Walls I can do pretty quickly, most doors as well, but overlays take me longer. If you would like to see a portrait, small pic or background, or maybe a sprite, feel free to ask. I'm happy to oblige where I can.

02-07-11: (manikus)

How long has it been? Too long. Issues with connecting to the ftp server seemed ot be resolved as if by magic (and I thought that finally gaining access to third level spells wasn't going to be that big of a deal...). Access brings updates, both in adding content, but in correcting stuff as well. The link to Uatu's site is now to his current site. The broken Adobe wall link is fixed.

Big update: all portaits, small pics and backdrops are resized for the default resolution and layout - that is 640x480 resolution and 176x211 viewport. If that weren't enough, there are 6 new small pics (small pics means monsters and scenes), and 16 new portraits (these are character representations of the demi-human races, alone and in groups). You can find: more mind flayers, some dragons, a myconid and an ogre; plus the dwarves have begun to arrive (8 images) and some humans have followed as well (8 images). Thanks to Les and Rebekah at Sixus1 for the lovely figures (dwarves and ogre) - they make rendering characters fun.

09-08-10: (manikus)

I updated the link to Dinonykos' DC web site. As soon as Uatu get's his new address, I'll update his as well. I've started work on the Hero Craft web page, more like suite of pages and hope to have it up here soon; I think as a partially independent site in case I want to go with a completely different look.

06-14-10: (manikus)

This past weekend, I was very productive. Today's batch of images are all new, though the two rogues had been set up and were ready to go, but I redid them (much easier when you know how you want it to end up). I offer to you 10 portraits of dark eleves - the drow. I present female and male rogues and warriors. I plan on doing some images of mages and clerics for both genders as well. I have drider and Lolth icons, so perhaps I should do portraits of them? And then do icons for all of the drow portraits? But, I'm getting ahead of myself...to see the new portraits, visit the portraits page and scroll down. This is the first upload of what is hopefully many of denizens of the Underdark.

06-11-10: (manikus)

Fixed a couple of little bugs in my stylesheet and am trying out a "gold" look. What do you think? I've also made a button for the FRUA community forums - see at left. Well, you will be able to see whenever the net decides it's okay to recognize the new style sheet and images. :)

06-09-10: (manikus)

I'm baa-aaackkkk! Thanks to Donnie Ewald. :) He has generously offered up some space for my meager site. Much of htis artwork appeared on previous incarnations of my site, but I guarantee that there is at least one new image per page, and in some cases quite a bit more than that. I've decided to bow to the pressure and release my walls for the 640x480 resolution. The portraits/small pics and backdrops are for the larger resolution, but they are easy to convert and there are instuctions on each page. I have a bunch more to put up as soon as I get it processed. On the other hand, a fair amount of what was up before will not be going back up, as I no longer feel the quality warrents sharing it.

Check it out, bookmark it, tell your friends. Oh, and I do take requests - see something you want in a different format, or want something you don't see? Just let me know.