Welcome to Eltingville: D&D Opening Designs

Scanning more of the remaining pilot production art I have for the Adult Swim pilot.

Most of the original production art was sold time ago, but I believe I have copies of my designs somewhere (I hope), and possibly the clean-up designs (which, if I understand correctly, was done by an artist named Eric Keyes at the Cartoon Network -- this information is probably on the pilot's credits, I recently came across his name credited online and have to double-check. It might be on IMDB, I forget I can look this stuff up, that there are resources out there, it's not 2000).

I have the official model packs for the pilot, the final black and white designs and the color versions. And I have copies of the backgrounds. And I have the storyboards, two acts of which are the original boards done by Stephen DeStefano. I'll be scanning everything as time allows and posting everything here eventually.

It's highly possible a lot of this work is on twenty year-old hard drives in the house. There's a lot of material I need to get to, it's a logistical mess. Scripts, art, color work, stuff we've forgotten we have over the decades. I want to get that material archived properly, and a lot of it would be good Patreon fodder.

Anyway, for today, from 2000 we have rough designs for the D&D characters played by Pete and Josh. I guess I thought it was funny if Pete didn't show any imagination by naming his character, "Sir Pete". We never used their character names in the pilot, but I had hoped to continue their D&D campaign over the course of the proposed series. In hindsight, I'd give Pete's character a much more ridiculous, heavy metal/horror kind of name. To be honest, "Axel Skullpunisher", Josh's character name, would be more apt for Pete. I'd have written the entire pilot a lot differently now, that's the way time and hindsight works. And, hopefully, brain development.

The basic design for Pete and Bill's characters was a nod to friends that I played D&D with back in the late 70's/80's. One of them was named Pete, but he wasn't the basis for the character. Another player was the template for Pete, although there's very little character resemblance between them. I was the DM for the campaign, but unfortunately I was more like Bill (to a far lesser degree) than Jerry.

Those were (mostly) fun times. But our occasional blow out arguments and fights -- that's where the combative nature of the Club, magnified and exaggerated, originated. Any actual fights that broke out among my nerd friends were unrelated to the nerd stuff. We never fought about "Eltingville" stuff, we just fought like dumbass teenagers. Sometimes things would get heated during an RPG session, but that only led to shouting and someone storming out. And once someone threw a D20 really hard and almost broke a piece of cabinet glass. Yeesh! Anyway, that's where the crazy conflict comes from, that, and watching other people at cons or comic shops get worked up.

Yesterday I was running errands before therapy, and I stopped in to JHUBooks to say hello to the folks there. I ended up talking about D&D and RPGs with co-owner Nick Purpura, and he gave me a copy of a DVD called Eye of the Beholder, a documentary about the artists who have worked on D&D. I'm hoping to get to it soon. D&D (and other games, Traveler, Gamma World and especially Champions) is a real nostalgia trigger for me. It's hard to describe the feeling I get sometimes when I look through the old guides, or see a set of Grenadier miniatures on eBay, or what have you. The immersive quality of RPGs, and the social aspects of the games, are still a draw for me. Which reminds, me, yesterday I got an invitation to appear on an RPG-themed podcast, which I am totally up for. More details when and if it happens.

Huh. This turned into a bit of an update. I'll stop now.

Okay. So. More Eltingville D&D designs are scanned and will be posted asap. Hope people enjoy seeing the pilot stuff!