The Origin of a Cover: M&M 2e GM's Screen

Battle in Riverside Park!
Or, the Creation of the M&M Second Edition Gamemaster’s Screen

In a previous Super-Vision, we gave you a look behind the scenes at the creation of the fantastic cover of the Mastermind’s Manual. This time, we take a look at another great piece of art from UDON Entertainment: the new M&M Gamemaster’s Screen!

Again, the art starts out with a concept: the Freedom League battling their opposite numbers from the Crime League in Riverside Park in Freedom City, where the Sentry Statue is located. Sound simple, right? Hardly! We’re talking about nine heroes, nine villains, and one giant statue, along with proper descriptions and references for all of them! Still, as you’ll see UDON’s artists were up to the challenge:

In a rough sketch, Chris Stevens gets all the characters on the two-page spread for the screen (no small feat in itself). This just shows that the artist has the concept of the image down and a clear idea of where everyone will go. With the basic concept approved, Chris can move on to the finished line art.

Here is Chris’ beautiful line art for the illustration. The GM’s Screen is unusual in that it is “landscape” format, but Chris uses that to his advantage in presenting a “widescreen” shot of the action. The hero/villain match-ups are according to the original concept, but Chris gets creative in terms of what everyone is doing: note in particular Medea’s summoned cyclops and Johnny Rocket outracing the Maestro’s sinister sound-effects!

The image is so crowded, in fact, that Chris provides the colorist with a “who’s who” key! This ensures the art references (from the existing Freedom City sourcebook art) are applied correctly.

Now look at the finished piece in color... wow! In addition to the subtle lightning of the Sentry Statue and the city skyline, the colorist adds tremendous detail in the form of energy blasts, force field, crackling lightning, and other effects (like Johnny Rocket’s speed blur). You can almost feel the ground shake from the impact of the cyclops’ club.

Now it’s up to us here at Green Ronin to fill the back of the screen with all the information an M&M Gamemaster needs at his fingertips to run the World’s Greatest Superhero RPG, and you can run your own super-powered melees to rival the battle in Riverside Park!