L5R: Toturi’s Army (1996, 97)

An early opportunity to revisit my own work

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Toturi’s Army

Of the other card games that appeared in the 90’s, The Legend of the Five Rings was my favorite. I learned most of the ones I illustrated for, just so I’d understand the context of the illustrations. But L5R was the only other one I played for fun from time to time, usually Crane Clan.

The Clans (equivalent to a color in Magic) had a Stronghold card associated with each. In the early days of the game, the 60-card box the cards came in had the Stronghold printed on the back of the box, meaning you would want to keep the box to use. This also made it difficult to keep these in good condition.

Toturi’s Army (1996), 8x10” oils on canvas

The game had a number of persistent characters, whose stories evolved over time. In the first release, I illustrated Akodo Toturi, a fairly important character in the first story arc, which ended in 1997’s release Time of the Void. So when Toturi takes charge of his own army (represented by the flags of the clans his army consists of), I was asked to illustrate his camp, which at this time is a small meeting place.

From 1991-1993 I worked with artist Thomas Kinkade’s publishing company. That’ll come up from time to time here. This was one occasion where I intentionally tried to incorporate some of the handling of his early works. Probably the thatched roof here recalled his work to me. I had the opportunity to see a number of his original in person in those years, so I took the opportunity to experiment here. I didn’t illustrate in oils much in this era because I didn’t have a sure way of using them or sense of how to handle them.

Toturi’s Army 2

As mentioned, expansion to expansion, the story developed. Within a year, by the time of Time of the Void, Toturi’s Army was more prominent.

Toturi’s Army 2 sketch (1997), 3.25x4” ink on paper. This was the fax submission for this artwork, in Sharpie.

For this piece, I switched back to acrylics, which I mostly worked in at the time. While I used a lot of airbrush back then, here I decided to create that softer environmental gradation with washes

Toturi’s Army 2 tracedown drawing: drawn on a cut piece of vellum (which I had evidently used for a mask on another painting, up above), I would have used transfer paper to transfer these shapes to the board. Evidently the details beyond that were resolved on the board itself.

Toturi’s Army 2 (1997) 6.5x7” acrylic on illustration board

I did ten (!) illustrations for Time of the Void, which culminated in a larger arc-ending event at GenCon that year, which I think I was at. I had really enjoyed working on the set, but following this story arc, I reduced the number of illustrations I did for the game going forward.

Toturi’s Army appeared in The Legend of the Five Rings’ Anvil of Despair expansion in 1996.Toturi’s Army (2) appeared the Time of the Void expansion in 1997