Greetings Forge community, and welcome to the nineteenth edition of our Stars of the VTT Galaxy series. This regular interview series is meant to shine a light on the already bright stars that make up our community of Bazaar Creators.
If you're looking for tokens in all shapes and sizes, from cyberpunk tokens for your sci-fi campaigns, to fantasy tokens for your traditional RPG campaigns, or other weird and wacky under-served categories in the digital TTRPG space, look no further. PeaPu has you covered!
We are honored to introduce you to Pu, one-half of PeaPu, a duo of artists who create assets for your favorite TTRPG games and are a masterclass in token art.
Our sky consists of many stars. Each of them illuminating our planet. As you can guess, the stars are you. Yes, it's you, the great content creators who, in your own unique way, shine on our worlds. Thank you for being part of our heavenly sky and weaving the fabric of our Community.
Let's meet today's star.
Introduce yourself. For those who don’t know what you do, what would you describe yourself as doing for a living?
Pu: Howdy dowdy, I'm Pu from PeaPu.
PeaPu consists of both, my wife (Pea) and I (Pu). We create assets and tokens for various niches within the TTRPG world. Nowadays, a lot of our content is focused on a few large categories, namely: Cyberpunk, Post-Apocalypse, Modern, and Sci-Fi.
Currently, creating the art that we do is where our livelihood comes from. So I guess we're artists.😮
What’s one random fact about you?
Pu: I used to be the President of a Bouldering Club back at University.🧗♂️
As for Pea, she's got quite a knack for chopping logs into firewood.🪓
How did the two of you come together to form PeaPu and get started creating TTRPG content?
Pu: It all started somewhat in the classic fashion. I had a group of friends I played D&D with. At the time, I didn't want much responsibility, so assumed the role of a player. But quickly fell in love with the game and, when our usual GM was too busy to plan out a game, I stepped in.
Being me, of course, had to go the extra mile and try to make the games as good as possibly I could. This resulted in me making a bunch of maps for our games. This ended up taking up quite a bit of time and research.
At a certain point, I noticed some folks were asking for commissions in the Megasploot Discord Server. What they were asking for seemed rather simple to me and I didn't mind the extra work. One commission led to another, and so began my small period of life as a map commission artist. Back then, I went under the alias of PopotoMopoto.
When I started playing DnD, Pea and I weren't together yet. But we got together quite soon after. So Pea witnessed my full transition from a simple player to a map-maker.
After about a year or so and a particularly tough commission (fellah was requesting art assets that didn't quite exist), Pea asked me, why didn't I just make the art myself instead of kit-bashing some eldritch monstrosity of an asset.
My response was hesitant, as I consider myself an absolutely atrocious artist (at the time, I would never have used that word to describe myself), but to her, it seemed like an easy-peasy job, even if it required mimicking a particular art style.
So, after a quick proof of concept, I knew the idea was possible. Pea was adamant that it was easy enough to learn that even I could do it. So, I began learning and copying her skills to try and make something of similar quality (it was not easy). So began the journey of me playing artistic catch-up to Pea's skills.
So, TL:DR:
Pu -> Player
Pu -> DM
Pea enters the scene
Pu -> Map-maker
Pu -> Map-commission artist
Pea tells Pu to make assets
Pu + Pea = PeaPu -> Asset artists.
How do your individual strengths complement each other in the creative process?
Pu: Pea is definitely the better artist. She creates about 90% of the art you see with us at PeaPu. I try my best to keep up, but I'm not quite at that skill level yet.
That being the case, I take over all the other responsibilities. Art quality control, packaging, tagging, distributing, marketing, social media presence, and all that jazz. It helps being a previous avid map-maker so I know when some assets of ours won't or will function in a manner that is easy for DMs to use.
So basically, she can focus on the art, while I cover the less flashy work.
You started your PeaPu journey in 2021. From this point of view, are you satisfied with everything you did?
Pu: Definitely not.😄
So many little mistakes were made. Some on the art front (inconsistent vision of the art style we wanted to use), and some on the organization side (inefficient naming practices).
But 'tis a natural process. Some things you don't quite learn until you actually have to do them and then face the consequences. For some of the mistakes we made, we're still trying to fix to get all our packs more or less consistent with each other.
You are making various weird and wacky under-served TTRPG categories from objects, textures, looping paths, tokens, and whatnot. But where does the inspiration come from in the work you do? Or perhaps, your “muse”?
Pu: At first, it came from necessity. What I needed to make maps.
On rare occasions, Pea or I will want to just randomly make a specific pack for the sake of it. Sometimes, a particular individual commissions an art-pack so we do that.
Early on, Pea had the idea to let our patrons decide what we make. To me, it seemed crazy, because folks can have crazy ideas. But Pea thought it was great. So we had a bit of a compromise.
We have polls every month. One month, we have a poll where I try and pre-select a number of packs that I think would flesh out our catalog of assets.
And then the next month, we have a lottery-esque poll. I call it HPDTNP (Help PeaPu Decide The Next Pack). Here, any patron can throw a suggestion at us, given it follows a specific format (and isn't too crazy - not making a token pack of Ballerina Dinosaur Hitlers). Then, we randomly decide which pack we make next from the suggestions, and so it goes.
So ultimately, I like to think that The People are our muse! Their wishes and desires take us places we'd never think of going ourselves!💫
How has the support of your patrons impacted your ability to create TTRPG content?
Pu: Support of our patrons has definitely helped a huuuuge amount. The ability to have a somewhat stable income makes living that much easier.
Individual sales are nice but are always fluctuating factors and hard to rely on. Naturally, we're not quite at the peak comfort zone and gotta hustle where we can, but we're still ever grateful for all those who support us.
Are there any specific projects or initiatives that you hope to pursue with the support of your patrons?
Pu: Right now, with how busy we get with just our current workload, the most I can ask of our patrons is to check out other small creators like us.
There are so many passionate, hard-working, cool TTRPG creators out there who deserve so much more love.
What are your goals moving forward with your content?
Pu: I would really like to get all our packs finally aligned with our modern standards, both in terms of art style and organization. (It is a bit of an endless cat-and-mouse game, but at least get the basics in there).
Once that's in order, it's easier to create megapacks or bundles for folks to more easily access a large content base.
On the art side of things, both Pea and I have packs we want to do, but they're on the less popular side of things sometimes.
I would really like to at least have a classic Trio for my Tank pack. USSR, USA, and Germany. Add a few token soldiers, and I can make for some pretty wicked ground battles in a Foundry VTT.
Pea adores animals of all sorts (we have 2 dogs and 5 cats, with maybe more later), so she would really like to build up our animal packs. Or dive into the more antique, vintage side of asset making with all that precious detail on furniture.
We had many more ideas relating to expanding the types of stuff we offer our patrons, but realize we have our hands full with the existing workload. So, they go into the future pile.
Currently, you produce battlemap assets, city map assets, and token/vehicle assets. How do you decide which niche categories to focus on? Whether the decision always rely on your patrons?
Pu: As mentioned above, the decision mostly relies on our patrons. The random factor sometimes creates a new category all on its own.
For the one time, a patron suggested a Norse-Mythology-themed pack for the game Vaesen. It won the pick, and so we ventured into the 'fantasy' genre. One I thought we'd never touch.
With the amount of packs we have around the Cyberpunk Genre or our other big ones, I do notice more suggestions for them. But then again, our whims can come into play, and we make some random pack nobody asked for.😄
Can you walk us through the process of creating a new asset pack from concept to final product? What challenges do you face in creating assets for both static and dynamic uses on battlemaps and VTTs?
Pu: There isn't much of a difference between static and dynamic assets besides their categorization. The process is usually about the same, but the exporting is much easier on the dynamic ones.
Usually, it goes like this:
Asset pack choice stage:
- Either poll-based, whim-based, or commission.
Once chosen, the idea/references stage begins.
Reference Stage:
- Find as many references as you can for the things you need, take ideas from many things and try to combine them, or be period-accurate if need be.
Then you gotta draw them.
Creation stage:
- Lots of hours into linework, shading, coloring, and scaling.
- Occasional emotional outburst at art program not doing something right (those accursed crashes).
Once that's done, gotta check for errors and export.
Quality-control stage:
- Look for any errors in the creation stage, and adjust things that don't quite fit.
- Export.
- Check if colorable assets work in DD (those darn reds).
Packaging stage:
- Name, tag, and pack the assets.
- Fix any errors spotted.
Upload stage:
- Upload it to all the appropriate distribution centers (first to Patreon).
- Spot an inevitable mistake you missed in all the earlier sessions and quickly panic to fix it before anybody notices.
Usually, the biggest challenge is letting go of perfectionism, and just letting the art be for what it is. Not adding extra assets to make a pack feel 'complete', not fixing every tiny little thing. Just gotta let it flow as is.
You do your best to produce 2 packs of assets per month. That's a lot of work. How hard it is to achieve that, and at the same time deliver high-quality content to users?
Pu: This was a goal we had from the beginning, and it is possible but results in a lot of crunch.
After a few very stressful end-of-the-month periods, I put my foot down and changed our policy, so now we do our best to produce 2 packs a month, but there's no public promise. These packs may come later, earlier, or not at all. They'll be ready when they're ready.
Time-crunch can be useful and can prevent overthinking a pack. But having it constantly present is just not worth the stress it causes.
You currently support the Dungeondraft format, but you talk about compatibility with programs like Inkarnate. How do you ensure compatibility with other tools or programs, like Inkarnate, etc.?
Pu: It's difficult to be compatible with everything. I still have to remind myself to turn on that true tag for all my DD packs so that they'd be compatible with ArkenForge. But we try where possible.
As for Inkarnate, it has now become a lot easier to be compatible, since they created their art manager. Before, uploading used to have the following limitations:
- .jpeg/png only
- 4096px resolution max
- 8MB max
Now, the limits are much better. If you upload through the art manager, they are:
- . jpeg/png/webP
- 30MB max
- 16K res max
Compatibility had 2 meanings for us.
The first is that they could be uploaded without running into Inkranate's limitations. The second was that, because I really liked the Inkarnate Watercolor City Style, I wanted to make more assets for it. So early on, our city packs were promoted as compatible since we thought that they would be aesthetically compatible, i.e. not standing out among the default art.
Can you point to a particular project or piece that exemplifies the essence of your art? Let's say your favorite one.
Pu: Ooh, that's a tough one. Each pack feels a little personal, as each one has a small lesson with it. It's hard to say which one exemplifies the art, as there's constant improvement in some areas here or there.
What exemplifies the current art and our favorite differs as well. Perhaps the best example of our art is Cyberpunk Interiors 04 - High Society.
Just some really nice-looking art here.
My favorite, however, would be World War 2 — Vehicles Germany.
Cause I am a biased boy, and the idea of building a modular stupid tank excites me.
And Pea's is Modern 2 Fishermen Fish.
Cause those fish were cool. And the fishermen.
And what's your least favorite piece of content you've created? (If it exists).😊
Pu: Both Pea and I agree on this one.
The Sci-Fi City Spaceships 1 pack is a funky boi. During its making, Pea had to deal with a lot of confusion. I was trying to mix and match ideas that didn't turn out the way I hoped, and we got a bit of a mixed bag with lots of great little assets that can be used in various ways. But not quite as cohesive as we planned.
That being said, I do quite love the little spaceships we made in this one. The fumbling around was worth it for that idea. I do intend to expand on it in the future since they're just so darn.
Do you have the opportunity/time to play games by yourself? If so, what game systems do you play? What VTT do you use?
Pu: I tried to get Pea to enjoy TTRPGs to the same extent as I do but never had the right luck. I'll keep on trying.😄
When I had the time, I played using Foundry VTT and The Forge (love you, guys). I mostly played DnD with my friend group, but ever since we had to go to separate countries, we never could quite find the time to get back together. We still call and chat and think about all the various systems we should try.
I am adamant about playing again. Just gotta find the time.
The spicy question- what is your favorite VTT to run on? What kind of improvements do you want to see in it?
Pu: I must say, I've only ever tried Roll20 and Foundry VTT. So it's a choice between the 2 for me.
That being said, I am a big fan of Foundry. The modularity of it just allows for the most customizable experiences.
I haven't used it too actively in recent times, but from what I remember the thing that gave me the most trouble was figuring out how to host my own server. So that's the only thing that comes to mind.
If I had the time to analyze it again with a critical lens, I could probably come up with something better.😄
What is your opinion on AI, especially in the TTRPG space?
Pu: A tricky subject that one.
In general, I'm not its biggest fan. The fact that, to my knowledge, it seems like a lot of its core training data was obtained in ethically dubious ways makes it a hard project to support. This is especially so since so many companies now are profiting from labor that they never compensated.
That being said, I do believe that technology is a hard horse to tame, so usually, it's best to try and swerve it in as ethical a direction as we can. For example, I do wonder if artists can benefit from it by training their own model solely on their own art to boost certain elements of their drafting process.
There's a lot of nuance here that one can get stuck in very quickly. But, I am happy to see that the TTRPG community does seem to be aware of the complexities involved. As always, an awesome community!
Do you have anything you want to say to the greater TTRPG/VTT community?
Pu: To such a large community?
The most I can say is keep being awesome, you fellas. The world would be a darker place without you.😎
What advice do you have for creators wanting to get into the VTT space? What advice would you offer them?
Pu: This advice gets passed around a lot. But it honestly does really work:
If you want to get started, just do it. Begin, create, share, learn, grow, repeat!
In all my time, with the TTRPG community, I've barely ever had any negative interactions. So many folks are willing to help and guide you if you need it. All you gotta do is just ask away. Look for help, and you shall find it.
Other than what we already discussed, what are your plans for the future as an RPG creator? How do you see PeaPu evolving over the next few years?
Pu: Besides growing our catalog of art assets, I foresee more collaborations with like-minded creators, and us going out of our comfort zone with some new weird projects involving tokens.
Best of luck with everything!
And thank you, Pu, once again for your willingness and time for this conversation.
Pu: It was fun. Thank you for having me!
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