tabletopgaming.co.uk 61as an artist. e company was at the beginning of
the meteoric ascent that would propel it to new
heights over the course of the decade.
“It was a great company to work in,” he explains,
“but it was turning into a much bigger, more
faceless operation. I’d had a wonderful time there,
but you could sort of see it changing so to be
honest it wasn’t really a big decision [to leave].”
With no attachments, he decided to up sticks
and went to live in Denmark, a country he’d fallen
in love with after a close friend had invited him
there on holiday. Much of his choice was down to
his interest in Nordic and Scandinavian mythology
he’d picked up from Tolkien, though there were
more earthly reasons as well.
“I was a lot younger then, obviously;
Copenhagen just had the most beautiful girls
there and everything was open 24 hours a day –
clearly that was important to me back then!”
Despite the change of scenery, Bonner
soon found himself back in a familiar situation
working on children’s books.
“ ey were even worse than the ones I’d be doing
in London!” he laughs. “It was all young teenagers
with problems at home running away or stu
about being bullied at school; there was no fantasy
market to speak of, especially not in Denmark.”
Fortune was on his side, however. Some time
after moving to Denmark Bonner was tracked
down by Nils Gulliksson, who approached him
with an o er to work for Target Games. Target was
a Swedish games company founded in 1980 whose
most famous creation was Mutant Chronicles – a
science-fantasy RPG that later became a card game,
a tabletop wargame and even a lm. Gulliksson
was the art director for the series and became the
main point of contact for Bonner, who worked
as a freelancer for Target from his workspace in
Copenhagen. e subject matter di ered heavily
from his usual comfort zone – being a futuristic
setting that contained no standard fantasy races,
instead featuring evil zombies and slightly less evil
mega-corporations – but his output during this
period constitutes some of the most iconic imagery
from the Mutant Chronicles universe nonetheless.
THE ART LIFE
Target collapsed in 1999, though it was through
Mutant Chronicles that Bonner got his name out
there in the gaming world, and the closing of
one door opened up others. For a time around
the end of the millennium, he worked on short-
lived miniatures title Vor: e Maelstrom, a
game pitting humans – split between the North
American Union and the Neo-Soviets – against
various aggressive alien races.
e main development, however, was when eo
Bergquist of Riotminds – another Swedish gaming
company – approached Bonner about working on a
project called Trudvang. is proved an ideal match;
an RPG, the game draws heavily on Norse and Celtic
mythology to create a world that mixes common
fantasy tropes with traditional Scandinavian
creatures and sagas. Best of all, it had dwarves.
“It was rather ironic,” notes Bonner. “When eo
rst approached me I don’t think he actually knew
my fantasy work; he just knew me from Mutant
Chronicles. He got in contact and said, ‘We heard
you were available; would you like to a painting of abunch of dwarves and goblins ghting in a forest?’
He didn’t have to say anything else!”
Trudvang, now in its eighth edition, has
constituted one of Bonner’s main area of output
from 2000 onwards, though there have been
several other projects of note as well. For a time he
worked with Rackham, a French miniatures and
roleplaying studio set up in 1997, which he’d been
introduced to through Paulo Parenti, a comic artist
for Mutant Chronicles. Rackham’s Confrontation
was a skirmish-level miniatures game set in the
fantasy world of Aarklash; though always niche,
the game’s beautiful artwork and miniatures
attracted a small but dedicated following, who
helped to a crowdfund a new version of the game
last year after Rackham went bust in 2010.
Bonner also did a few pieces for Games
Workshop’s Forge World miniatures division in the
mid-2000s, as well as some paintings for World of
Warcraft and Magic: e Gathering. More recently,
CMON released a set of gures for its Zombicide
sequel Black Plague based on some of his illustrations.
(“ ey’re fantastic-looking miniatures – oh jeepers
they’re good!”) What’s impressive is that during all
this time Bonner has remained freelance; Games
Workshop remains the only o ce he’s physically
worked in for the best part of 30 years.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he admits, “I’m just a happy
chap doing my own thing in my own little world.”
Nowadays, Bonner continues to illustrate from
his workspace in his home in Copenhagen. He also
has a number of personal projects; although he
doesn’t play many wargames, he still sculpts and
paints miniatures for various dioramas.
“If someone would pay me for it I’d sit and
do it all day; it’s a lot easier than painting and
drawing and such fun!”
When work calls, however, he gets on with the job.
“Basically it’s just a matter of having that
discipline to grab your cup of tea and sit down to
it. ere’s no funny getting my chakras aligned
or chanting mantras – nothing arty-farty.”My main thing
is a need to
portray some kind of
reality rather than a
cliché approach
to fantasy.
Many of Bonner’s
illustrations take
inspiration from a
mixture of classic
fantasy and
Scandinavian folklore