Building Rome in a Day

Go Make Me A Sandwich

2010-11-03T14:08:00.001-04:00

It occurred to me I hadn't posted this over here yet. I've started a new blog about sexism in gaming called Go Make Me A Sandwich. You can check it out over here.

Sexism in Gaming: A list of links

2010-10-14T11:30:00.004-04:00

At GenCon this year, Simon Rogers asked if I was interested in writing an article about sexism in gaming for a new issue of See Page XX. Sexism in gaming is a pretty huge topic, and I wound up taking a pretty narrow focus for the article. Initially, however, while I was trying to determine what direction to take the article, I amassed a pretty impressive list of links that I wanted to organize and make public.

So! Keep your eyes peeled for the new issue of See Page XX. But in the mean time, here's some food for thought:

Detailed Analysis of 300ish Covers of Dragon Magazine

Part One of Seven (links to subsequent posts)

Response from Editor of Dragon Magazine

The Infamous Quote By Jonathan Tweet About Evolutionary Psychology and Gaming

John Kim's LiveJournal entry with the offending paragraph (the original post has been removed)

A scientifically-minded response to Tweet that blows him out of the water: Gaming is Not a Genetic Trait, Part 1 and Part 2

Holy Shit, What the F*ck is Gamecrush.com??

GameCrush.com: Find a play date

Explanation of GameCrush.com's business model

Gallery of Porn-tacular GameCrush profile pics (now with horrid comments!)

Sexual Harassment in Gaming (I can't believe this needs sub-headings)

Jade Raymond (Assassin's Creed) v. Something Awful

Detailed explanation of chronology of harassment of Jade Raymond

Ubisoft's legal response and SA's response

Horrific "she had it coming" response

Another awful "she had it coming"

Another "she had it coming" with actual comic excerpt (NSFW)

The full comic (NSFW. Warning: It's pretty horrific.)

Completely remorseless response by the comic's creator

"Where's Jade?" forum thread afterward

StarCraft II forum harassment

Summary of harassment incident on Team Liquid's StarCraft II forum

The actual thread (you have to be logged in to view)

EA Fail: Sexual harassment as a promotion

EA puts a sexual bounty on its booth babes' heads

Good critique of dangers of this promotion

"She had it coming" and rebuttal

Guy who won a prize and declined it

EA's "apology" - since retracted

EA Fail link roundup

Sexism in World of Warcraft

Awesome, awesome, awesome article about sexism in WoW

WoW Lore breakdown

Claims of "reverse sexism" and forum comments by female anti-feminist

"Deal with it or don't play WoW"

Trying (and failing) to have a conversation about sexism in gaming

Sexism in Game Ads

Video games as women that beat you

Discover the luscious hills and valleys of Rappelz (and here, and here)(Maybe NSFW)

Awesome chronology of Evony ads

Evony sues blogger for defamation over criticism of ads

Amazing Evony ad spoofs

Most sexist game ads

Relevant Forum Threads

StoryGames: Is Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress sexist or not?

StoryGames: Sex with chainsaws? Not sexist? Really? (start with post #4)

StoryGames: Racism (and sexism to a lesser extent) in the 4E PHB (turns into a bit of a shoutfest)

StoryGames: Gender and gaming

StoryGames: Why don't women play roleplaying games? (actually quite positive)

StoryGames: What do you want to know about minorities in roleplaying games? (not all that useful)

StoryGames: Maid RPG (quickly devolves into uselessness)

D&D: Gender violence in gaming (absolutely horrific)

Statistics

Nick Yee: WoW demographics - 2005

Men v. women in app gaming

Women outnumber men in online games

EQII demographics

Numbers of women in gaming

Women in game development

Sexism in game development

Facebook gets women into game development

100 most influential women in game development

Miscellaneous Articles

BBC: Female Everquest avatars sell for less than male avatars

Female characters in video games are designed to appeal to men

Sexism at E3

Excellent Breakdown of the fiasco at the PAX East Women in Gaming panel

Collectible porn cards in The Witcher

Frag Dolls

How D&D started a forum FOR women in gaming, closed it, and started another one to talk ABOUT women in gaming.

Female apologist for sexism and rebuttal

Derailing for Dummies

The One Girl in RPG comics

Are D&D encounters sexist?

Sex scenes in games

Terrible article, but good photoset

Converting chainmail bikinis to fully-clothed avatars that are still sexy

Careers for girls

Not that you care, but...

2010-09-30T16:08:00.002-04:00

I updated the links list on the side there, since half of them were either abandoned or defunct.

Also, I've started re-vamping Under The Sun - my Game Chef entry. Hopefully I'll have a more complete version to show off soon, though laying out Thou Art But A Warrior remains a priority.

Finished!

2010-09-20T14:26:00.002-04:00

So I just squeaked in under the deadline, but I finished my Game Chef game! I'm feeling pretty good about myself, since this is the third time I've attempted to do Game Chef but only the first time I've finished anything.

Under the Sun
The good spirits have spoken. In order that the People are not entirely destroyed, your tribe must journey into the heart of the Deepest Desert to find the Promised Land – a land that until now was thought only to exist in myth and legend. Will you have the strength to survive?

It's a super-rough draft, but you can find it here. I'm going to give it a week or so of lying fallow and then I'm going to go back and start adding all the stuff that I didn't have time to add in for Game Chef.

Fiasco playset: GenCon

2010-09-16T16:07:00.002-04:00

After I recovered from the sleep deprivation and mild insanity that always results from attending GenCon, it occured to me that GenCon would make a perfect playset. Think about it, tons of nerds with no sleep, lots of booze and/or caffeine, and easily-provoked nerd rage are just a fiasco waiting to happen. So here for your Fiasco enjoyment is GenCon: The Worst Four Days In Gaming.

Big thanks to Travis Farber and Nick Frankenhauser for helping me playtest it. And thanks to Jason Morningstar for giving me excellent advice that helped me make this as terrible and awful as it could possibly be.

Game Chef 2010: My entry

2010-09-13T09:42:00.003-04:00

The ingredients this year instantly made me think of my time in Egypt. The Theme this year is Journey, and the 3 ingredients I'm working with are Edge, City, and Desert. This will be a game about a tribe of people on the edge of survival, trying to survive in the desert.

My Game Chef Thread can be found here if you're interested in following the contest.

Thou Art But A Warrior - now a PDF!

2010-08-25T22:33:00.001-04:00

Hey folks! Thou Art But A Warrior is now for sale as a PDF! Check it out!

That is all.

More illustrations for the new edition:

2010-08-19T08:21:00.002-04:00

While the first draft of the revised edition is being edited, I've been working on doing illustrations for the new edition so that when the edits are finished I can go directly into laying out the book. (That's the theory, anyway. We'll see how that works out.)

I've been pleased with the work I've done so far. I have to admit that I had put down the sketchbook several months ago because I was frustrated that I couldn't translate my knowledge of the human form to drawings that didn't look like cartoony shit. Six months or so seems to have broken down that particular block, for which I am very grateful. So far I have been very satisfied with the quality of what I have been producing. So without further ado...

A character that will be referenced in the examples of play, a secret Christian within the emir's court.:

(CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW)

I have to admit, the inherent sexism of the setting was killing me. So when I found a way in the examples to have a woman in armor, I didn't even think twice. What she's wearing is a mish-mash of Christian and Muslim armor, which I had fun doing.

(CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW)

Because there is an Islamic angel, there also needs to be a Christian angel. I'm quite happy with this illustration - especially with the reflections cast by the halo and with the fact that the wings don't look like total crap.

(CLICK FOR LARGER)

And, because Thou Art But A Warrior is, of course, a tragedy... (I showed it to Kit last night when I finished it. His response: "Well that's cheerful.") I actually really struggled with the composition/pose of this one.

So that's proceeding well, even if I've decided to re-do the very first one that I drew. (The faces were just... weird.) My plan is to have eight illustrations, so that means I'm five eighths done! If I knuckle down, I should be able to finish by the end of next week as long as the inspiration continues to flow.

I'm impatient for my software to get here. (It's now officially in the mail! Yippee!) I want to start laying out this thing!

Sagefight.org

2010-08-10T22:18:00.001-04:00

New edition of Thou Art But A Warrior! (Plus updates on other projects)

2010-07-29T11:28:00.005-04:00

(Quick note: Yes I know my website is down. Again. It'll be back up soon.)

It's been a while since I posted - I've been a busy, busy geek. Since it's been so long I thought I'd give an update on various projects that I'm working on. But first, my plans for the revised edition of...

Thou Art But A Warrior

I've mentioned a few places online that I'm working on a revised edition of Thou Art But A Warrior. The past few years, I've encountered some issues with play that have led me to want to make some changes. Also, sales have pretty much slowed to a small trickle, which I attribute to the fact that Thou Art But A Warrior is a supplement. $30 is a tough sell for a supplement and the base game in this economy.

After some examination of my numbers, and looking back at my experience last year trying to sell Thou Art But A Warrior as part of Pirate Jenny, I've come to the conclusion that most of the people who own Polaris and are interested in Thou Art But A Warrior already own the supplement. For people who don't own Polaris, the price of both books is acting as a barrier. Ben has been kind enough to give me permission to release an edition of Thou Art But A Warrior that includes the Polaris system.

This represents a substantial addition to the book, effectively doubling the amount of text. It required a lot of writing, and re-writing, and more re-writing, but I did finish a first draft and that draft is currently being edited by my long-suffering husband who I voluntell to help me with my projects for no pay. (I love you, sweetie!) Currently, it's too early to say what price point I will be targeting, but I can say that I would like to include color in the new edition if it's at all feasible. I can say that I plan on releasing the revised edition for the end of this year.

As for the current book, there are a few print copies of Thou Art But A Warrior in stock. I plan on letting the book go out of print, which means once they're gone they're gone. My struggle to access a professional copy of Acrobat that will let me add bookmarks continues, but I have every intention to start selling PDFs once I have run out of books, and anybody that buys the unrevised PDF will receive a free copy of the revised supplement PDF once revisions are complete. At the very latest, I will have PDFs for sale around mid-August.

Lastly, while the book is being edited, I've also been working hard on completely re-vamping the design of the book. When I published the first edition, I gave myself a month and a half to do the layout and all the illustrations. Considering that I laid the book out in Word, that wasn't nearly enough time. As a result, I wound up rushing the interior illustrations and I've never really been happy with the quality of the artwork. Since the interior design is changing anyhow, this is a good chance to re-work the illustrations for the new edition. I've already penciled two updates to existing illustrations in the book that I may or may not add color to digitally. (Experimentation is in order.)

The first (graphite and white prismacolor on tan sketch paper):

With the old illustration, I was super happy with how the fabrics and the swords came out, but I always hated the anatomy and the faces. I also thought the shading was kind of flat. I'm much more pleased with the new version.

I also did a new drawing for the Islamic angel that appears as an illustration. Here's the old version.

Not bad. It was actually my favorite illustration from the previous edition, but I'm not crazy about the face or the wings. The drapery is nice in spots, like with the sash. But overall, I thought I could do much better if I had more time to do it right. Which is why I drew this:

MUCH better. The wings don't feel stiff, the shading is much more interesting with the hand as a light source, and the drapery looks much more natural. (Click to view a larger version. I'm very proud of the subtle shading.)

So that's it for Thou Art But A Warrior. I think it's safe to say that things are proceeding well. I just hope I can get my hands on a copy of InDesign by the time that it's time to start doing layout!

And now, something completely different: A card game

I've been cheating on Black Sky lately. There are several problems that I'm not sure how to fix, so I'm letting it lie fallow for a while. In the mean time, I've been working on a silly card game about playing MMOs. I have to admit that the original idea came from Cape Freak, but he's taking his MMO card game in more of a dungeoneering direction. So I decided to design the MMO card game that I wanted to play - game about MMO economies and screwing over your fellow player. I just finished the prototype deck yesterday:

Now I just need to give this baby a test run and see if it's any fun. I hope it will be fun, but who can tell?

That novel I've been promising to write

I've been working on this novel off and on for the last two years, obsessively outlining the plot and detailing all kinds of background information. Lately I started actually writing the damn thing. Currently, I'm ~15,000 words in - significantly further than when I attempted this thing last time.

It's amusing that the valuable lesson I'm applying from having completed NaNoWriMo is that I'm giving myself permission to not write perfectly. I'm not writing at the break-neck, mind-numbing NaNoWriMo speed that results in huge volumes of crap, but I'm not spending two hours on four paragraphs either. That's what re-writes are for.

I feel good about this. This is something I will finish. I just hope I don't take too long about it.

And that is all for now.

Tea Party: some commentary

2010-06-08T17:52:00.001-04:00

My struggle to acquire a copy of InDesign continues. I hope to God that I get it soon, because I did all of the layout for Tea Party in Word, which was enough to make me want to scratch my eyes out! I did eventually get it to look the way I wanted, but I wound up putting way more work into it than I should have.

I blame Jason Morningstar for all of this. I wound up taking a look at an early draft of a Lady Blackbird hack of his called Death School. One of the characters reminded me of something I’ve always wanted to do with an RPG – have a character who got mechanical bonuses for offensively gratuitous uses of the American flag. I suggested this to Jason, and he used it, but then I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

So I’m thinking about this, and then I hear a news story on NPR about the Tea Party, and I realized that I had to write a Lady Blackbird Hack about the Tea Party. (So, sorry, Jason. I liked my idea so much that I had to take it back. Oh well. It happens.)

This was frustrating to me, as I had other creative things that I wanted to work on! But noooo… I couldn’t get Tea Party out of my head until I wrote it. So here it is, and it’s been posted on my website. Just for laughs, I’ve also re-posted STAB! STAB! STAB!!, my original foray into satirical game design.

I’m glad it’s done. Now back to other things.

This is Satire

2010-06-08T17:50:00.003-04:00

(Crossposted from Story-Games)

Tea Party
A Lady Blackbird Hack by Anna Kreider

Despite decades of warnings from conservative visionaries like Ronald Reagan,
the creeping socialism propagated by the intelligista and the liberal media has
caused the collapse of American society as we know it. Under the crippling
double-burden of national debt and entitlement programs, the American dollar
has collapsed and everything is in chaos.

The last of the Tea Party patriots have formed a stronghold in Nashville where
they have stockpiled food, weapons, and ammunition. But it won’t be long
before they are overrun by forces in league with the new socialist regime. It’s up
to you to make things right.

Free PDF here: http://www.browserbeware.com/TeaParty.pdf

It amuses me to think that someone, some time will find this and not understand that this is satire.

(Jeez. I guess there’s some kind of Lady Blackbird-hacking mania going around. Anyway, I blame Jason Morningstar for getting me started on this, and Graham Walmsley for encouraging me to finish. Thanks, guys. That was a week that I didn’t work on other projects at all.

Dear BP: In Case You Forgot

2010-06-08T14:12:00.003-04:00

Dear, BP

I know you've had a lot on your mind these past two months. I know that I have trouble remembering things when I get stressed out, so I thought I'd send you a friendly reminder. I hope the following helps you out:

(All before photos taken by me in 2008. All after photos taken from the Associated Press)

Now selling prints on ImageKind

2010-05-08T23:14:00.003-04:00

I've been wanting to sell my fine art photography for a while now, but the problem has always been finding a way to do it where I don't have to handle fulfillment; shipping from Canada to the US is problematic at best, and expensive to boot. The problem was finding a service where I could make more than a pittance on each print.

Thankfully, I found ImageKind. They're owned by CafePress, and have very civilized pricing and payment options. And best of all, I don't have to worry about printing or shipping anything. Sold!

I've uploaded selected prints of my fine art landscapes and wildlife photos, and I plan to put up selected illustrations for sale within the next little while. So please, go check it out.

[/crass plea for money]

From start to finish

2010-05-01T17:11:00.004-04:00

I thought I'd document the creation of a finished piece that I blogged about previously. It wound up being an excellent example of how happy accidents can conspire to make art better. (WARNING: Photoshop jargon ahead)

So after the last post, I attempted to clean up the lineart for the robot and insert him into the drawing. But I was very unhappy with how it was turning out. I decided that the old design of the robot was just to simple to mesh well with the intricacy of the rest of the piece. So I went back to the drawing board, re-designed the robot, and then put him into the drawing. And lo! It worked! Adding the myself and the margarita glass was quite easy after that.

So, the finished lineart of the piece:

I knew that I wanted the piece to be colored, but that I wanted something that was deliberately non-realistic. I had a vague notion that I wanted to do flat colors with a washed out color palette, so I started coloring. Several hours later, I had this:

It was a good start, but the coloring didn't look quite finished. It looked too much like a coloring book, and didn't convey the dream-like quality that I was aiming for. I wanted to add some grungy textures underneath the color layer on a low opacity, to try to give it a foggy feel.

So I dug up some textures (parchment, rust, and daguerreotype) and set out to make a texture layer. My goal was to create the texture layer UNDER the color layer at a low opacity, then set the color layer over it to multiply so that the texture would be seen faintly through the color layer. But instead, I wound up moving the texture layer OVER the color layer and wound up with this:

This was awesome! I knew right away that this was closer to what I had been looking for. It captured very well the feeling of unreality that I wanted to convey. But I thought it might have been closer to black and white movie than to "dream-like". And I'll admit that after all that time spent painstakingly coloring in the color layer, I didn't want to just toss it out the window. So I set the color layer over the textures at 50% opacity with the blending set to overlay, which resulted in this:

Now I was stuck. Both the colored and non-colored versions were awesome! After a while, I came to the conclusion that the colored version was closer to what I had wanted. So I decided to make one last change and call it done; I had wanted the robot to be holding a light-pole, but it just looked like a metal bar of some sort. So I added a lamp, tweaked the blending a little bit to make sure there wasn't anything it was missing, and then saved this version:

This turned out to be so successful that I decided I definitely want to make a series of it. And since my dreams are so bizarre, if I start recording my dreams again I will have no shortage of material!

It's going to be tough deciding which of my dreams to illustrate next. I've had a list of dreams that I've wanted to do this for for a long time. We'll see what happens when I start doing sketches for the next one.

New art in progress

2010-04-08T22:22:00.003-04:00

So I've been working seriously on the margarita robot image that I mentioned in a previous post. I just thought I'd post a few screens of work in progress.

Here's the finished lineart for the background:

I started to sketch in the robot here:

It took a few tries to get the positioning right, but I think it will look good once it's polished.

More later!

Brief updates

2010-04-08T15:24:00.003-04:00

Website: Browser Beware and the Tasty Bacon Games site are both back up and running, thanks to assistance from Joshua A.C. Newman. (He rocks, go buy a copy of Shock:) There's a couple areas of Browser Beware that still need to be fixed, but it's 90% back up and running and will be fully restored in the next few days.

Thou Art But A Warrior: I'm about to do my third print run of Thou Art But A Warrior! Hooray! Unfortunately, because of how horrendous the service is with my old printer, I'll be switching to a new printer with slightly higher costs. This means I'll be raising the price a bit after I've sold out of copies from the current print run. More details on this once I've finalized the print run.

Wundergeek Writes: A bit of an analysis of my progress so far and future goals over on my other blog.

Recent work

2010-03-30T21:05:00.003-04:00

My website is still down, I know. I'm waiting to get some help with it right now. So, still working on it.

I've been sketching daily at work to get back into practice. Here's one result that turned out rather well:

Something I'm finally starting to work on after wanting to for several years is a series of illustrations based on my dreams. Back in university, I was required to start a dream journal by a drawing teacher. This was when I discovered that my dreams are, apparently, far more peculiar than the average person's. Which, I suppose, bears out with me being far more peculiar than average in general.

Anyhow, I feel like I've finally achieved enough skill in my drawing to really do this series justice. So the other night I did a preliminary sketch based on one of the dreams that has long been a favorite of mine: I dreamed an evil robot was going to destroy the city unless I could make it a good margarita.

I like the face on the right-most robot the best, but the body on the middle robot is my favorite. So I'll probably switch heads on those two.

Where the hell have I been???

2010-03-25T20:24:00.003-04:00

So I just wrapped up a one year volunteer gig as Chief Script Writer in charge of ~~herding cats~~ coordinating writers for a local amateur theater company known as FASS. It's a group affiliated with the University of Waterloo that writes and puts on a musical comedy each year. The show is in January, which meant that during November and December I was wrapping the script, and January I was busy rehearsing for the performance in February.

But Anna, you say. It's now most of the way through March. Well, my time since then has been spent on three trips to Ohio, battling the plague, and recovering from a cracked rib. (Tae kwon do sparring accident, nothing sinister, I promise.)

And now I've got a lot of catching up to do. So first thing's first.

Yes I know my website is down.

My webhost went out of business in December and I somehow didn't get notified. I didn't really find out until we were about to go into production on the play, and I'm only getting to rectifying the situation now. I know, I know, bad me. But I hope to have something up no later than Easter - I'm making inquiries about new hosting right now.

Secondly, I'm getting back in the swing of being creative. For the past year, I pretty much haven't done anything creative that wasn't script-writing; I just didn't have the creative energy to work on FASS and my own projects as well. Unfortunately, my drawing and writing skills are horribly horribly rusty. I have two different plans for this.

Getting back into writing form

So I started another blog. It's rather embarassing as of yet, but it's a blog in which I will attempt to force myself to do writing daily. It hasn't happened yet - getting back in the groove is hard. But I'm hoping by mentioning it here that will make me feel a bit more accountable to the five of you weirdos who have actually followed this blog and to the ten or so of you who check in every several months or so.

Anyway, here it is: Wundergeek Writes. Fair warning that I fully expect the things I post to suck for at least the next six months. I've had to do this before and I'm pretty familiar with how it goes. But the only way to get good again is to actually write, so I suppose I'd better get the pain of sucking over with now.

Getting back into drawing

Drawing is a bit of a harder faucet to turn back on, since it's not so much a thing that you do as a way of thinking. I've found that when I sit down with my sketchbook, I have trouble of thinking of things to draw. So I've been visiting the Daily Sketch Group over on the ConceptArt.org forums to mine old DSG topics for ideas of things to draw.

It's been working out well, so far. I'm starting to get back into the groove. I even did an original sketch the other day. So I thought I'd at least post some of those here so there would be something concrete to show:

Dude, the topic was "freaky looking creature that has the qualities of owl and grub". I kinda freaked myself out drawing it, which is why I draw an owlcat to make sure that owlgrub wouldn't get too uppity. Brr.

The Valkyrie is one of my favorite roleplaying characters ever. When I was playing her, I would draw her with a silver-age style costume - very skimpy and superhero-y. But I thought I'd try my hand at a more heroic and less scantily clad Valkyrie. I like how it turned out.

Zombie Santa! I had a lot of fun with zombie Santa here. I hope you can read my hastily scrawled notes.

Fog excursion

2009-11-15T11:23:00.005-05:00

Last night, I went to go take out the trash and I stumbled into a wonderland of fog. It was so amazing I went inside, grabbed my camera, and told my husband that we were going for a walk, despite that it was after 1am on a Saturday evening.

Now, fog is very challenging to shoot in - especially at night. You can't see very much detail through the viewfinder, so you have to use your knowledge of what is there to mentally compose shots in the viewfinder with the elements you can see. You also have no idea if your camera is interpreting the light levels correctly. And there's always the risk that the camera isn't going to pick up all the detail that you can see so clearly. Plus I was pretty tired, so I didn't want to mess with the tripod.

I got lucky last night, though. A lot of shots turned out, even though many others didn't. I'd definitely like to do something with some of these, but I'll have to de-grain them first.

All in all, I got some great stuff. Take a look:

I love the sweep of the headlights here.

I totally expected zombies to attack us at any time. Totally.

You can't see it, but we were very near the highway, so there were these monstrous tall lights to light the highway. Kit and I kept joking about lights in the sky, since you couldn't even see the poles. So I got him to pose for a silly shot of him being "abducted".

Again, the tall lights are the lights next to the highway.

We kept joking that the rendering servers had crashed.

My photography instructors always said that the key to good night photography is to capture different kinds of light sources to get different color shifts. It's funny how lights that look white or yellow at night shift so radically "on film".

Spooky!

This picture took so long to take I had totally dismissed it as lost. I was delighted that it came out.

On Facebook, a friend left the comment that this photo made him feel like he was playing Left4Dead. I found that amusing.

Willows + fog = awesome.

Kit liked posing in the fog.

Coming back, the street outside our house.

The oft-talked about novel about my old job

2009-11-11T15:24:00.002-05:00

From the day I turned in notice at my old job, I swore that I was going to write a novel based on my time at [Dysfunctional Company], a 'names changed to protect the guilty' kind of affair. It will make a metric asston of money, because everyone will think it's fiction because it will be just too absurd to be based in truth. I've kept a lot of things that I wrote about my time there, and I've made notes about how such a novel would be structured, and from time to time I consider dusting off the project and making a serious go at it.

The only thing is that every time I start to go through my notes from that time, every time I start to remember all the stuff that made me crazy and angry and miserable about that job, I find myself shying away from the project again. It's been more than half a year, and I still don't know if I have enough space yet to be able to work on this project and actually make it funny.

Huh.

An amusing side project

2009-10-13T11:44:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine is having her first book published soon, and the person who was originally going to put her cover together had to bail out at the last minute. She asked if I could take the photo that had already been manipulated, add a neon sign, and put together a simple cover with title and her name.

I wound up doing two different versions, as the photo I was given was horizontal and I wasn't sure how cropped she'd want it. Since I had extra space to play with, I made myself some custom splatter and set it as a multiply layer over a free rust texture I grabbed off the internet and... voila!

I do have to admit that I added the line break in the middle of the title to assuage my angst about the lack of an oxford comma. My inner grammar nazi strikes again!

Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

I wish I got emergency design projects more often. This was fun!

Photography update

2009-09-14T16:12:00.003-04:00

I've been doing a lot of photography in the last several weeks since I've been out of work in attempt to build up my landscape portfolio. I'm rather lucky in that, since I only live 45 minutes away from the Niagara Escarpment, there is no shortage of amazing scenery immediately available. Here's just some of the close to 1500 photos I've taken in the last few months.

I want to organize my porfolio a bit more, but the plan is to apply to around 20 Toronto galleries before the end of the year. I've talked about doing fine art photography long enough - now it's time to put my money where my mouth is.

The state of affairs (long post)

2009-09-02T14:55:00.003-04:00

Happy Birthday, Robot!

At GenCon, I was lucky enough to be able to play Happy Birthday, Robot! with Marc Majcher and a friend of his. (Alas, her name escapes me. I met so many people at GenCon...) It's an adorable little game in which you tell stories about robots that always start with "Happy Birthday, Robot!". I think Daniel Solis has hit upon a real gem, here, and I highly encourage interested parties to go check out the threads on Story-Games pertaining to HBR.

I enjoyed the game rather a lot, so I promised that I would do an actual play in the form of drawings. Which I did.

Success. I should do comic stuff more often.

Illustration

I've got a few jobs in the works, right now. Not to be coy, but I'll have more about that later once I have something to show for my efforts.

Photography

As mentioned in my previous post, I've updated my website to bring my online portfolio up to date. I'm working hard on putting together porfolios to send out to local galleries, as well as sending out letters to local photographic studios that might need assistant photographers. I've also been working on beefing up my portfolio of fine art landscape photography as well, and hope to be able to post photos from some of my most recent hikes soon.

If you know of anyone local to the Greater Toronto Area or Region of Waterloo who needs some photography done, please do consider referring them to my website.

Updates have been a long time coming

2009-08-24T21:55:00.002-04:00

So! I do intend to do a full GenCon report. Ever since getting back, though, I've been working on finding a new job.

Anyhow. In the mean time, go check out the Pirate Jenny blog for some post-mortem information on how we did and links to podcasts.

Also, do go check out my website. I've revamped the design as well as adding a crapton of photos in the portrait and art photo section. With hope this will help me make some money off of my photography whilst I am job hunting.

Wish me luck!

Two down, one to go!

2009-06-25T22:10:00.002-04:00

Words cannot express how relieved I am to finally have this image done. I knew that doing a dragon properly would make my life a nightmare, but I'm so happy with how this turned out. I'm so *very* excited.

Unfortunately, the fact that I had so much trouble with the background means that I have five days to finish a fifth piece from start to finish. I anticipate working right down to the wire. But at least the finish line is in sight.

Here! Admire!

Now I just have to find a place that will do poster printing for me cheaper than CafePress. ($6 for an 11x17? Black and white only? You've GOT to be joking...)

Another Kagematsu update

2009-06-22T23:22:00.004-04:00

This is more for Danielle's benefit than anyone else, but so far I'm very excited about the progress of the second Kagematsu image.

Thankfully the last image in the series will be much less complex... The scales alone have been a nightmare.

EDIT: Had trouble sleeping, so I did another hour's work and finished up the dragon. Maybe another hour left to put in an appropriate background, but for now I'm going back to bed.

Kagematsu versus the dragon - in progress

2009-06-17T22:34:00.004-04:00

OMG. This is going to be so awesome it hurts.

I will for sure post in-progress updates of this one. It's going to be really lovely.

More Kagematsu

2009-06-16T16:34:00.003-04:00

First off, I was negligent in not linking to an excellent Playtesting thread that Ron Edwards wrote up on the Forge after our game at last year's GenCon. Though the game has gone through revisions since then, I think that you can still get a good feel for what sort of play the game creates. If you're interested, you can read it here.

Secondly, the sketch that I posted yesterday has since undergone some revisions. You can see the new version here:

And here is the other image that I promised, the one that is already finished and ready to go. It took a lot of trial and error to get right, but I'm soooo happy with how it turned out and plan on offering prints of these images at GenCon.

Artwork for Kagematsu

2009-06-15T21:56:00.005-04:00

Last year at GenCon, I got an opportunity to play Danielle Lewon's game Kagematsu which was all kinds of fun. It was still in late playtesting last year, and this year she's finally releasing it. It's a super fantastic game, and I was very excited when I got the chance to illustrate this game. (If you haven't heard of this game, go follow that link and read about it. It's awesome, trust me.)

I'm on a bit of a tight schedule to accomodate getting the book printed in time for GenCon, but it's well worth it. I've already had quite a bit of fun working on the pieces for this game.

I've gotten the first one finished already, which I'll hold off on posting for right now. I'm working on the second, which is a fight between Kagematsu, the samurai from whom the game takes its name, and a dragon - one of the many potential threats that the women in the game are trying to get Kagematsu to protect them from.

Here's a sketch to whet your appetite:

I started this sketch off in pencil and finished it up digitally since the dragon was giving me some trouble. I'm super excited to see what the finished version of this piece will look like. Danielle has me doing her pieces in a sort of modified ukiyo-e style, which has been a lot of fun and a good challenge...

It's getting late, so I'll post about Pirate Jenny tomorrow...

Update on my status: a flood of sketches and art

2009-06-15T21:48:00.003-04:00

Hi, folks! Just an update on what I've been up to. In my last post, I mentioned that I was working on several different projects. Just a quick update, and then I'll get to the art...

1) Script-writing: Is going well. We're switching over to the scene-writing phase, having just completed brainstorming. I'm somewhat worried about participation, but otherwise pleased with our progress so far.

2) Apologies to Danielle and Emily, but I've since decided not to go through with the print run for Thou Art But A Warrior for reasons I'm not ready to talk about yet. Also, I need to sell down my current inventory.

3) Illustrations for Kagematsu are going well. I'll make that a seperate post, however.

4) Planning proceeds apace for our booth of female game designers and content-producers. We're calling it Pirate Jenny! I'll make that a sepe

5) Black Sky... well, I'll get to come back to it after GenCon.

Now... ART!

I haven't gotten to do a lot of random sketching lately, but Kit asked me to do a drawing in my niece's birthday card. He's a firm believer in twisted oddity for children, because who wants them to grow up normally?

With that explanation in mind...

Odd? Check. Twisted? Check. My work here is done.

Too many balls in the air

2009-06-09T21:50:00.004-04:00

Way too much to do to be able to update regularly. Currently I am:

1) Coordinating a script-writing team for a musical - a year long project that will go through December of this year

2) Preparing a small print run of Thou Art But A Warrior

3) Doing illustrations for Kagematsu

4) Helping organize a booth at GenCon

5) Trying to prepare artwork for sale at GenCon

6) Wishing I had time to work on Black Sky

...yeah. So not enough hours in the day.

Anyway. Here's something I did recently that I might explain later

I'm not dead...

2009-05-14T23:23:00.002-04:00

Black Sky is occupying rather a lot of my attention. I've finished drafting v1.1 and need to break it again so I can move on to v1.2. I'm very happy because this looks like a game I can actually finish, unlike Delta Choir.

Anyway. I've determined that I WILL finish the cover for Showdown in the next week. Here's a small snippet of where I'm at:

As I mentioned to Seth in my email, the trick will be making him read as "pirate" and not "redcoat" (a lot of it is in the hat). Still, having fun with this one!

Showdown cover - work in progress

2009-04-19T20:13:00.005-04:00

Not too long ago I started coloring the cover of Showdown, got something I really liked, and then screwed up the file. I couldn't bring myself to work on it right away again, but tonight I fired up my computer and got about a third of the way through coloring the cover.

I thought I'd post some images of the work in progress, just to give a sense of the progression.

I'm very excited. This is going to be quite awesome.

EDIT: I worked on it a bit more, so I decided to add one more image:

Black Sky: Alpha draft now finished

2009-04-10T23:21:00.004-04:00

To quote Hiro: YATTA!

So for the past month and a bit, I've been slaving over finishing an alpha draft of Black Sky - my sci-fi RPG inspired by, but that doesn't slavishly re-create, Firefly.

Don't ask me why, but I decided this evening around 8pm that I was going to finish the alpha draft THIS EVENING. Despite the fact that my parents are coming up for Easter weekend are going to arrive about any minute now, and the section that remained incomplete was the section on conflict, or in other words, the section that makes the game go.

Four thousand words and three and a half hours later, I finished, and probably will have only beat my family's arrival by about half an hour. But the fact remains that I am FINISHED! Which means I get to move on to testing, and having people rip it to pieces! Hooray!

So. If you'd like to take a look at the alpha draft of Black Sky, then please either post here or send me an email: anna (dot) kreider (at) gmail (dot) come. Please, though, expect that if I send you a copy I WILL pester you for feedback.

(PLEASE also refrain from sending this around. If you want to have people ask me for copies, that's cool. But I want to know who has copies of this thing. At this stage, I'm very leery of having lots of totally broken versions of my game floating around the internet that can confuse things when I do eventually publish.)

Please also let me disclaim that this is my first complete game. I have never before created a conflict system and am fully aware that this one will need lots of breaking, I mean, testing before it is functional. Be gentle, I'm not so great at math and I'm sure lots of stuff will need balancing.

Still, I am proud. It took a lot of work, and a lot more time than I would have liked to rip this from my brain meats, but the hardest part is done! Yipee!

Some recent-ish sketches - more to follow

2009-03-09T17:55:00.005-04:00

So my first week of real unemployment began today. In addition to using this time to search for new jobs, I plan on working creative projects with money-making potential. Hopefully you'll see more about that here.

For now, I'll just post some recent-ish marker sketches that I did.

One of the forces of anti-productivity that I will have to work to control now that I am out of work is WoW. My husband and I recently fell off the wagon after three years of not playing MMOs and reactivated our WoW accounts. Naturally, Kit started bugging me to draw our characters.

This is my character, Keirasti Moonpride. She's a hunter, because I must play an archer no matter which MMO I'm playing. And I would like to state for the record that Kit had to make me redraw the ears to be longer. So even I, with my obsession with pointy ears, think that Blizzard is taking it too far.

This is Kit's character - Alaillea. I'm happy that I was able to make all brown look interesting.

This is a drawing that's been lying around for a month or so. Sometimes when I'm bored I'll go back and color old drawings in my sketchbook - and this was one of those instances. I like how it turned out.

An update on what went down with my job.

2009-02-25T21:10:00.001-05:00

So, as I’m sure many of you are aware, last Friday I turned in notice at my job. This was precipitated by a crisis that has, or so it has become apparent in the last week, turned out to be much more Head Office’s fault than mine. Still, the crisis made me sit down and face facts about my job. Things are not getting better – as evidenced by me having to sic HR on my boss for trying to make me work unpaid overtime, or by such managerial “genius” as banning the word “busy”.

That’s right. I’m not allowed to say that I’m busy. Not even to head office.

(Amusing parenthetical anecdote:
So, on Friday of my play - when I have the day off - the regional manager sends out a memo. We're not allowed to use the word "busy" anymore. So Monday comes. I'm sick as a dog, and we get EIGHTEEN SETUPS in. Our previous record is 11, and anything over 6 is a heavy, heavy day. We get a request to do something that can wait until Wednesday, and I tell the customer care person relaying the request that there's no way we can do it today.

My boss overhears me, and the following conversation happens:
"By the way, we're not supposed to say we're busy anymore. [Regional Manager] wrote a memo, I'll show it to you later."
"Okay, then how am I supposed to deal with --"
"Just use your best judgement"
"Can I see the memo? If I'm supposed to be restricting --"
"No. Later. Not right now. It's too busy."
(HA!)
"Okay, but then how am I supposed to --"
"If you want, you can call [Human Resources] and ask if you can say the word "busy".")

So when the crisis initially sprung, I was very much in a mode of “my options are quit or get fired”. This week, as regional middle management started to intervene, it became clear that that probably wasn’t the case. But the initial spur of panic had given me the impetus to review our finances and discover that thanks to Kit’s raise, our gap in expenses would be relatively small and that we could afford to have me quit.

It took some hard thinking – was this really something I wanted to do? But when I looked at the effects that my job has been having on my home life, on my health, on my stress levels, there was no question. Especially when I considered the fact that due to understaffing, the stress was only going to get worse – not better!

There wasn’t any recrimination, which I was half-expecting, and there’s been no attempt at negotiation – which is a relief.

It’s been scary, though, quitting with no position lined up. I’m trying to use nepotism, but I haven’t heard anything yet and the economy is always a factor. I just wrapped up a freelance job, which along with some evening hours I’ll be picking up at a theater box office will cover the bills for March and mean that I can stay home to concentrate on job searching, at least for a month, who knows if I will have found something by April?

It’s hard to remember that I’m doing the right thing. Giving up a secure job is a scary, scary thing. But I have hope that this time I’ll be able to find a job that doesn’t slowly suck the life out of me.

Survey for the Women of the Redemption Woodstock LARP

2009-01-28T16:37:00.003-05:00

Hello, LARP ladies!

This summer, as part of a general effort to get more women involved in gaming, I’m going to be part of a booth of female game designers selling independently designed and produced roleplaying games. As part of this endeavor, we’re going to publish and sell a ‘zine called RPG = Role Playing Girl with a collection of articles about women in roleplaying.

It’s been pointed out to me that our LARP group is a bit unusual in the number of active and involved female players that we have – as the gaming population at large tends to be largely male. I’ve been asked to write about my experiences as a woman with LARP, but I thought it would be much more interesting if I asked the women of LARP to speak for themselves.

So! Here’s the deal. I have a short survey comprised of a few open-ended questions. I’d really appreciate it if you took the time to fill it out. Feel free to write as much or as little as you care to. For that matter, answer the questions that appeal to you; feel free to ignore questions you don’t feel are relevant to you.

Some caveats, I may not use all of what you send me, but by sending me answers I am taking that as permission to publish your comments. Anything you say will be properly attributed, but may be edited for spelling and/or grammar.

I’m hoping that you’ll take the time to answer these questions. I’m excited about trying to get more women involved in gaming. And I’m excited to hear what you might say in answer to these questions.

RPG = Role Playing Girl Survey

NAME (as you would like it to appear)
How long have you been at LARP?
How did you get involved with LARP?
Do you think that women are discriminated against in roleplaying? If yes, why? If no, why not?
Is LARP more female-friendly than tabletop roleplaying? If yes, why do you feel that way?
Have you ever experienced discrimination by male roleplayers because of your gender? If yes, would you be willing to provide examples/anecdotes?
(For people who roleplay outside of LARPs) Have you ever played cross-gender characters? If so, have you encountered resistance from other players about playing male characters?
Have you ever felt that certain plots were expected of your character because they were female? (i.e. rape, pregnancy, etc)
Is there anything else you’d like to say about being a female roleplayer?

My deadline to submit the article is the beginning of April, so I need responses by the end of February so that I have time to compile answers into a finished article. Please send responses to my gmail address: anna (dot) kreider (at) gmail (dot) com.

(Also - a bonus question. We're trying to come up with a name for our booth at GenCon. If you had to come up with a name for a group of female game designers, what would YOU call it?)

Thank you!

Showdown cover sketches

2009-01-15T22:31:00.003-05:00

So my current illustration project is Showdown - a game in development by Seth Ben-Ezra that started out as a silly thread game on a forum and turned into a full-fledged game. Currently, interior layout is still being figured out, so I've just been doing sketches for potential cover illustrations, which are to be as genre-bendy as possible.

So this was my first attempt. The poses are definitely kind of 'meh', I was more wrestling with the idea of having characters from two obviously different genres of fiction face off against each other. (Seth's initial request was for space marine, but I had too much difficulty with that so I turned him into a retro-future space man.)

The verdict: the character design is good, but the poses not so much. It needed to be more action-y! They need to be actually fighting, not just facing off. So I took another stab last night at rehearsal and came up with this:

Better, although there's definitely some pose weirdness. I'm not thrilled about the idea that it looks kind of static, despite that she's hauled off and slugged him. Also, her face was ugly. But whatever - just a sketch. Easy to fix.

Tonight I had another stab at it. I actually did two different drawings. I did one where I liked him but not her, and vice versa. So I scanned them and pieced the two good halves together - which is why the placement seems a bit odd.

So that's proceeding nicely.

Currently, in addition to working on Showdown, I'm also in a play as well as doing some freelance web design while continuing to look for a new job. It's making life very... interesting. So who knows how frequently I'll update here?

Last Session of Hero's Banner

2009-01-01T23:12:00.002-05:00

So, we played the final session of Hero's Banner tonight - at long last! Man. There was some hardcore awesome-itude that happened tonight.

Amusingly, all of our characters went with their Hero influences - which resulted in some pretty personally bleak endings. In terms of mechanics, this meant that:

Magdalena managed to secure the right of women to inherit and rule their own property. In order to do this, she had to give up the possibility of a future with her lover, Carmina. (In fact, Magdalena saw her lover beheaded by Octavian as a traitor. (She was innocent)) She also gave up on continuing her family's line, as she never married or had children. Ultimately, she became a ferocious warrior and one of Octavian's chief generals and died in battle.

Octavian claimed the throne for himself and created peace between the four kingdoms - although a peace brought about by force. In order to do this, he disbanded his House and murdered his family - including his beloved Roxana. Though completely insane and corrupt, history will remember his reign as a good one. He was ultimately murdered by the son Vasilica had by the Queen (before Octavian murdered her)

Casimir followed his heart and became a priest after succeeding in his campaign to convert the barbarous folks from over the mountain. Gavril, swayed by Casimir's sermon, converted as well as became a priest - entering a life of holy solitude. Casimir never saw him again. His lands were absorbed into the Principality of Carol - formerly known as Ryic.

Vasilica decided to pursue expansion at the cost of his people, and when his loyal servant Oana tried to persuade him to be content with the crown of Tucaescu, he killed her. He died a lonely bitter old man, and no one remembered him as a hero.

Here are the drawings from the final session:

Magdalena killed a soldier to save her lover, and she was ingrateful enough to repudiate her because of it. Stupid woman.

To his credit, Octavian did try to reconcile with Roxana before boarding her up with the rest of the family in his family's manor and burning it to the ground.

Awesome SAUCE. Conclusion: Hero's Banner rocks my world.

Christmas doodle

2008-12-28T00:21:00.003-05:00

I've got quite a bit of sketching that I'm obligated to do over the next few days, and I might post things here depending on how rough the sketches are. In the mean time, here is a marker sketch for a present to my brother and sister-in-law. We're donating to a local nature trail in their area.

I only spent about half an hour with pencil and marker, but I thought it came out cutely.

My parents aren't leaving until tomorrow. But after that I have some sketching to do for Seth Ben-Ezra's Showdown as well as logo sketches for a play. Hopefully I'll be able to get them all done on Monday, but we'll see.

More photography from Florida: wildlife and seascapes

2008-12-21T10:56:00.003-05:00

So here's the other half of my Florida photography favorites. It's a bit saddening to be going through them now as we had 15cm of snow on Friday and will be getting 15 more today.

The resort that we stayed at in Key Largo had a small beach. We sat out there one evening and watched the sunset.

Sadly, we discovered that they don't really clean the sea-grass off the beaches during the off season.

This was part of an old bridge, now only open to foot and bike traffic, that goes out to a mostly abandoned island called Pigeon Key that used to be a railroad building settlement. Kit and I walked out to the island and had a spin around. It was quite entertaining.

This fellow was lurking in the bird gardens at Busch Gardens. I have no idea what he is, but those legs sure were funny-looking.

When we went on the boat tour in the 10,000 Islands part of the Everglades, there was an island simply covered with white pelicans. What you can't get from this picture is the sense of scale - pelicans are *huge*. These were at least four feet tall.

Another picture from Busch Gardens. Meerkats are just adorable!

The islands in the 10,000 Islands section of the Everglades are all mangrove islands. Amusingly, it only takes 1 mangrove to constitute an island. As we were headed out to the Gulf of Mexico, we spotted a flock of birds perched on a tiny mangrove island.

More Busch Gardens. Macaws are pretty.

Photography from Florida: wildlife!

2008-12-18T20:20:00.006-05:00

So here is some of the promised photography from Florida. There was an awful lot of wildlife to be photographed, and I went pretty hog-wild.

There are white-tailed deer in the Florida keys, only they're about the size of large dogs. We were very lucky to have spotted some while at the Key Deer Refuge. It's sad that you can't really get the sense of scale in this photo.

There are some very large iguanas in Florida. This fellow was hanging out near the visitor's center in one of the parks, but there was a very large specimen that hung out at our hotel as well.

We startled this heron at the beach and I was lucky enough to get a good shot of him flying away.

We stopped at Gator Hole State Park to watch alligators. It amused me to watch the gators pretending to be logs. The reflections did turn out really well.

I'm just a log. Yep. Juuuust a log. Nothing dangerous here.

There were some HUGE alligators in the Everglades. This guy was seven or eight feet long!

It was too bright to tell what this fellow was, but he was probably a turkey vulture. There were more turkey vultures than you could shake a stick at in Florida.

Kit and I were amused by the fact that this flamingo was letting his leg flop down like that.

This picture was taken at Busch Gardens, so I'm not really sure what kind of bird this is, other than some kind of buzzard (honestly).

The COOLEST thing we saw the entire vacation was in the Everglades. We went on a boat tour and saw a pod of dolphins swimming in the wild with a baby. What you see there are two females holding it up, since apparently baby dolphins don't swim so well. SO. UNBELIEVABLY. CUTE.

A bit of writing: henchmen benefits

2008-12-17T22:07:00.003-05:00

There's this thing that I'm helping to write. Explaining what it's for would take too long, so I'm just going to post this draft of a scene-let that I wrote because it will be funnier if I don't take time to explain it.

It's a bit rough and needs polishing, but I found it amusing.
Villain Henchperson 1: Ugh. I thought today would never end.

2 - Good Henchperson 1: Oh? What happened?

3 - Villain Henchperson 2: Some heroes invaded the base today. Mr. Dastardly fought them off, but it threw our afternoon schedule all to hell.

4 - Villain Henchperson 1: Don’t complain! You got to sneak off. I got killed early on in the fight and had to lie there the whole time, since some jackass was standing right on top of me.

5 - Good Henchperson 2: Oh, you were there then. We weren’t sure if it was your shift.

6 - Villain Henchperson 1: I didn’t realize you got a new job already. So you two are henching for good now?

7 - Good Henchperson 1: Well they call us sidekicks, but yeah. It’s basically the same thing. Plus we’re allowed to keep our membership in the Henchman’s Union.

8 - Good Henchperson 2: I doubt you would have seen us. The hero we got assigned to isn’t a very good one – The Scarlet Pimple.

9 - Villain Henchperson 2: Ouch. That sounds pretty horrific.

10 - Villain Henchperson 1: Hey, I remember that guy. So that’s why Mr. Dastardly kept making cracks about needing a bathroom mirror.

11 - Good Henchperson 1: Talk about lame. Anyway, you guys are lucky. The sidekick uniforms are pretty terrible.

12 - Good Henchperson 2: And the benefits aren’t as good as they were with villainy either.

13 - Villain Henchperson 2: Well it’s not like you need all that supplemental coverage working for the heroes. I mean, you don’t exactly need to worry about if your Wrongful Maiming and Dismemberment policy is comprehensive enough when you’re henching for good.

14 - Good Henchperson 1: Yeah, well at least you have a comprehensive policy. Our Maiming and Dismemberment policy only covers accidental maiming.

< Spy Henchperson 1 enters, sits down >

15 - Spy Henchperson 1: Hey, guys. How was the raid on the base today?

16 - Good Henchperson 2: Oh, hi, Spy Henchperson 1. Figures that you would have heard about it already.

17 - Spy Henchperson 1: One of the perks of working for the spies. Plus… < gloatingly holds up an iPhone > We all get iPhones!

18 - Good Henchperson 2: Man, spies get all the coolest gadgets.

19 - Villain Henchperson 1: Hey, while we’re on the subject… What are the benefits like henching for the spies?

20 - Spy Henchperson 1: The benefits are okay. I mean, the supplemental health and drug coverage is really good. But we don’t have vision or dental. We do get perks, like access to gadgets, but you have to take it as a given that you’re being spied on 24/7.

21 - Good Henchperson 1: Bummer.

22 - Spy Henchperson 1: Yeah. It makes it a little hard to have a real love life unless you’re dating another spy.

23 - Good Henchperson 2: Hey, is it true that spies get free daycare?

24 - Spy Henchperson 1: Yeah, they just started it. It’s pretty cool, they even have an app for your iPhone that lets you check in on your kids on the spy cameras installed in the day care.

25 - Villain Henchperson 2: Well hey, it’s not like working for villainy is such a raw deal. I mean, we don’t get iPhones or free daycare. But we pretty much get to break any law we feel like.

26 - Villain Henchperson 1: And since our bosses all want to take over the world, we don’t get taxes taken out of our paychecks.

27 - Villain Henchperson 2: Oh, and the rates for RSP matching are really nice too.

28 - Good Henchperson 1: That does it. When my contract runs out, I’m totally switching sides.

29 - Good Henchperson 2: No kidding. Good is such a raw deal. No wonder there’s almost no sidekicks. You’d have to be stupid to work for good long-term.

30 - Villain Henchperson 1: No argument there!

< find a way to end the scene, or transition bit to something else >

An update: No, I'm not dead

2008-12-14T17:12:00.002-05:00

Regarding my absence:

So I'm back from my vacation in the Florida keys. I won't bore you by talking about how warm and fantastic it was. But I'll be spending some time going through the photographs that I took and posting some of the best ones here. We saw a lot of really neat wildlife, and I can't wait to pore through my photographs.

Regarding current projects:

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be working with Seth Ben-Ezra to illustrate his upcoming game Showdown. It's still in the planning stages, so it'll be a bit before actual illustrations appear here. But I will post work as I do it, and will link to Seth's page for Showdown in just a bit. I'm super-excited, because I read the forum thread that the game was spawned from and it promises to be very fun.

Regarding the second print run of Thou Art But A Warrior:

Due to circumstances beyond my control, there likely will not be any more printed copies for around a month. I have had delays both with the printer, which I have started a thread about on the Forge, as well as with UPS, who has had my proof for almost TWO WEEKS now.

I will be rushing to have a PDF version of the game available on the Un-Store as soon as possible to make up for this delay. I do apologize if this inconveniences anyone. When I started the reprint process at the end of October, I didn't realize I still wouldn't have my proof by now.

In lieu of absolutely nothing

2008-11-17T20:52:00.002-05:00

While planning our vacation in a few weeks, we came across the following resort offering:

20 mile bowling! That must be some ball!

"That picture of Vasilica needs more axe in the face"

2008-11-13T21:34:00.004-05:00

We just played our fourth session of Hero's Banner (I didn't do any sketches for session number three).

I won't go into all the gory details of the session (because frankly, that's boring). But I will note that our characters are currently in the following situations:

* Vasilica got to seduce the Queen whom he had been in love with. She is now pregnant with his child. Life is generally coming up roses.
* Octavian spent most of this session in prison. His sister sprung him, then turned him over to the Tuscaescu - as that was the only way to guarantee his freedom. The session ended with him being dumped at Vasilica's feet. They'll either be thick as thieves or try to kill each other.
* Magdalena and her gay lover Carmina, the Queen's sister, are currently on the lam. Carmina tried to persuade Magdalena to run away and live in the hills, but Magdalena remained determined to stop the brewing war.
* Casimir found a village in his family's lands destroyed by dark sorcery. He returned to his estates just in time to stop the Church from burning innocent peasants accused of being sorcerors.

Here are the sketches from this session:

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I'm rather amused that I wound up with a page of arguing gay couples. Magdalena and Carmina are on top, Casimir and his lover Gavril bottom.

We look to have two or three sessions left. Hero's Banner is pretty slow over Skype, so I don't know if we'll be playing a second generation. After six or seven sessions, I think it's more likely that we might switch back to In A Wicked Age for a while. Though I would like to leave the option open in the future for coming back to our iteration of the Hero's Banner world for a new generation.

Fun stuff.

Trollbabe finally finished

2008-11-10T22:31:00.003-05:00

Last two Trollbabe images finished.

I realize this is unforgiveably terse, but I'm tired and my job is slowly draining away my life force.

Another quick Trollbabe update

2008-10-30T17:30:00.004-04:00

So I finished another Trollbabe piece and work proceeds apace on the last two. Here's the one I finished:

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I've nearly finished number four - it's about 75% complete. I've still got the rest of the troll to finish (obviously) and some finer gradation of shading to do in some parts, but this one is going pretty quickly.

We're not playing Hero's Banner again until next week, but I'm sure I'll have art then.

Quick Trollbabe update

2008-10-16T22:50:00.001-04:00

Work on Trollbabe is still happening. I finished another image and started another. I have just been lax in posting results.

It is late now, and I am tired from awesome, awesome Hero's Banner. So more later.

Hero's Banner continues to be awesome

2008-10-16T22:24:00.004-04:00

"Well, something had to happen. Maybe beating him was a bad choice."

That pretty much sums up how our second session of Hero's Banner went. It was filled with pure awesome.

Some highlights of the session:

* Magdalena (my character) beat her pig fiance with a silver candlestick for intruding on her while she was dressing. ("You may be my fiance, but you will NEVER be my darling".)
* Later on Magdalena pledged to throw her support behind Octavian's political schemes if he would send her pig fiance out to deal with the inevitable rebellion that arose. He took her request to get her fiance killed remarkably well. I had a lot of fun with that.
* Octavian, the psychotic would-be emperor in love with his sister, had a conversation with the ghost of a long dead emperor - Alin IV of Prodan - who told him he needed to fulfill his destiny.
* Casimir's went crazy and beat the shit out of his gay lover for using witchcraft to poison his mother.
* Vasilica's most loyal subject found out about the fact that he'd had his father, the King, murdered and threatened to expose him and Vasilica basically stared him down.

The dice told some interesting stories this session. For instance, when Nick made the passion check during his scene with Casimir, on his first roll he rolls two 2's - which meant that he had a breakdown. (Hence the beating of his lover.) But his passion only went up by one.

Even more amusingly, in the next scene his mother's chamberlain tried to have his gay lover imprisoned on suspicion of being a traitor. Nick rolled a passion check and rolled two tens - another breakdown! So Casimir BEAT THE CHAMBERLAIN TO DEATH.

Wow.

Not a huge advancement in Passion happened this session, which was a bit of a relief. We were all sitting at around 30 after the first session, but mostly people were succeeding on their rolls. I actually didn't gain any Passion this session, so maybe something to work at for next time.

I did some sketches of this session:

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We play again in two weeks. I'm very excited to see what happens. I love Hero's Banner so hard.

Trollbabe, part 3927

2008-10-01T22:55:00.004-04:00

Things have been pretty busy in the last little while. Tae Kwon Do has been eating up a fair amount of my time. The investment has been worth it; after three months I have my green belt again. I'm hoping I can get my black belt back inside of two years. It's a worthy goal, but losing two to three nights a week is tough for art production.

Also, my shows are back on the air. True Blood has joined Heroes and Supernatural in the list of shows allowed to suck out my brain meats. I'm quite enjoying all three of them right now.

Lastly, I've been working on writing the alpha draft of the game that is not the angel game. It's a bit frustrating, because I know what I want the game to do. I'm just having trouble translating my notes into speech intelligible to humans that aren't me. But things proceed apace with that as well. I'm up to 2400 words, which is probably about a quarter to a third finished. Assuming I keep plugging away at it I'll have it finished and in a state to look at before too terribly long. Until then, I don't plan on talking about it.

Anyhow, all of this means I need to be a bit more proactive in finding bits of time to cram in Trollbabe shading. The more I do, the quicker I get - which helps.

Trollbabe piece number three is shaping up well. I finished the lineart, which you can see here:

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I spent forty-five minutes doing the shading and managed to do a creditable job on the face - which is always the fiddliest bit to do. So far I'm quite happy with how this one is turning out.

This image pretty much convinced me that I'll need to do color versions of these Trollbabes once I've finished up the black and white ones for Ron. Gaming needs more pinups of fully clothed fantasy women kicking ass.

Hero's Banner: reliably awesome

2008-09-26T09:30:00.003-04:00

Last week our Skype group had a pretty frustrating experience. We were trying to play a game that just didn't work all that well with our play style, and the game wound up sucking to a complete halt. We were feeling pretty discouraged and wanted to play a game that we knew from experience would bring the awesome. Our solution? Hero's Banner.

(Side note: For a while after we picked up the game in 2006, we were pretty obsessed with this game. We group went through a phase of playing Hero's Banner whenever we needed a one-shot game.)

And man, Hero's Banner did not disappoint. Briefly, the characters we have are:

Octavian: crazed would-be emperor, in love with his twin sister
Vasilica: almost looked like he was going to be a nice guy until he had his father, the king, murdered in the heat of battle
Casimir: Was almost a priest when his elder brothers were killed, is tempted to break his vows by his gay lover, is actually a nice guy
Magdalena: feminist member of the high nobility, lesbian, might be a decent human being as well

Kit went to town GMing, and last night's session was HOT. Aaron wound up having a conflict to *not* brutally murder the man his sister was betrothed to. He failed, mostly on purpose, and creeped everyone the hell out.

Vasilica, amusingly, had an emotional breakdown in his very first scene, slapped his father (the King), and charged off with an armed contingent to protect something his father had told him not too. This was made extra awesome in the next scene when he was surrounded by his father's men and ordered to stand down. He did, but in the battle that he didn't take part in, he had his father murdered and then "avenged" the murder.

Magdalena, had a perfectly horrible scene where her mother was pressuring her to have dinner with an odious younger son - owing to the fact that all of her brothers had been killed in the wars and she needed to marry well, but not too well, so she could have a son to pass their family name on to. There was a perfect moment where Magdalena was lippy and tried to bring up her brothers and her mother basically said they didn't matter.

Needless to say, the younger son she was to dine with was insipid and horrible and Magdalena refused to see him again. Later that evening he came to her rooms and made her look like "damaged goods" (I failed my roll and re-roll both) so that no one else would want to marry her. And the next morning her mother started talking about plans for the nuptuals, making the comment 'I didn't think he had it in him'. Horrible.

Casimir got off to a slow start in his first scene; his mother tried to persuade him to steal from the church to pay for some of their family's massive debts but Casimir resisted. His second scene went much better, though. His bodyguard and lover, Gavril, was revealed by Casimir's mentor - a priest - to be a heretic. Casimir's mentor said he had two weeks to either cast him aside or see his friend branded as a heretic. When Casimir confronted Gavril, he promised to reform (he was lying) and then distracted Casimir with sex. Rawk.

Anyway. I did some sketches of last night's session. Octavian came out every bit as psychotic and disagreeable on paper as I pictured him in my head.

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I'm very much looking forward to our next session, which sadly might be a few weeks from now. Still, pretty happy that Hero's Banner has come through once again.

Trollbabe: another finished piece

2008-09-25T20:24:00.003-04:00

Things have been really crazy lately; I've been spending time getting ready for a rank promotion test which has meant I haven't even had time for Spore, let alone art.

I did finally manage to finish Trollbabe piece.

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Two down, three to go.

Finally returning to a normal pace.

2008-09-18T21:47:00.003-04:00

I seem to be returning to a more "normal" level of creative output after my post-GenCon frenzy of creative activity. Much of that is due to Spore, which is an evil, evil brain that has been consuming my brain meats. But I've also been working on some other projects, which as of yet are not baked enough for me to want to talk about publicly. Almost! But not yet.

At any rate, here's another inked Trollbabe piece. At Ron's request I pulled the camera back to show a bit more of the context. I struggled with re-working with this, but I wound up pretty happy with it.

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I managed to do a few hours work shading the final result and wound up with something I'm pretty happy with - though I'm not sure how I'll handle the background. I guess I'll burn cross that bridge when I get to it though.

Watch this space for coming details about a design project that I'm almost ready to talk about that is not the black ops angel game.

Still crazy productive after GenCon

2008-09-07T00:47:00.002-04:00

It took me a while to get back in the groove of working with hatching, but I finished my first Trollbabe drawing and consider it a success.

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I'm having a lot of fun drawing Trollbabes and am having serious thoughts about doing finished color versions of these images once I'm done doing black and white versions for Ron.

In other news I now have a second game that I'm pretty sure I'll have to write in addition to the black ops angel game that I've been working on. I blame this on Graham, as he's the one who gave me the idea. More later once I've fleshed out the idea more and am willing to talk about it.

Trollbabe: experiments with shading

2008-09-06T00:25:00.003-04:00

So now that I've finished sketching, it's time to turn these Trollbabes into finished pieces. Here's the sketch I decided to work on first, plus a bit of added background. Before doing anything else, I just "inked" the drawing using Photoshop.

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I don't think my lineart is intricate or interesting enough to stand on its own merits, so it's going to need shading of some sort. Now, it's been a long time since I've done any truly two-color work; I much prefer the ease of greyscale. So I'm going to experiment with shading using different kinds of brushtrokes and/or hatching to see if I can come up with something that I like.

I decided to start with shading the faces and see what happened. Preliminarily, I'm going to say that I like the results - but I'm not committed to finishing the whole image. I'll keep going and hopefully I'll like it enough to finish.

Anyhow, here's the results of this evening's tomfoolery.

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Stay tuned for more trollbabes yet to come! Same Trollbabe time, same Trollbabe channel!

The last Trollbabe sketch

2008-09-01T23:04:00.005-04:00

So here I am, sad because I've burned through all my Trollbabe already. Here it is less than a week since I started doing sketches and I've done five already.

Of course, I still have all the joy of finishing them yet to come, but it's just not the same.

Anyway. Here's the last Trollbabe, who gives me glee.

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It's a bad scan, because the sketch was really light pencil and didn't want to scan well. But oh well, I'm happy with how my troll came out. I still haven't decided how I'm going to finish them, with regards to shading and whatnot. But that will be something I can discuss with Ron.

I've decided that I need to do nice full-color prints of these and sell them at next year's GenCon.

Yet more Trollbabe

2008-08-30T14:10:00.003-04:00

Me: Look! Check this out!

Kit: Awesome! Looks good.

Me: She's totally, like, I will f*ck you up! Don't mess with me!

Kit: Isn't that what you say about every Trollbabe?

Me: BECAUSE IT'S TRUE.

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This makes me want to do an entire series of fantasy women kicking ass. Trollbabes are SO MUCH FUN to draw.

I'm going crazy with posting!

2008-08-28T23:33:00.002-04:00

I've been cooped up a bit more than I'd like the past week. This in combination with the fact that I seem to be having an 'on' period with my art means that I've been sketching the crap out of Trollbabe.

I doodled a pose on lunch today and then came home and turned it into this:

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I'm really happy with the drapery of the clothing, and again with the face. (Head a little less giant this time, thankfully. I think the horns wind up exaggerating head size.) I think I'll probably add some stuff to the background - probably some dudes getting their asses handed to them by a badass trollbabe. But for now, pretty happy with this.

I feel like GenCon really re-charged my creative batteries. I don't know how long this hyper-productivity will last, but I'm going to have fun riding it while it does.

Channeling frustration

2008-08-28T21:28:00.002-04:00

I have a job that can be most accurately described as a steaming pile of failure. Frequently, my husband has told me that I should write a book about my job, because no one would believe that the things that happen to me on a daily basis are true.

Well, I don't have the energy for a book, but we'll see how long I can keep up a comic.

I started a blog over here: My So-Called Job.

I've tried to do regular comics before and failed. But hopefully catharsis will be incentive enough to keep up with this.

First of the new projects: Trollbabe

2008-08-27T18:12:00.002-04:00

Shortly before GenCon, Ron Edwards decided that he was going to publish a revised edition of Trollbabe. Originally, I gathered that the plan had been to have it ready for GenCon, as my husband sent me to GenCon with Trollbabe at the top of his shopping list. Apparently, Ron thought better of that and has decided to take his time in putting together a revised edition.

This worked out very well for me, as I wound up getting to spend quite a bit of time this year. I got to show Ron some of my work at the convention, and he said he'd like to use some of my art for the new edition. Aces!

So I'm in the sketching phase right now, just trying to come up with concept sketches that could work well as finished illustrations.

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I had intended to do nothing more than a horn study with this one, but I had a vague idea for a pose in my head so I went for it. I wound up being really happy with it, even if her head is too large. (I have a bad habit of doing that.)

This second piece I did just today after going home early from work (long story, nothing serious). I think the pose is a bit stiff, but the drawing overall has promise. And again, I do like the face, even if she has a GIANT HEAD.

So overall, I feel good that I've made an excellent start on planning sketches for Trollbabe illustrations. It's good to have Thou Art But A Warrior finished, but it's even nicer to have projects to work on. I'm discovering that I don't deal well with downtime.

Thou Art But A Warrior now on IPR

2008-08-26T20:25:00.002-04:00

There was a bit of a backlog, but Thou Art But A Warrior is now officially up on IPR.

You can find it here.

GenCon 2008 Wrap-Up

2008-08-25T17:59:00.002-04:00

A couple things, and then I'll stop posting about GenCon and start posting about current projects and concerns.

1) FINAL NUMBERS: Thou Art But A Warrior sold 24 solo copies and 7 copies as part of the package with Polaris for an astounding THIRTY ONE copies. I had suspicions that I could sell that many, but the fact that I actually accomplished it despite overall booth numbers being low makes me really, really happy.

2) OTHER COOL THINGS. There are a couple things that deserve mention here, but since I've already discussed them elsewhere I'll just post links to the relevant threads.

Danielle's amazing game of Kagematsu was fantastic, and is one of the things that I'm excited to see next year. Ron started a thread in the Playtesting forum on the Forge, which you can find over here.

Tony LB is posting actual plays of all seven (SEVEN!) of the games of Misery Bubblegum that he ran at GenCon. I'm even more excited about Misery Bubblegum than I am about Kagematsu. Hopefully some time within the next little while, he'll have gotten to posting AP of the game that I played in. That thread is also in the Playtesting forum, and can be found here.

A lot of people talked about their GenCon experience in this thread over on Story Games.

Steve Segedy started a GenCon post-mortem discussion in the Conventions forum on the Forge, and there's been some good conversation already.

3) FUTURE PROJECTS. One of the reasons I went to GenCon, besides engaging in dirty dirty capitalism and hanging out with new friends, is to do some networking and get my name out there for future projects. This aspect of GenCon was much more successful than last year, as I have a few definite things lined up. As of yet, it's too early to talk about any of them. But I'm confident that I'll be able to talk about them more in the future.

The art in Thou Art But A Warrior was really well received, and I have hopes that it will generate interest in future illustration work.

4) BLACK OPS ANGEL GAME. I saw a lot of neat games that handled character creation in rather unorthodox ways, which helped to shake loose a lot of ideas for how to deal with this problem in the game that I'm working on now. I have every hope that by the end of the year I'll have an alpha version of the game finished and ready to start ~~mutilating~~ playtesting.

I've thought a lot about how I want to plan things, and I decided that taking two years to develop Thou Art But A Warrior was a sensible move on my part, considering that I have so many other projects on the go. I might shoot for having an ashcan available for next GenCon, but for now I'll just concentrate on trying to finish an alpha version of the game.

Misery Bubblegum fanart

2008-08-21T22:26:00.003-04:00

Here's the only art I've done of any of the con games I got to play - from Misery Bubblegum. I'd like to reflect on the game I played of Kagematsu a bit more before trying to draw that.

Misery Bubblegum is so good. I have to say it again, even though I've already said it. I'm so sad that it only exists in Tony's head, because otherwise I'd be playing it RIGHT NOW.

Anyway. Enough of that.

So the game I played in, we decided after making characters that they were part of an emo-punk band called Microwave Poodle. He was a "Feisty Rebel", which I totally had fun playing. And he had a totally touching ending with the band's drummer, Jessie, as played by Tony.

Despite his bad haircut and penchant for using the f word, Damien turned out really sweet and charming in an awkward puppy sort of way.

The other game I just sat in on, rather than playing. Graham picked "lonely cheerleader" for his character, which made those of us who had played MB before sad just thinking about it, and named her Lily. Even better, he made her an actual cheerleader.

There was something so haunting and lonely about how Graham played Lily. It was sad and really sweet.

If anybody's interested, Tony's opening up blind playtesting over on Story Games. Go! Email him! Play the game! You must!

Thoughts on GenCon 2008

2008-08-20T12:24:00.002-04:00

1) Zombie Cinema is amazing. It really took a lot of people by storm, and I hope that Eero sold the crap out of it. Every time I looked, I saw him running demos, which bodes well for sales.

Also, listening to Eero talk about his game is super entertaining, because Zombie Cinema with a Finnish accent comes out sounding like “Chombie Kinema”. The rest of the Forge/IPR booth people were enthralled, and there was much talk of “chombies” throughout the con.

I told pretty much everyone that I talked to at GenCon for longer than 60 seconds that they needed to play this game. So hopefully Eero will do well.

2) I suck at visualizing people on the internet. I thought Graham would be large and bulky, so imagine my surprise when he was… well… small. Also, Josh Roby was way taller than I thought he’d be. The funny thing is that I never really know how I picture people until I meet them and am then surprised.

3) Tony LB is working on a card/roleplaying game that simulates shoujo anime hauntingly well – Misery Bubblegum. It’s short, maybe an hour and a half, and he ran about a million games at the con. He had people who didn’t even like shoujo sold on the game. I can only apply the term “gut punching emo porn” to this game in the most positive way imaginable.

I knew nothing about this game going in, other than having heard Lenny (one of the Evil Hat guys) rant about how amazing Misery Bubblegum was. The group of people I played with were, by and large, pretty tired. But we played the crap out of it and wound up with a heart-wrenchingly sad tale with a pretty heartwarming end.

This is far and away the game that I am most excited about for next year. It warms the cockles of my little heart, and I told Tony that I would have given him money right there and then if he had had decks to sell.

I also have fanart of Misery Bubblegum which I will post later, I just haven’t had a chance to scan it yet.

4) Flow charts and diagrams were my obsession of the con. I discovered that making sarcastic flow charts is quite fun.

5) Thou Art But A Warrior, as mentioned previously, sold very well. I ran a crap-ton of demos of it, which was good. Sadly, I discovered that my demo is much stabbier than I thought it would be – owing the fact that I often had to stab NPCs to make people state that they wanted a conflict, despite stating up front that they could declare a conflict whenever.

Lenny enjoyed my demo far too much, as the stabbing made his eyes light up.

6) Speaking of Lenny, one of the Evil Hat guys described him as a rabid ferret. I found that a very accurate description. He’s a very cool guy to talk to and game with, but holy shit. You could use him to power a lap top.

7) Graham ran Poison’d for myself, Vincent, Joshua Newman, and Danielle Lewon, and it was officially the best roleplaying game I have ever played. EVER. At one point, Graham said the following to Vincent, of course in his adorable British accent: “the crew would like to tie you to the mast, if that’s not too much trouble”. I laughed so hard that I cried at many points.

I played an utterly reprehensible human being named Bloody Harry, and was kind of relieved at the end when he got a chisel through the eye socket. Also, I kind of traumatized Vincent, which still amuses me to no end because Vincent was the one who pulled this out of his brain in the first place.

8) Seeing Graham surrounded by women for most of the con was pretty amusing. It must be the accent.

9) I only bought three games, which kind of surprised me given how many new games there are this year. I demoed a lot of them, and plan on keeping on eye on them while I make up my mind if I want them or not.

I think I’m just tired of buying games that I know I won’t ever play.

More later, I’m sure, as I think of more amusing things to share

STAB! STAB! STAB!!

2008-08-19T19:57:00.001-04:00

For people who wandered over from Story Games, hi! How's it going? I feel compelled to point out my post was a joke.

If you want to know what the joke was about, take a look at this.

Thou Art But A Warrior successfully released at GenCon

2008-08-18T19:57:00.002-04:00

The release of Thou Art But A Warrior went amazingly well. I'm not sure of exact numbers yet, since I left halfway through Sunday, but I definitely exceeded my sales goal - which is amazing. I'm hoping that Polaris will have enjoyed a sales boost as well, but I won't know for sure for a bit yet.

Thou Art But A Warrior will be available for purchase through Indie Press Revolution very shortly. There will also be a PDF version of the game available at some point in the next few months.

Many thanks to everyone at the Forge booth this year who supported me in running a crap-ton of demos.

Art from our D&D Campaign

2008-07-30T22:08:00.003-04:00

Kittens are terrible for productivity, let me say that now. I've had to force myself to work on the demo kit for the convention. And working on the angel game? Forget it. How can I possibly do work with two adorable fluff balls thundering around the house?

Well, I finally started doing some drawing again - despite my husband teasing me that I had to re-learn how to draw. I wanted to draw our characters for our game of 4th Edition D&D.

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This is Valeria, my Eladrin Wizard. I'm very much enjoying 4th Edition's take on Wizards, especially since I rolled really well and she wound up with super-high casting stats. She's a rock star!

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This is Zarin, my husband's Ranger. Zarin is, possibly, the most badass character EVER. He has a higher kill-count than the rest of the party, almost. And of course, he's an elf - so how could I resist drawing him? I will probably color him at some point, because he is very, very yummy.

So more D&D drawings will probably follow, since I feel mildly obligated to draw the whole party (though whether I do or not is another story.) Hopefully I'll get some interesting illustrating jobs after GenCon since it's been a while.

My newest productivity-killer

2008-07-22T21:37:00.004-04:00

You can't see him very well, but this is Constantine - like the Holy Roman Emperor, not like the crappy movie by Keanu Reeves.

This is Rhubarb, Constantine's sister. Clearly, she sees something interesting.

Attack! Rhubarb attacks!

Constantine decides to show his displeasure for the attack on his royal dignity.

---

So, as might be obvious from the pictures, Kit and I adopted two kittens this evening. They're happily exploring the house and tearing around making lots of noise. Rhubarb is brave and sweet and not at all afraid to come up for petting and affection. Constantine is not as sure of things as his sister and quite shy, but he can be affectionate when you do pet him.

We're very happy we got two siblings, because they're obviously having a hoot playing together and they'll be able to keep each other company while we're at work. In fact, right now they're play-fighting under my desk.

So that's my latest productivity destroyer. It's a very *cute* productivity destroyer, however.

The angel game - some basic notes about structure

2008-07-08T16:46:00.000-04:00

The angel game (titles are a weakness of mine) has been coming along nicely. I’ve got the basic structure of the game figured out, even if hammering down the specifics is giving me a bit of trouble. I’m designing it to be a pretty short-form game that can be played episodically or as a one-shot – very much like Inspectres. What’s more, it’s going to be a very competitive game, with players on two teams trying to accomplish opposing goals.

There are going to be two modes of play with different lengths. Skirmish mode will be a super-short, party game type length – say forty-five minutes to an hour long where teams play through only one mission. There will be a longer mode that will consist of three connected missions with an overall goal, the goal for play length being a couple hours.

As far as the structure of play goes, the game will be pretty rigidly structured into distinct phases of play.

The first phase will be Mission Generation and Briefing. Teams will generate a mission by rolling on a table once each for Person, Action, and Location. So sample missions that might be generated could be Assassinate the UN Secretary General in the Hague, or Brainwash a Popular Cult Leader in the Pentagon.

The second phase will be Mission Prep. During Mission Prep, players from each team will take turns trying to accumulate advantages to apply to the inevitable conflict. (This phase is, as yet, the least well-defined)

The third phase is when the two teams actually go head-to-head. Play in this phase is team-versus-team play in which each team races to acquire three successes and complete the mission. This section is looking to be pretty crunchy and tactically complex, but the goal is for it to be crunchy in a Gamist fun kind of way. The tactics map that I posted in my previous post is actually going to be used in this section of the game.

I’ve already gotten some positive responses from a thread on Story-Games, so I’m feeling very encouraged and am happily plugging away at the first rough document.

The new game

2008-07-04T23:52:00.004-04:00

I decided that my notes were reasonably complete enough to make a stab at typing up a draft version of the black ops angel game that I'm working on right now. There's still several things that I don't know how they're going to work, but I feel like I have a reasonably complete idea of what the overall structure of the game should look like and what my objectives are for the type of play I want to achieve is.

Whether or not I can come close to achieving that is anyone's guess. But I sure plan on giving it a go!

As might be implied by the subject matter, and from previous posts, this will be an incredibly tongue-in-cheek endeavor - which will be a bit of a relief after the unrelenting seriousness of Thou Art But A Warrior. Here are some amusing excerpts from what I have of the document so far.

"Opposing team, your job is much easier. You know that God wants to kills bunches and bunches of infidels. So obviously you want to Protect the Popular Cult Leader from being Framed in the Hague, Assassinate the Weapons Researcher in China, and Brainwash/Covert the Popular Cult Leader at the Pentagon.

Easy? No? Well, nothing worth doing ever is."

I plan on opening the book with an intro comic to set the tone of the game and explain the ideas behind the setting. I was writing up my thoughts on how it should go, and this little bit amused me...

REPORTER: What about the fact that Satan and those traditionally affiliated with him deny responsibility for the outbreaks that have killed millions. A spokesman for the terrorist group HALO blamed the attacks on God.

PRESS SECRETARY JESUS CHRIST: Well, Satan is a liar. Next question.

Lastly, here's something I'm working on for the phase of the game when the two sides battle head to head. I'm not going to bother trying to explain the rules, because I haven't got them all figured out yet. Never the less, I think it looks pretty nifty.

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

Anyhow, I had a lot more planned out than I realized because when I sat down to translate my 5 or so tiny pages of handwritten notes into english, I wound up with 5+ typed pages of notes in Word, and I haven't even touched half of what I've done so far. Which is heartening, because I've gotten more done than I thought I had.

My goal is to have a mega-ultra-super rough draft that I can test bits of the system for by October - as that will be when we're having the next gaming mini-con/reunion for the old Ohio group. What with GenCon and the house, though, I don't know that that's terribly realistic. But I'll keep that goal in mind all the same.

Status update

2008-06-30T22:07:00.002-04:00

1) Status update the first: THE HOUSE

We moved in yesterday without any serious incident. It is, as of yet, very very messy. It will be occupying much of my time.

Unfortunately, my notes for the angel game I'm writing are lost in one of these many boxes. Dammit. I guess that's incentive to pack.

2) Status update the second: THOU ART BUT A WARRIOR

I got the proof back today, and am pretty excited about it overall. There's two really minor things that make me Sad: the page numbers are oddly placed (I laid out the book using Word - fuck you, Word!), and the ad for Emily Care Boss' games is low-res.

I'm super sad, because revising it would cost me fifty bucks and make my timeline totally not workable. So I have to print my first hundred copies with slightly retarded (but correct) page numbers, and a low-res ad.

Woe.

But hey, you know. Learning experience.

Finally between projects

2008-06-22T23:01:00.003-04:00

On Friday, Thou Art But A Warrior officially went to press. Hurrah! I wish that means I could work on my black ops angel game, but moving is going to take precedence. We take possession of our new house on the 27th and are currently up to our eyeballs in boxes.

All of my art supplies are currently packed, so it'll be a bit before you see any art around here that's not me spending a few minutes goofing around on Eat Poop U Cat. I could explain this, but I think it's funnier out of context.

Thank GOD. It's finished.

2008-06-18T23:07:00.003-04:00

So the book is done. Finished. Thank God.

I decided pretty last minute that I wanted to get the title of the book calligraphed in Arabic and I am super, super, SUPER excited about how awesome it makes the cover.

So here's the cover and title page, just because they're too awesome not to share.

I'm sending the book to the printer in the morning. But no rest for the wicked; now that I'm finished with the book I get to finish packing the apartment. Oh well.

Scheduling conflicts leading to hilarity

2008-06-11T15:44:00.002-04:00

So we're trying to schedule a night for our Skype group to keep playing our game of Contenders and failing. My friend Aaron just sent the following email. The fact that I laughed as hard as I did is proof that I am a nerd.

___________________

load libEmail
load libSnark
load libPasvAggr

set Kit
set Anna
set Travis
set Aaron
set Bacon to {Kit,Anna,Travis,Aaron}

get numberOfMeetingsToday from Anna
make numberOfMeetingsToday equal n
n equals 0

run all
tell gmail to send to Bacon
set To: to Bacon
set body to
if today equals {n+1}
then Anna equals Fail
else Anna equals Cool
print result of if {then or else}
endif
endtell

idle for 5 minutes

tell gmail to send Bacon
set To: to Bacon
set body to
if Anna equals Fail
then set Aaron to cry
endif
also
get makeUpDay
if makeUpDay equals Friday
then set Aaron to unavailable
endif
endtell

while running
if Aaron is set to cry and unavailable
call for Kit to equal {head - 1}
set house to burn
endif

while running
set Travis to doucheBag
also
Travis tell {Kit,Anna} sendToDisplay "You can all suck my balls!"
set Travis to flippingYouOff

end run all

Someone shoot me in the head

2008-06-10T23:03:00.002-04:00

So I finished the interior layout. It's done. Finished! (Shit. Except that I have to fix the index. Oh well. Almost finished!)

And then I discovered I hate my cover. HATE it.

FUCK.

TABAW is almost finished! Also, I'm going to hell.

2008-06-10T22:02:00.003-04:00

So work is proceeding apace on Thou Art But A Warrior. It looks like I will meet my self-imposed printing deadline, so - hooray! Thank god the end is in sight.

I've been taking much-needed breaks by visiting Eat Poop U Cat. Thou Art But A Warrior is so full of Serious Thought that sometimes I need to look at something silly like Batman in women's underwear to relieve the stress.

Tonight I took a longer break and drew a panel, for which I am totally going to hell. I mean, generally Eat Poop U Cat will make me go to hell, but this really will.

If you think that's twisted, here's the sentence it's based on: "The children's suspicions were confirmed--Uncle Mort sliced further into his stump of an arm anytime his miniature hippopotamus needed to be fed."

I laughed almost the entire time I drew it. Ah, good times. Good times.

More Eat Poop U Cat silliness

2008-06-06T22:53:00.001-04:00

The following sentence came up just now when I decided to draw a panel for Eat Poop U Cat: "The Sun fell in love, and Mars was for sale, and the jellybeans ran away and were sad."

Damn you, Vincent, for linking to Eat Poop U Cat! Daaaaaamn yooooouuuu!

Spending time with The Other Game

2008-05-28T08:40:00.005-04:00

Continuing the theme of procrastination...

So over here on Story Games, I talk about this game that I now have to write about black ops angels (warning: there are Serenity spoilers in that thread, if you're one of the three Firefly fans who hasn't seen it).

In actuality, it's been writing itself and I seem to just be along for the ride. It's been making a welcome break from the tedium of layout. And since I'm waiting for a book on typography to come from Amazon, I seem to have some time to kill.

Last night I sat down to muse on what Press Secretary Jesus might look like, and what might a black ops angel look like. I came up with the following drawing.

It has since then occurred to me that if Jesus is Press Secretary, then what the hell does that make the Metatron? Is the Metatron the Secretary of Foreign Affairs? Or the Chief of Staff? Or maybe even the head of the black ops division? So many choices!

(And yes, I quite cheerfully realize that I am going to hell.)

Silly five minute drawing

2008-05-27T22:30:00.004-04:00

I blame Vincent for the following bit of oddity.

Over on his blog, he linked to a site called Eat Poop U Cat, which is basically a graphical version of broken telephone. (Go check it out. It's very amusing.)

I was intrigued, signed up, and was giving the prompt: Even Darth Maul himself was unprepared; as he unleashed the deadly power of the boom-box half his face melted right off. How could I resist that? So I did the following sketch in Open Canvas.

I call this pure awesome.

It's amazing how much I've managed to avoid working on Thou Art But A Warrior the last few days, between stuff like this and working on my angel game. Ah well.

Last color illustration finished

2008-05-26T17:54:00.003-04:00

Layout has been pretty torturous so far. For some reason the fact that I'm designing for print has made everything I learned in University fly right out of my head. Makes me wonder why I spent $20,000 to get a degree in design if it can fall out of my brain that easily. But thankfully, Joshua Newman has been kind enough to give me some pointers that will hopefully get me going in the right direction.

I finished the last color illustration - hooray! And it is, even if I do say so myself, awesome.

You'll note that I previously mentioned this would be on the cover? Well, I lied. I tried to the other half of the image with cowering Muslims and all, and it sucked. I hated it SO HARD. So I decided to adapt one of my other images into a cover and to make this an interior illustration because, well, I already did all that work on this half after all.

So slaving continues. Meanwhile I have a game I'd much rather be working on which, amusingly, also involves angels (but in a totally tongue-in-cheek way). God willing I'll have this finished by my self-imposed deadline of the end of June, but we'll see.

Getting ready for Publication

2008-05-14T21:55:00.004-04:00

A couple of things. Firstly, I just got back from Camp Nerdly, which was amazing. I was lucky enough to get in one final playtest of Thou Art But A Warrior, and it went very well. Jason Morningstar posted a thread over on Story Games which doesn't do the game justice, but it's definitely one of those "you had to be there" types of games.

Also, I'm very glad the playtest happened because I discovered a strange loophole in the code of conduct that determines experience. Apparently you can do all the horrible shit to your family you want as long as your family isn't Muslim. Whoops! That needs to be fixed.

So much thanks to Nick Marshall, Clinton Nixon, Jason Morningstar, and Rachel Walton for bringing the awesome to Camp Nerdly. And Jason says he's going to try and get the Durham 3 (4?) to play Thou Art But A Warrior in the future, so awesome!

Second, I'm getting to the point where I'm finishing layout and illustration for the book. My goal is to have illustrations done and a draft layout with the few minor changes implemented done by the end of next week. We'll see if that goal is achievable. At the very latest, I want to be printing the third week of June, because god only knows what could happen with shipping cross-border to IPR.

The cover illustration is coming along nicely. No, the colors on the angel will be changed. The reference materials I found had red and green, and I'm initially wanted to match the colors of the reference materials. But then I decided that, you know, considering this is mostly targeted at gamers who are - by and large - not Muslim, I don't want to have a Christmas angel on the cover of my book.

Here's how it's coming so far:

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

(I'll probably change the green to a more teal-y color rather than change all the red.)

Once I finish illustrations, I don't know that I'll have a lot of time to do other artwork while I'm doing the layout of the book. Hopefully it won't take up too much time, but having heard horror stories about layout from lots of designers, I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.

The finish line is in sight!

Lastly, I paid Ron for a spot in the Forge booth yesterday so it is now official. Thou Art But A Warrior will be released at GenCon this August. Now that I've turned in my money, I don't have much of a choice!

More work on Thou Art But A Warrior

2008-05-06T22:40:00.002-04:00

Well, GenCon is approaching fast, which means that I've been working on finishing up all of the art that will be used in Thou Art But A Warrior. I cleaned up the pencil sketches that were posted before, and those will be used in the book. All that remains is to finish the cover - which I have been rather neglectful about.

Joshua A. C. Newman gets partial credit for this drawing, because he was the one that pointed me to some nice reference images of Muslim depictions of angels. I decided that I wanted to make use of that for the cover, so I drew the following - make sure you click on the image for a larger view, as there's some nice pencil strokes there.

CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW

My husband made the point, and rightly so, that I shouldn't have just an angel on the cover, as this is a game about Muslim knights and not about Muslim angels. So I decided this will be part of a wraparound cover image with the angel on the back cover terrorizing some knights on the front cover.

Rawk.

It's late, and I'll be gallivanting off to Nerdly in just one short day! So it might be a bit before I get to post anything more about this. I'm sure I'll have interesting stuff post-Nerdly, however.

Website updated

2008-05-05T08:04:00.003-04:00

Well! I finally managed to do what I've been wanting to do for months and update my website. The new website has an entirely new gallery, including all of my fine art and portrait photography, as well as a site for the soon-to-be-released Thou Art But A Warrior.

Mosey on over and take a look.

Well now that Game Chef is up and running...

2008-04-21T22:03:00.002-04:00

...I can post pictures of my entries! Go check out the contest over here if you're interested. There are neat things going on over there.

(Game Chef is going to keep me pretty busy until next week, so this might be it until I'm done trying to pull a game out of my brain meats in not enough time.)

They broke with tradition this year, and for ingredients had artists do sets of images to be used as inspiration for games to be designed. I picked 'women warriors' as my theme. I wound up being really, really happy with the final result. I look forward to seeing the finished games that are going to be using my artwork!

I'm happy I was adequately able to convey in black and white how absolutely garish Egyptian jewelry is. Having seen it in person in the Cairo Museum, it is rather appalling to Western sensibilities.

This was cleverly cropped to avoid showing that I suck at drawing horses.

Easily my favorite image of the whole set. I love, love, LOVE her face. She is so totally saying 'I am about to f*ck you up'.

Marker sketches

2008-04-18T19:10:00.002-04:00

I've been working on improving my marker technique recently by going back and coloring mostly-finished sketches in my sketchbook.

CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW

This is actually a concept sketch for the as-yet-unnamed webcomic. This was mostly a color test.

This is my character from our current game of In a Wicked Age, Baila - the war sorceress. IaWA has been all kinds of fun, and I've gotten to do lots of fun things with Baila - including spawning a demon baby! Whee!

I'll probably wind up pirating certain aspects of this design for a character in the webcomic.

Thou Art But A Warrior Illustrations, Part Two

2008-04-17T23:07:00.003-04:00

These are the other two color illustrations I've finished for Thou Art But A Warrior. I'll probably keep it to three for the interior, to keep costs down since it's going to be a short book. But I'm super-happy with how they turned out.

My goal is to make TABAW a very art-rich text. With me doing all the layout, game design, and art, all it costs me is time after all!

CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW

I tried to vague up the angel's clothing, simply because I couldn't find any good resources for artwork of Islamic depictions of angel clothing. Oh well. It turned out pretty badass anyway. (Though the wings were a trial.)

The colors took forever to get right with this one. Super-saturated colors are hard to work with. But I like the result. Very dramatic.

That's all that I've got for TABAW for the time being, but I've got tons of other things I've been working on - including the long-planned webcomic. I've started scripting pages, so I'll be posting concept art for that now that I feel confident this is a project that will see the light of day.

Back online, new images

2008-04-17T22:59:00.003-04:00

So the past few weeks have been pretty productive in terms of art-production, what with having no computer and all. I've been going back through my sketchbook and re-drafting sketches done during the initial stages of working on Thou Art But A Warrior. The goal is to clean them up sufficiently to use them in the final book, along with the finished color illustrations.

These are relatively low-quality scans, because I plan on working on these further to clean them up.

One of the things that excited me the most when I started doing research was the beauty of the padded surcoats and the chainmail armor. The armor from this period was just as beautiful as it was functional. I've been having a lot of fun with it.

I've been trying to maintain a balance between Arabs, Moors, and Christians in my illustrations. It can get pretty challenging trying to differentiate, but I think I managed well with this one.

There's something weird with the face here. But I like the pose, particularly the hands. So I'll probably salvage it.

Keep watching this space for new stuff. I'll be updating frequently as I go through my artwork and update my portfolio and revamp my website.

Things will soon be up and running again!

2008-04-16T21:30:00.002-04:00

My new computer finally arrived today. We still have to figure out how to network between Vista and XP before I can get my computer set up all the way. But there will be new stuff soon!

Brief update

2008-04-07T16:14:00.002-04:00

So my computer is still dead. Five year old motherboards are hard to replace, so my new computer will likely beat my new motherboard. (It was time for an upgrade anyway.)

I've been working on a lot more traditional media stuff, pencil and marker drawings. A lot of these have been illustrations for Thou Art But A Warrior, but there's other stuff in there as well. And I'll be posting artwork that I'm working on for the Game Chef contest once the contest deadline is past - since it's supposed to stay secret until then.

Also, once I have the new computer I'll be able to push through all the website updates I've been wanting to do.

Bad timing

2008-03-21T15:37:00.002-04:00

Well. I was all set to update my website, make everything current on my blog, all that good stuff... And then my computer imploded. So all I can say is that new stuff is coming soon. Just not now.

Oh! Except for this. I did a low-tech (pen, paper, and mouse only) image for the cover of Sea Dracula, as per a wacky thread over on Story Games. If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit!

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, ghetto mouse coloring and all.

So, haven't been around much

2007-12-20T22:11:00.000-05:00

Well, things have been hairy the last little while. I've been struggling with job issues, as well as other things, and haven't been producing much art. I'm looking to get serious about illustrations for Thou Art But A Warrior, if I can round up some playtest reports to do illustrations from. Failing that, I dusted off the old illustration to finish.

CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE

I'm happy with how it turned out. I won't offer much more comment than that. Hopefully I'll manage to stick to my commitment to get things done.

Between projects

2007-11-01T22:45:00.000-04:00

Well, this marks the last of the illustrations for Sons of Liberty, which means I'm officially between projects once Joshua rubber stamps this one. I've got a few in the lurch, but in the mean time I'm kind of at a loss for what to apply my artistic energies to next.

At any rate, the last illustration is of Francis Marion, aka "Swamp Fox". Apparently there was a Disney show about him that I completely missed either because I was oblivious or because I'm too young. Whichever.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, even if I loathe doing one point perspective.

CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE

I figured since I have time to work on my own projects, I might as well finish that illustration for Thou Art But A Warrior that I've had kicking around for a Dog's Age. All that was really left was to finish putting in yummy patterns.

I didn't go as hog-wild as I would have liked to, but only because I plan on putting in a background that will probably have tile work. I'm beginning to think illustrating my own book isn't so much about achieving high production values cheaply as it is about getting a chance to draw pretty Islamic patterns.

But hey, it's all good.

I'm happy with how it's turning out, even if I'm kind of angsting that she might be too white. Hmm.

Wrapping up some projects

2007-10-18T22:50:00.000-04:00

So things have been busy the past few weeks. Things have been wrapping up with the script-writing committee that I'm on for the play come February - we have to be done by Christmas. But I've still been getting some work done here and there.

There was a bit of a lapse, but I did get the second to last Sons of Liberty piece done. I wound up being happy with the result, despite the crazy challenge of perspective that Joshua's description entailed.

CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE

The following two images were the last two revised images done for Ben Lehman's upcoming game Drifter's Escape - which, incidentally looks like it will be a super-interesting game.

I've got a few more potential projects in the wings, but after I get Sons of Liberty and Drifter's Escape lined up, look to see more art from that webcomic I might do someday and from Thou Art But A Warrior. Now that I've gotten people to play some playtests, I have fodder for illustrations.

Grey Ranks, horrible shit part 3

2007-10-03T22:20:00.001-04:00

I might write more about our last session later. Right now, the last session is just too raw.

Enjoy some drawings from the last session.

CLICK TO VIEW LARGER IMAGE

The comic I'll some day draw

2007-09-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

Whenever I find myself between projects for other people, I drag out one of my own projects. (I think my priorities might be a bit backwards, but oh well.)

One of the ones I've had kicking around the longest is for a webcomic that I will some day actually start producing. I've been planning it for two years, mostly because I know that any artist + writer combination is doomed, since the writer inevitably quits halfway through, the artist has to keep writing, and the comic jumps the shark since they don't know where to go from there.

No thanks. I'd rather do all the prep work up front.

Anyway. Here's something experimental for the comic that I may some day finish. It of course will contain elves, because if I'm going to draw millions of drawings, I want them to be of elves dammit. (I know fantasy comics are a dime a dozen. I don't care. Mine won't suck.)

More finished artwork

2007-09-27T21:14:00.001-04:00

It's been a few weeks since I'd done any serious art-production, and there was sufficient impetus to want to distract myself from other matters. So I've been working on finishing some unfinished projects that have been kicking around a bit too long.

I dusted off the illustration that I've been working on for Thou Art But A Warrior. I changed it around, since my initial drawing was completely incorrect, historically speaking. It still needs work - the sword needs finishing, there are spots where the colors overlap, the color of his hands doesn't quite match his face. But overall, I'm really happy with how it's going so far.

I'm still thinking about whether or not to do a background. My gut feeling is that it will need at least something simple.

Something else for Ben. I had fun with the wacky perspective.

Life interferes with art

2007-09-25T21:34:00.000-04:00

Things haven't been terribly conducive to art lately, what with a few personal crises conspiring to destroy my productivity. In particular, one of our rats - Hippo - was very sick and needed a lot of attention as we tried to nurse her back to health.

Sadly. We weren't able to nurse her back to health.

I did the following letter for Ben's upcoming game, Drifter's Escape, as an attempt to distract myself. It turned out well, considering I've never owned a dog.

And because I can, here's a picture of our rat Hippo - the world's tiniest and fuzziest hippopotamus, and the only rat I've ever known to jump three feet straight up. She was the smartest, and the weirdest, of our rats. And I miss her.

Here's to you, hippo. I hope wherever you are they're giving you lots of yogurt drops and peanut butter.

Thou Art But A Warrior illustration, continued

2007-09-12T21:01:00.001-04:00

I've been continuing to work on the illustration that I started for Thou Art But A Warrior. Since I did the drawing, I discovered that the boring armor I had drawn was about 150 years out of date. Hooray! Which means I get to do something much more awesome. It doesn't look awesome now, but it will.

Getting the skin tones right is something I have been really self conscious about. I played around lightening and darkening out of paranoia about not having euro-centric illustrations. The last thing I want to do is white-ify people.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that there's no way to know what skin tone the native Spanish people had before interbreeding for several centuries with Moors and Arabs and just sampled photographs of modern Spaniards. It's a compromise, sure, but it's the best I can do.

I'm loving coloring this, because I get to go crazy with rich colors. And I'm going to add awesome patterns. Woot.

CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION

I'll continue to update as I make progress. I've got a lot of other stuff on the go, so work on this is going to be pretty sporadic. And I'm holding off on other illustrations so that I can pirate material from what my playtesters come up with.