22
Jul 10
Moods and the posting thereof…
I’ve opted to start making some silly cosmetic uses out of the custom fields functionality made available by WordPress, namely a little ‘current mood’ end-of-post blurb featuring a tiny little ‘me’ graphic. I used the following page as an example when it came to making the necessary theme tweaks and it makes for a fairly good introduction into the use of custom fields.
01
Jul 10
It’s been one of those days, weeks, months, years…
I don’t work well in Summer, heat gets to me and makes my brain turn into angry mush but overall I’ve been having a weird ‘ho hum’ kinda day today so I’m goings to blurb myself into a stupor…
28
Jun 10
Travian.no staff rank bars
A little bit after work on the forum.travian.in staff bars I was approached by the lovely Faith (MH manager & forum mod) and tasked with creating a set for forum.travian.no which has a slightly smaller team and some small variances in role. In some way the resulting bars are a combination of the .in work and the much, much earlier bars for .co.uk staff (and users), being less extravagant than the .in theme but retaining a fancier bar design and taking up the shields that are familiar to .co.uk users. As a matter of interest, that simple shield was first made as part of some ideas I had for another browser game called Dawn of Myth… I think it still functions in some form but hasn’t really gone anywhere development wise for years, in which time is has bored/scared off pretty much all the community it once attracted.
24
Jun 10
Travian.in staff rank bars
I was recently poked with a stick by Tullia, the forum admin at forum.travian.in who I had worked with very briefly at the tail-end of my (by then, soul destroying) duties on travian.co.uk and was tasked with developing a set of staff bars around a concept she had devised. I agreed to begin work on this set (Having worked on minimalist staff & user ranks for the forum at travian.co.uk previously) and the rest of this entry collates the various stages of that process, from the early drafts to the subsequent edits based on feedback from the server/community team… Continue reading →
16
Jun 10
Hiatus broken… Bunker in repair
Excuses: Apprenticeship has been an absolute nightmare in terms of having to do ALL the work outside of, well, work.
I have been giving the site a lot of thought, I’ve not really been running it as a site for other people (yeh, you lot!), more a site for me to work on (and retain dimming skill/familiarity with WordPress) that people just happen to be able to see. Also means I can link friends/associates or others to stuff I’m working on, though more recently these projects have been handled over Skype or through Twitter DM and I’ve been too apathetic (from the stresses of full-time work saddled with an NVQ outside of hours and a long distance relationship) to drag myself on here and post something, anything!
So for now, I’m alive and guilt ridden… I’m going to be working on graphics for site use and building out sections over the coming months but for starters I’m going to backdate some content that I could (and should) have posted at the time and get them live (Thank god I’ve started dating my doodles/illustrations) and I’ll list those in a ‘Hiatus broken, bunker repaired.’ Follow-up!
-Tom
I’m not that sorry, now that I think about it. 
Edit: I’ve dropped the blogroll and am manually building a new list of links in the sidebar. Also added an ‘about me’ blurb (Stolen from Twitter) complete with ‘demi-god/cam-whore’ style avatar.
20
Apr 10
A break from TSSC
A typical Dwarf of the Steamshaft (Derwent Inktense)
The bulk of the writing work on TSSC has been paused for the past few months and will not resume for a little while yet, some of the art has be tackled during that time, largely map making and Inktense work, some of which I’ll add into this entry to prove I’ve not been lying in the hiatus entry about working on a lot of material but not finding time to blog about it… 
Map work 'The Deeps'
If you have stumbled here by chance and like the sound of the setting and perhaps fancy running a play test in the future, get in touch through Twitter and I’ll keep you in mind.
A typical Clod of the Steamshaft (Derwent Inktense)
An 'aether touched' Human (Derwent Inktense)
-Tom
Edit: Comments are now disabled after two weeks have passed, I decided that I agreed with some views on commenting systems and since this blog (through my own numerous faults) does not garner much commentary anyway… I’m not losing out too badly. There is always the option to seek me out on Twitter and give direct feedback or response.
07
Mar 10
Inktense DrMagister
Anyone who has read my mini-rants on Twitter will know that I’m really liking the Inktense pencils from Derwent, the above gallery tracks my work this morning on @DrMagister in wondrous re-enactment mode…Â (I added a tiny bit of graphitint cloud/cool grey to the background white, can see them in the final photo snap. )
-Tompl
12
Feb 10
The Steamshaft evolves…
The one thing the early sketch of the Steamshaft lacked was settlement labelling, at that point I was only sure on the location of three or four of them and I was always inclined to work on a digital copy. I have finally sorted out a full version of that map as part of layout design and art work I’m pushing through at the moment.
I won’t say final as yet but this is a very close to final version of the map.
02
Feb 10
TSSC Cover
This is the first draft of the cover, which I’ve been working on today. My intention is to overlay clean hero art (Probably three) between the title and the license fluff. I want to get the official license but at this stage I’m not sure (if alone) I can reach the levels they are asking for in terms of professional layout and art (HIGH production values, as they say). Under the Fan license of course I can’t angle for donations (to allow those who liked it enough and wanted to support future projects) and wouldn’t be able to use any other means of generating a small tidbit of revenue. The official license would allow me to sell the physical book and take donations on the PDF which I’m still keen to make freely available.
(^ Click for full image)
I feel very isolated at the moment, not only because I’m miles away from friends and loved ones but because I’m writer, illustrator, editor, layout designer and manager/promoter of this little island. Carrying the workload over all the areas isn’t easy, especially when you’re doing 39hrs a week baking bread from 3am – 11pm and juggling apprenticeship paperwork, sometimes it just overwhelms me and I’m faced with that tough choice, work on this or play L4D/TF2 etc. and relax for a few precious moments. Sleep continues to chase me around with a cricket bat, adieu!
Update: I had to redo the parchment background for the innards due to a very silly dpi blunder on software I’m unfamiliar with… here is the redone copy. I may yet tinker with the final design.
-Tompl
27
Dec 09
Steamshaft Chronicles, a Savage World?
The biggest slowdown on work at the moment involves pinning down a first drafting of magic notes. I’ve scrapped two approaches thus far because the things I want to do with it seem to tug in different directions. *sigh* I am going to be forced to compromise somewhere along the line.
Current thoughts involve limiting elemental/natural magic to the Elves, this slots into their appearance fluff which denotes that their hair (eyes and other features too depending on power) reflects an elemental origin. I am suggesting to GMs that they offer Elven mages a chance to develop features that denote an increase in power by whichever level-up marker they feel best. The additional reflections of power tend to be a shift in skin hue, arcane tattoo about the face or chest and in some cases a rare (but beautiful) mutation. Other forms of magic are more open, or device dependent.
Anyway, I digress… The more I suffered on the subject the more inclined I was to look at Savage Worlds again and so I’m preparing the work with more of an eye to Savage Worlds. Notes are still going to be made for use with Anno Geometrica. In keeping with this I’m going to try and release an open draft to download at some point, this will involve me stalling settlement work a little to release it with only Furnace Town active. This means I can get feedback from generous playtesters and drop the time-consuming settlement work in at later stages.
I’ve started using Derwent graphitint pencils to work-up sketchy artwork for the system, I don’t think the scans do them justice but I’ll work on that when I have a bit more time to tweak settings. I promised I’d show off some of the work done with them so far, so here are the first two pieces…
The above reflects my current ideas on the elemental nature of the Elves, this particular Elf draws the power of air, I have referred to him as an acolyte of storms…
The above is an equipment draft for Dwarven PCs, their tower shield is one of the mightiest tools at work in tunnel warfare along with the Jade-core Splinter. The Jade-core Splinter is mildly arcane, giving off a faint glow and increasing the chances of penetrating magical shields, barriers or armour.
Apologies for the lack of updates for the last few months, every single time I got close to typing up a new entry something more important jumped on my back and forced me down.
-Tompl
29
Sep 09
Work in progress, papermages splash.
Started work on transforming this old sketch (featuring a battle royale of sorts between monsters and heroic figures) into a coloured splash image for the currently in-active Paper Mages site, Paper Mages will be the home for Steamshaft (when it is finished) and is also going to be the web home for Anno Geometrica and a few other British authored roleplay items.
Those of us behind Paper Mages come from a background of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, wargaming (Games Workshop), Advanced Fighting Fantasy and other very Britishy products… No shock then that we enjoy keeping alive the things that made those products so great for us. Fairly early on when I was drafting the steamshaft I realised that I was making an upside down Necromunda in many ways, what a shame that Games Workshop never considered making Mordheim a more direct fantasy imagining of Necromunda… part of me hopes it would be much like the Steamshaft.
30
Aug 09
Fantasy Buildings (Mini Sketches)
Just a very quick share of two tiny sketches as I pondered the nature of Steamshaft buildings… currently my mind is settling on actual houses/structures of some kind in special regions designed to support such features, often under the control of Elves. For more common buildings I am having to sketch and give thought to the sorts of buildings that might exist on a settlement by settlement basis. I hope to eventually have each settlement offer a unique way of life within the Steamshaft. But enough waffling, I’ll end up going into a much longer entry if I’m not careful!
I’ve had little to no interest in the moo.com challenge, a shame really but then my blog doesn’t extend much of a reach so it was half-expected. Still, I’m going to give it a bash on my lonesome and perhaps some people will join as it goes.
-Tom
27
Aug 09
In which I tell of my own laziness…
Somewhere during the second pint after arriving in Edinburgh (a semi-dreadful journey weakened me!) I realised I was probably going to fail with the taking of pictures and writing/typing of words, even the sketching would take a back seat… In the end I took photographs of the Signspotting Project madness and the Christmas Shop, the latter purely because it would amuse Nicola and her mother. So yes, I failed to capture my antics.
The literary pub tour was probably the highlight, really good night with sore heads all round the morning after and shockingly light wallets too.
![P180809_15.26[01]](http://www.bunker58.co.uk/s1/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/P180809_15.2601.JPG "P180809_15.26[01]")
![P180809_15.28[01]](http://www.bunker58.co.uk/s1/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/P180809_15.2801.JPG "P180809_15.28[01]")
![P180809_15.28[02]](http://www.bunker58.co.uk/s1/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/P180809_15.2802.JPG "P180809_15.28[02]")
16
Aug 09
A long overdue holiday…
On holiday at long last, though I’ve lost a day of travel I’m ready for Edinburgh tomorrow. I’m going to try and update the blog during that time with photographs. I may even find the time to finish off two entries that I’ve been meaning to post for some time now and which don’t slide into my current format of sketchy postings. The biggest thing I’ve been missing are my little audio updates, I’m going to try and sort that side out in the near future to compliment the doodles and broken writing. Speaking of broken…
You might notice that the previous entries link at the bottom doesn’t work, annoying! I think I know why it is broken but I’ve been far too tired to tinker/dig for fixes and I might be changing the theme anyway. For now the archive will serve as a hopping point, please forgive me. All fixed with the new theme now, hopefully…
