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… (I added a tiny bit of graphitint cloud/cool grey to the background white, can see them in the final photo snap. 
)
-Tompl
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
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
I retired as the forum admin for a community (many months ago to focus on a new job) but have been so trusted and valued for my contribution that they have retained me as a casual member of the current team. I have a continued input on the health of the community and do a little bit of work behind the scenes where I provide material for events that run around geek holidays and general holidays. The upcoming event is about Pirates vs Ninja so I have been charged with creating user ranks for the rival usergroups that will be created for its duration.
Events like this are really fun, the community get really involved in the roles and very rarely take it too far with each other. They also enjoy the effort the team have made to break the forum year into little glimmers of madness and laughter, with competitions rewarding user input in many creative areas. The best moment is when a user remarks ‘They don’t do anything like this on the other domains!” because it tells the team they’ve made it an event. The rivalry aspect is a strong part of most events, we normally have two temporary usergroup factions battling each other out in the competitions and threads, it encourages the users to work together to try and out fox the rival faction.
I can sometimes be very bad at sharing work and activities that occupy my time, leading to silence on this blog… often it is an element of secrecy or because I feel the entry needs a considerable bulk of text rather than just a gallery in isolation. I will try to be less TOP SECRET about everything in the future.
-Tom
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
This is a fairly organic follow-on sketch request courtesy of one very cute (and possibly Ninja grade) bunny. It is for @girlygeekdom who founded the girl geek dinners and does many awesome things in the world of technology.
Kinda somewhere between these two tweets:
http://twitter.com/girlygeekdom/status/3057206218
http://twitter.com/Motoko_K/status/3057831706
Half-tempted to make it super bunny :/ I should have another entry up later that won’t be filled with doodles/sketches but it may end up going live on Tuesday or Wednesday, depends how tired I get.
-Tom
This is for @Motoko_K a brilliantly geeky server overlord with an excellent taste in anime.
This was the 140 character (or less) sketch pitch: Flying Spaghetti Monster, yr version of what it would look like.
http://twitter.com/Motoko_K/status/2852824846
She gave me a lot of freedom so I opted to make a Flying Spaghetti Monster in God Mecha form… The meatballs are rotating sauce blasters and the eyes are slunk down into a protected visual cradle, its divine noodly appendages feed into graviton armour which continually shifts and reforms about the noodled core. To speak more of the armour is to stand on the brink of madness and rapture!
There were lots of very strange looks in the staff canteen while sketching this, I opted not to explain because they wouldn’t get it anyway…
Apologies for missing my usual update days, I’m swamped with some apprenticeship deadlines so have been mightily distracted.
-Tom
This is for @shuttler who is the source of my miniature wargaming/collecting envy, beyond that podcasting, gaming and geekery abounds!
This was the 140 character (or less) sketch pitch: 15 ft amazon women defends the city of London from alien jellyfish falling from the sky.
http://twitter.com/shuttler/status/2741841104
I should also add that I had loads of fun with this one, best pitch so far… I don’t normally draw Jellyfish, Big Ben or Amazons. I’m probably going to go over in copic pens and erase what doesn’t make that and give it a touch of copic/prismacolour. Easily more that could be done to take it beyond the sketch stage. I couldn’t resist adding in that text before I uploaded.
(I probably messed up on the 15ft part, I had intended to use the vague height of Big Ben as a marker but “OMG, Jellyfish in the sky while London burns!”)
I’d also like to apologise to the city of London for the sloppiest rendition of Big Ben ever to grace the internet. I really did want to spend hours crafting each beautiful part, I really did!
-Tom
Managed to colour an old sketch earlier that I love. While it fails on an artistic level for various reasons my intent was purely to liven the original in a way that pleased me. I still prefer the sketch as it was but I was determined to splash some colour to it eventually and have thankfully done so.
The original sketch was for my beloved lady as a Valentine gift in 2005, I really like drawing her and she really likes faeries, dragons and all kinds of mythical and fantastical things. This is a scan of the original made before I framed it for her:
-Tom
This is for @Blue_Alice an overworked young lass, who deserves a much better and lazier lifestyle making god-damned awesome cowboy bebop canvas magic.
This was the 140 character or less sketch pitch: Doc K. 50ish, short grey hair. Smart suit. Bionic steampunk style eye. Think femme Muraki and you’re mostly there. DO IT.
http://twitter.com/Blue_Alice/status/2521116694
-Tom
I sketch to unwind after a long day, a doodle here and there of random. I’m starting to take requests on Twitter every so often to give some goals or themes to sketches, I can’t promise artist grade sketching but I’m not going to drop something completely dire either… Just a way to encourage me to put sketches up here and gift people at the same time.
This is for @PkmnTrainerJ – A nice guy who likes to doodle also and quite possibly worth a follow.
Legs annoy me, well crossed legs do but I did try… 
This was the 140 character or less sketch pitch: James Wolfsbane – Thief with a fondness with wolf-skin tunics & gold coins. Unkempt appearance, but posh boots, regularly stolen.
Missed out the gold reference and the tunic is more partial wolf-skin but I’m sure if I sorted digital lineart and colour I could sneak in some bags of gold.
-Tom
Just a quick post, was supposed to be doing something else and stumbled onto some old sketches… got distracted and ended up finishing off a colour version of one such sketch…
I promised a better upload on Twitter and here it is. A campaign map for an (as yet) unrealised D&D 4th edition campaign.
I really enjoy making fantasy maps and tend to find excuses to start working on them, this map was created during the lunch breaks of a training course. I spend all my breaks and lunch breaks on illustration or the written word, largely because life has sent me into an industry that dulls such skills. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the work in that satisfyingly tired kinda way but am always wishing I worked in an environment that allowed me to use my interests and talents better.
The job has made it very hard for me to sort out a blog again or pursue many of my old interests to the full, it has been hard to adjust and even now I’m fighting for balance… I’m trying very hard to focus on getting this place up to the standard of my old home.
-Tom
