So far, these are the mood (or non-mood ‘status’) graphics I’ve had a chance to make:

-Tom

Run away!

Rediscovering Magic: The Gathering

Duels of the Planeswalkers launched fairly recently on Steam along with the first DLC pack for it. Magic was something I very briefly collected but never really had very many people to play against and wasn’t inclined to seek out official tournaments or groups and it was something I briefly tried to court again when WotC modernised it in the wake of what the Pokemon CCG did to the market, which presumably depended on your angle… To me, it appeared that MTG just kinda vanished behind the sparkling anime. I remember the Harry Potter equivalent which I have to admit/confess holding a like for but that never blazed quite so brightly.

A long story short, I’m quite impressed by this digital offering and M:TG on-line in general. I’m almost tempted to start collecting the cards themselves. The digital table is beautiful, with wondrous animation and emulation of play.

Painter 11 acquired…

It’s a pretty daring leap ahead for me and makes ArtRage Studio Pro a little defunct (Though I foresee potential areas where it may be handy or manage work better… I enjoyed ArtRage and I highly recommend it, it is worth the money.) though it will take a bit of time to get settled with Painter. I’ve taken up a subscription with ImagineFX as part of my journey and will be indulging in issues of the official Corel Painter magazine. My aim is to work through tutorials and workshops between the two whenever I get the time. Most of my work in Painter 11 will be for Anno Geometrica and The Steamshaft Chronicles, I hope to be able to share that progress (and the learning that went into it) with you every now and again.

Steam Summer Sale

It just made my bank account it’s bitch. I’ve picked up a few games I was planning or pondering a purchase of prior to the sale and gifted a fair few to Nicola or friends. Some real bargains popping up on 24hr cycles not to mention the longer duration savings off large swathes of the Steam catalogue.

-Tom

That is all.

Version 1

Requested edits after that were a red bar for the overall game server admin, and a short time after they were implemented there was a request for Norsk characters on the Translator and Operator bars…

Version 1 w/ Modified Game Admin bar

Example of Norsk character addition

Staff ranks: Active (Can be seen in use on http://forum.travian.no)

They decided to add ranks for the IRC staff under the moderator theme but in discussion we opted for a lighter green and additional imagery to make the difference between the two a little clearer, those ranks are as follows:

…and I really need to remark on how much I love the way Tullia has used them on the team listing page here.

-Tom

I’m melting…

The 'rough round the edges' feeler draft of the staff ranks

Tullia wanted to match the staff ranks to the national colours and symbols of India, loading meaning behind the different types of community role. The first set was very much an attempt to court the simplicity of the .co.uk ranks with the more vivid imagery, which broke away from the simple shield motif used on those .co.uk ranks. Feedback from staff was varied (and in some cases conflicting) but the poor old ‘cute’ Tiger got the thumb down for the crime of being cute. The ‘life bar’ Ex-Crew was also a no and someone even believed the tiny text for each symbol would lead to confusing… Really? Someone is going to be confused by that? You’re honestly telling me someone will go, “Is that a Multihunter or A TIGER?!” But overall the feedback made a lot of sense.

Many (if not most) Travian domains mark the Forum Admin in similar colours to the game server (overall) admin or removed from the Mod/SMod colouration, Tullia wanted to ensure her Forum Admin rank identified clearly with her sphere of responsibility.

The Feedback Fatality

The response to the massive feedback dump made Tullia wish she’d limited the feedback she sent my way, because I went and ticked pretty much all those boxes and made something I didn’t much like and which actually ended up departing from the sort of thing we were aiming for. I should take this time to point out the less cute tiger is based closely on an existing tattoo design, though I’m having trouble pinning down the originator so I can credit the reference…  If I had my way we’d be using my cute tiger. I won’t say these are bad ranks, but they were a bit too corporate, clinical, forum chic? I can’t even find the word for it but they didn’t really fit with the community.

Note: The crowns marking seniority of roles between the different crew areas were expanded to introduce ‘senior’ Support and MH staff tiers, a Head MH was provisioned for even though there isn’t one on .in at the moment.

Version 3, Tweak 1

The tweaks of the third version staff ranks (above and below this text) offer one set with a border to the bar and the other set border-less with a small, grey ‘Travian.in’ text. While trying to solve the lack of concept for the Ex-Crew bar I proposed using the stars (replacing crowns as marks of seniority) to create tiers to Ex-Crew that would allow the community to identify more experienced Ex-Crew when seeking help or gauging the authority of Ex-Crew insights. I also found an excuse to save the cute tiger from the graveyard. Discussing the Ex-Crew idea with Tullia and the Admin of the server, the three star Ex-Crew was marked for a change to Ex-Admin. The borderless set with text emerged as the favourite and was a few tweaks away from being implemented.

Version 3, Tweak 2

Just about there... (click to see full)

Many Travian servers have a Head MH but .in has none and there are no plans to have one in the near future, in the final set above (and the earlier feedback based revisions) we provisioned for the existence of that staff rank… Due to width constraints it was made to mimic the senior ranks and the Head Supporter bar was modified for the sake of consistency. The Head Supporter rank in actual use does not have this treatment and will be retired if a Head MH is introduced. Feedback acted on includes dropping the flag colouration on the admin stars and making the Lotus flower a little bigger.

They were put into active use a few days ago and this is the part of the announcement where Tullia explains the design concept:

b> New Crew Userbars and Colours

We wanted to refresh the look of the forum and bring in something unique to this forum, and to show a real Indian inspiration – and so we used the colours of the Indian Flag and the national symbols for the new userbars.

Multihunters
The saffron represents courage.
The national animal, the tiger, symbolises the hunter and protector.

Forum Crew
The green represents hope and growth
The peacock, the national bird, represents beauty and creativity.
The SMods and FA are now green instead of having our own colours, to show unity and make it simpler for users to understand who does what. However, SMods and FA have bold names to make us stand out a little more.

Support
The blue represents truth and serenity.
The Lotus, the national flower, represents wisdom and learning.
The Head Supporter is now blue instead of having her own colour, to show unity and make it simpler for users to understand who does what. However, the Head Supporter does have her name in bold to make her easier to find!

Admin
The purple represents leadership and power.
The Flag unites all three strands of Crew together in one role.
OK, it’s a little cheesy… but nice. We believe that the symbolism tells you something about each of the roles.
There’s also a new set of userbars for ex-crew which show what level of Crew they were, through the star ranking.

There are some ideas floating around about event and reward ranks for users, any one of them could possibly happen… and here are some demo ranks along those lines. I have discussed one system at present for user ranks but it could be quite some time before it is considered.

Some example (demo) user ranks

Werewolves vs Villagers: Werewolves reward (aPNG)

Staff ranks: Active (Can be seen in use on http://forum.travian.in)

-Tom

Sleepy errors must always be excused! zzzzZZZZZ

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.

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.

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

I won’t say final as yet but this is a very close to final version of the map.

(^ 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

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