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

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.

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

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.

We’re not going to get rich doing this but we do get to put out our work and hopefully see it get used, that is a reward in itself. We’re still going to have fun setting games in our own worlds whatever happens. Generally we’re giving stuff away free in a wiki format, as a word document or PDF. Sometimes (at great struggle) we will have a print release on the table, the first such release is likely to be the ‘Anno Geometrica’ core rules and will be via the likes of Lulu. With a print copy we’re putting in effort to produce the best possible version of the freebie we can, normally in the form of art or exclusive material, so it will only happen if we have demand. The good thing with a print copy is that you can stroke it lovingly and we might get a few bob to spend on a pint or a packet of crisps, we also get to buy our own copies and pretend we’re real game designers… But this is talk for a later time!

The finished image is now up on http://www.papermages.co.uk/

-Tom

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

Too early for me to ‘review’ Champions Online but I am excited about it and most importantly, enjoying it thus far. In some ways it is too similar to CoH, which while expected feels a little lazy on the part of Cryptic. I feel bad for saying it. Really happy to have gained a Steampunk action figure in-game, not sure if they are random or based on where you bought the game but if they are fully random I am amused at being gifted the Steampunk figure.

Geekery abounds! Is that Fire Fox? Or FyreFox… I’ll probably end up having to drop the name, alas.

-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

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.

The 9hr (More like 10hrs when you include the car and bus side of things) journey that took me from Edinburgh to Haverfordwest, “hello Midnight!” Was tiring and allowed me to relearn all my favourite football chants courtesy of lads celebrating their exam results before Cardiff… I had to laugh and thankfully they were all in such a good mood as to leave the crazy-haired (I got annoyed and had loads cut-off, the survivors are in open, curly rebellion.) geek alone.

I’ve spent the past week and a bit in a sleepy, beautiful part of Pembrokeshire being both distraction, motivator and luxurious layabout to my wonderful geekette. She has a dissertation to finish and I’ve always been very ‘Hakuna Matata’ on the academia side, very much the stubborn rogue who would much rather they let him do his own thing than suffer the enforced, rigid and ultimately damning modular approach to study. Modules are awful when there are too few to choose from, the idea surely was to make it easier to cater a degree to the needs/interests of individuals like myself?

The lack of updates has not all been laziness, truth be told I feel more comfortable working on my desktop… I have plans for the blog, plans I hope my bakery lifestyle does not delay too much, plans that involve pretty things and longer entries. There are a few blogs/sites I’m going to quickly link to because they should be in my blogroll and indeed will be when I’ve had a chance to sort them a little graphic… in no particular order:

http://lurvalamode.wordpress.com/

Sometimes, you find a blog quite by chance via an unusual series of web leaps that you wish you’d found sooner. lovely use of sidebars and absolute dedication to devouring literature towards creative, exciting reviews. (Twitter: KMont)

http://www.ponor.info/blog/

P O N O R is new(ish) to wordpress, a creative and fun individual. (Twitter: ponor)

http://girlygeekdom.com/

I know too many awesome (and dangerous) girl geeks to dare neglect them for too long… (Twitter: girlygeekdom)

-Tom

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…

I’ve been a bit quieter this month for various reasons, work for one thing has been very intense (lots of 3am starts) and I’ve been preparing for holiday. Beyond that I’ve been crafting in secret patches of blissful free-time, a little something something for another site. The best thing about this casual ‘twitter-sourced’ project was that I got to use my vast experience in drawing cute, silly versions of my girlfriend to great effect.

I’ve dotted the entry with a few of my favourites by way of penance, they are designed to be seen at a smaller size so some of the line thickness and colouration choices are deliberate. If/when they go live and I get the nod of permission I’ll share the whole lot (including concept/draft sketches) in a single blog entry about casual design projects.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make a blog update on the train between Crewe and Edinburgh, First Class is nice… especially when it is free.

-Tom