ORTHODOXY Sketches

Just a quick update here, but a little while ago I added a page to the Projects section – it’s called “Sketches” (was “Sketches & Miscellaneous”). Basically it’s just a ‘running gallery’ of sketches, WIPs, and mostly unfinished things I’ve been doing recently. Last night I did a few sketches for my friend Jordan Voltz’s KickStarter Project, Orthodoxy RPG. Below is my favorite color sketch (there are 3 additional sketches on the Sketches page), as well as one of the new headers for the page sections.

The Duellist, one of the traits in the Orthodoxy RPG

I chose to do a less traditional representation and focused on “duality” (a purposeful mis-reading of “duel”). I actually reasoned it out, too – duels often occur(ed) between friends/acquaintances over perceived slights & wrongs, so “friend & enemy”.

Overview header image for Orthodoxy RPG Kickstarter

Jordan asked me to create some new headers (or update the old ones; I chose to make new ones) with some sort of embellishment rather than just text on a textured background. The nature of the Kickstarter site doesn’t allow for changing the page background or even the color of the font, so I went with all new headers, black on white. One of the major rewards we’ve offered are laminated, hand-embellished player screens (“sect screens”) – 5 to each backer pledging $100+! – and we’ve got 2 backers who’ll be receiving those. I chose the font and the design for the header with those screens in mind; depending on what I can find at an acceptable price, I’m hoping we’ll be able to make the sect screens out of fairly heavy-duty parchment (or kraft-paper-colored) paper rather than white/off-white. That will best offset the hand-embellishment, I think – except an update about those player/sect screens fairly soon!

 

 

World Building Blog

GENERAL UPDATE

Well, it’s one of those times. “Those times” being when “I’ve been struggling with getting any art, design, ‘or anything, really’ done because I’m a total perfectionist and it’s so much easier to just spend forever researching +/- 37 different things simultaneously” (ranging, of course, from how pteradons fly to the best way to scientifically (and most painfully) determine exactly where in a particular binary star system the life zone – a.k.a habitable zone or Goldilocks zone – would fall).

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WORLDS OF SAND

Fortunately, I’ve been insanely fortunate enough to be selected as a finalist-interviewee – a writing position – for an indie game company currently working on their first big project, which happens to be based on some of my favorite themes/genres, movies, game-types, etc. The company is Starboard Games L.L.C. (links tp FB page) and the game is called INT (short for Interstellar). While this blog has been primarily about art, design, and more “visual-creative” projects, I’ve been world building – and creating languages – for years now (almost a decade, and that’s not counting the totally-uneducated attempts I made back in middle school).

In the interest of not only continuing to explore those areas of interest but also to get all the research I’ve done and ideas I’ve been exploring out there to share and discuss with other people, I’ve decided that now is a great time to start a blog specifically for world-building and all that goes into that (or can, at least)! Taking the first step applying for this writing job has been a great push forward towards the blog, but whatever happens with the job itself – all power to them, the idea sounds great – I’m looking forward to writing again. Well, writing in a “public forum” and getting feedback and having discussions, anyway. All the writing I’ve been doing recently has been kept … under wraps, so to speak.

Perhaps I’ve reached a kind of “critical mass” in terms of the amount of information I’ve amassed. Now it’s time to actually make use of it all, even if I end up just sharing it and helping others use it for their own epic ends.

 

Therafim

UPDATE (finally)

Well, it certainly took me long enough (far too long) to update this map. Not even the holidays or my part time job starting up again can really justify how long it’s taken me to get this far; all I can say is that it hasn’t been easy. Campaign Cartographer was difficult enough to get a handle on, and it has quickly become my single most disliked software at least in regards to cartography. That being said, I think I can be reasonably proud of how this map is turning out, and I’m optimistic about finishing it up. So – here’s what I’ve managed to get done so far, with a close-up shot of one of the most recently finished sections to show the resolution of the final image. Note that the full world map image is at the full resolution and as such is a significantly large image (600 dpi, ~11″ x ~7″).

Full map, at full 600 dpi resolution; very large file, may load slowly