I also had the title “An Adventures in Graphic design and Typography!” in my mind when I started putting together this post, but I think that might be a bit melodramatic. If you’re following me on twitter, you’d have seen this image before, but for those that don’t, what do you think? Does it look like an RPG you’d play?
Lost Heroes RPG: Front and Back Covers
Don’t mind the text on the back cover. It’s just a space filler for when I really write something.
I took a short break from working on Lost Heroes RPG and end up working on Lost Heroes RPG! Swinging from writing to graphics and layout. I just started playing around with ideas on paper for the front cover of Lost Heroes as a book and ended up taking it to the end.
I don’t think my efforts are professional, but they look good, good enough to fool you from a distance! 
I’m working with my “limits” here, using what I can do well, to produce something that looks good. The above image was generated using Inkscape, Gimp and original artwork by myself. The little icons I’ve been working on all along (just check out the “drawings” tag to see more about them).
I have to say, I’m loving Inkscape as a tool more and more. I can easily move around and edit elements of the above image. And the images are all scalar vector graphics scalable vector graphics so I can print them out at any resolution and they look good. I’m not sure how they’ll fit into a Desktop Publishing Tool when I finally start to think about layout of the PDFs later for Lost Heroes.
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Inital Concept (pencil)
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Fleshing it out (pencil)
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Fleshing it out #2 (pencil and ink)
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Final Ink of Figure
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Working with the Figure on Computer
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Lost Heroes RPG: Front and Back Covers
Here you can see the process in a little more detail. I used pencil, ink and charcoal while playing around with it. My original idea was the abstract “angel” with the floating symbols and a rope tided around his legs pulling him back down to a graphic-inspired city scape. I imagined the logo for Lost Heroes sort of exploding from the top of the image.
I’m not particularly happy with the Lost Heroes logo. It works but its static and a little boring. Doing a little search on “typography” found me getting quite inspired, realising that the text is as much part of the picture composition as anything else. Playing around with it, I wasn’t getting convincing or pleasing results though. I ended up just laying it out and modifying the other elements to work with it.
I finally put some time aside to finish off my “Flower Fairy” image. Here it is:
Flower Fairy (final)
If you remember, I started with this:
Flower Fairy (in ink)
I’ll leave it up to you guys to decide if the final image is better. The background is done in watercolours, the fairy’s colour was done, first by copying with my lightbox, then using grey markers and ink brush and then on the computer I used gimp to colour her. I only have a mouse, not a tablet to do work on the computer. Because of the limitations of using a mouse, I couldn’t finish the fairy character how I liked. I would have liked to strengthen her outline, like the original image, but with a mouse the effort would have looked very flaky.
Here is an inset of just the Flower Fairy, to show you how the colouring came out:
Flower Fairy (final) (inset)
It’s certainly not going to used as an illustration anywhere, but I’m proud of it. I also learned a lot and the more you learn, the better the rest of you’re drawing skill improves.
You can grab the latest version of tdo-mini-forms from Wordpress.org right now!
I’m sure within minutes the internet will collapse but I’ve finally got it done. v0.13 adds the ability to edit posts and has improved moderation screen. I say that with a big sigh because there is still a lot to do to finish off the backend, improve the post editing and finally tackle the long list of bugs that has accumulated, but with this version at least you can start to play with editing.
Enjoy! And any issues report them to the support forums or even try out twitter (hashtag #tdomf).
Please keep in mind that this plugin is free and any support I provide is also free. If you found it useful you can show your appreciation via a small donation or buying me a book!
Taking a break from coding or writing, I did do this little piece for my daughter Alice for her to colour in. It came out especially nice I think, so much so if I get the time I will do my own colouring. Alice’s take on the colours is not yet complete, but I might put it up here (or maybe on facebook) for a bit of fun.
Flower Fairy (in ink)
Also, a few weeks back, my wife bought me a new light box. A nice big one too. I love it, but I don’t have the desk space for it. I have to unpack it before I can use it and then put it away again before we can use the kitchen table for dinner! However, I did go back to the two projects that I had left over when my original light box broke.
I first tackled my “Britney” Satyr and used markers to add tone, planning to use the computer to chose colours.
"Britney" Satyr (colour attempt #1)
While I like the image, I was dissatisfied with it. So I ended up leaving it at this stage. I then dug out my water colours and tackled my Freyja concept (warning nudity):
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I’m making good progress on the next release of TDO Mini Forms. I’ve managed to clear out much of my “TODO” list and I’m only left with updating widgets before I move to a live test server. On the live test server I’ll be testing and finishing admin notifications and akismet spam integration for the editing feature. More screenshots after the “more” link!
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What a great weekend for TV: a Dr. Who special and three brand Red Dwarf episodes!
Dr. Who was enjoyable and fun, but I was much more excited about the Red Dwarf specials. I can’t wait till Dr. Who starts proper (I think that’s penned in for next year), but the Dr. Who special filled in the gap for the time being. At least we’ll have Torchwood in April (I think).
The Red Dwarf specials were fun and they left it open, possible, for a new series? I live in hope. There were lots of great nods to previous episodes, the fans, and Bladerunner. Loved it. If I had the box set of Red Dwarf, I think I would be watching it from the beginning again right now.
I have to say so far this year has been great telly wise. “Being Human” on BBC3 was, IMHO, by far the best fantasy I’ve seen this year on either side of the Atlantic. Pity it’s already over, but I have my fingers crossed for a second season. For those who don’t know, it’s about a ghost, werewolf and vampire living together trying to be “human”. Sort of a “situational drama” rather than the typical mystery-action or horror-action. There was some great episodes in there and I really recommend people try to watch it if they can.
Even the current “volume” of Heroes is markedly better than the previous season and other “volumes”. I don’t know if it’s enough to get people back into Heroes because you need to watch the previous half of season 3 to get the context and that was diabolically bad. The plot is much tighter and makes more sense, characters aren’t been added and dropped for no reason, and old forgotten characters are being remembered and used. There was even one particularly poignant episode with the death of two of the more recent characters.
And then Fringe just re-started there. Thoroughly enjoying it. The last few episodes before the break have really made it interesting, and, like recent Heroes, I want to see wants going to happen.
Still watching Dollhouse too. Episode six seemed to mark a huge improvement in the show, though I’m still not overwhelmed by it yet. The most recent episode, they seem to be “evolving” the show quite quickly with some of the characters. My wife suggested a good theory: it’s been written as a one season show, so if (or rather when) it gets cancelled, it’ll have come to some sort of conclusion. For the moment I’m still watching and I’ll see how it goes.
And then there is the excellent new seasons of Criminal Minds and Medium! So much to watch.
Of course, you can’t have it all ways and, though I’m late to say it, I’m sorry to see Pushing Daisies canned.
Now that I’ve declared my love of TV, it’s time to resume normally services!
I’ve been toiling away on TDO Mini Forms for a while, but I’m finding it hard to get a big stretch of time to work on it. So work is done in bits and pieces and I’ve had to priorities what work is done. Right now I have a long list of bugs and other features to be implemented because of being concentrating on getting Post (and Page) editing implemented.
It’s still a long way to go, however the core work is done. I can create forms that allow you edit posts and to moderate edits. It should work with Akismet, much like submissions do, but I haven’t yet tested that part of the code. The Form Options screen has been updated and the Moderation screen is much more Wordpress 2.7 now. Still there is a lot of work to do and even when I have it basically finished (and release it), I’ll still have tons more to do. The admin UI is still in a transitionally design between Wordpress 2.5 and 2.7 look and feel and most of the other widgets will incrementally get added to the editing feature.
However, to wet your appetite, here are some screen shots of the moderation screen and edit form:
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The new TDO-Mini-Forms default editing form
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The new TDO-Mini-Forms moderation screen
There is an interesting discussion going on right now over on the igaming mailing list (and cross-posted to LiveJournal), but one I’ve consciously chosen not to comment on. The people involved have much bigger stakes in it than I ever have and I’ve had my share of being on the virtual battleground but I have little to add on this.
So I guess I’m doing it here. If you take the time, read the original post. It’s roughly about now in the year that some argument occurs (though the last few years have been quiet). The discussion is about how scenarios, or rather TableTop RPGs, are run at Irish Conventions. Apparently we do it differently to everyone else and one of the “old hands” in the scene has strongly suggested that cons change the way they do things.
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