Posts tagged with keywords "LH"
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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It seems so much easier to blog about my drawings than anything else, it’s certainly not for lack of topics to write about. Probably because I have something tangible to show and talk about. So I picked up my pencils and started doing some work on Sunday. I started drawing this female Satyr, based on a signature character from Lost Heroes RPG. This is my second attempt, but it’s not perfect. The character I imagined is older and more womanly, but I like it and planned to colour it using the technique I was practising in my last post. My wife described it as a “Britney Satyr”! However, as I was taking my pencil sketch and colouring it using markers, my light box gave out all I’ve got right now is the ink image, which loses a lot of the detail.
Female Satyr (in ink)
Once the lightbox broke, I then reverted it to pencil and started attacking a subject I’d like to take on. It’s the story of Freyja and the Brisingman necklace. Because I’m knee deep in Norse mythology at the moment writing for Lost Heroes, I’m thinking a lot about the Norse gods and Freyja, Goddess of love and to a much greater extent than the Greek Goddess of Love Aphrodite, she is also the Goddess of lust. I’m going to try it in watercolours, just because I have the itching to do so.
(The picture contains nudity… so follow the more link to see it) Read More…
Satyr Colourtest #1
So I’ve been playing with some new techniques and some new equipment. The above image is the first colour image I’ve done in a while and it was coloured very quick. I used a “lightbox” to trace the original pencil sketch (which you can see below), then used a selection of toned coptic markers to give it shadow and depth. And finally, using gimp’s hand-drawn selection and “colorify” I was able to colour it in less than 30 minutes. I’m not sure I’m going to continue the image first, it was more for a test of techniques and equipment but I certainly like it. There are lots of little computer tricks I could have applied and I really didn’t go into depth in my choice of colours.
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So I’m finally getting over being poorly last week, but I’m finding I’m not up to full speed yet. I’m quite tired from the run of antibiotics. Last night, after the kids were in bed, I planned to do some writing (on Lost Heroes) and some painting (bought some new watercolours) but instead, all I could do was zombie out in front of the TV for half an hour before I crawled up to bed.
Today has turned out to be a frustrating one. Work was going fine till after lunch, when my PC started to act weird. It’s a new PC that I’ve just got up to spec with all the software I need and have been using fine for two weeks. So I reboot and it won’t start - can’t find “boot device”. As it turns out my hard drive is fecked. So the whole afternoon is lost, I couldn’t even go and do something else. I’ve lost some stuff, nothing critical, but I have lost some work on TDO Mini Forms which I hadn’t been backing up.
Anyway, chin up. I’ll get a new harddrive tomorrow, spend the rest of the day re-installing all the software I need and trying to recover as much data as I can and just getting on with it. 
I don’t particularly won’t to post to complain about being sick. I’m not bad or in a dangerous condition, but I’ve been hit by a continual stream of colds, flus and infections this winter. I’m genuinely frustrated by it and it’s been the whole family, not just me. This recent one I got from my young son and the two of us have been at home all week till today and last week was certainly no picnic.
So if I haven’t responded to comments or emails, please understand. I will get through the backlog in time.
I haven’t been able to do much work on any of my projects including TDO Mini Forms and Lost Heroes, my drawings, gaming or even spend time just reading. I have been just about keeping up on my TV watching (for another post I think). So apologise for my invisibility over the last week. I’m hoping, with the sun showing in the clouds more and more, I’ll be able to get back into things quickly.
Best of health to everyone!
I had fun with this. I’ve known about Inkscape for a while, but I never used it. I know SVG is much better “image” format for DTP (Desktop Publishing) so I should have looked at it sooner. Particularly because Inkscape is also open-source. SVG basically allows you export your image at any size without a loss in quality that you might get by resizing a jpeg. As it turns out, inkscape is a doddle to use. So easy to start doing stuff, it looks like it’s going to be my default diagramming tool from now! I’ve already converted my lost heroes logo into SVG.
I set myself a little project, to create a “Family Tree” of the Olympian Gods that I’ve mentioned in Lost Heroes. My plan was to make this part of the setting text. I want to do something similar for the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Aesir when I finish that. I have idea about something for the Angels as well. Now don’t go thinking this is a complete family tree of all the Olympian Gods, thats just something I don’t have time for and someone body has already done that. This is instead, just the Gods and other characters mentioned as part of the Olympian God pantheon in Lost Heroes RPG.
Family Tree of the Olympian Gods from Lost Heroes RPG
It’s missing a “legend”, though I’m not sure it needs one. It looks pretty cool, because Inkscape simply rocks! 
Okay, so not earth-shattering news. I’ve finally done something with the lostheroesrpg.com domain and setup a blog and a custom theme. I’ll be releasing Lost Heroes Roleplaying Game there.
I was a bit afraid that I might be duplicating/crossposting content between the two blogs and I was looking at all sorts of solutions to do it. But practically it’s not going to happen. The purpose of lostheroesrpg.com will be a platform for promoting and releasing my Lost Heroes RPG project and there will be no worries about having to cross post, though I may “borrow” content from thedeadone.net for lostheroesrpg.com. In fact, the first thing I did was copy the Wordpress theme I created for here and modify it.
I’ve already added the feed for it to the Monster FudgeRPG feed but does it qualify for the Irish Gaming Planet feed? (Probably not).
While working on Lost Heroes RPG over the Christmas, I wrote this little flash fiction. I was hitting a bit of mental block so I changed tack and wrote something else. I think it works actual, what do you think?
He put down the staff beside him and scratched his head. “I don’t know if it’ll work. I’ve passed the message up the ranks, but Hermes doesn’t really have any pull with Hades you know? Do you happen to have a fag? I’m dying for a cig.”
I pulled a pack out of my pocket and offered him my last one. He accepted it and used his herald’s staff to light it. It sort of glowed and a flame squirted out of the top, lighting his cigarette. “You don’t happen to be a great singer or artist or something that I didn’t know about?” I shook my head. He weighed his hand heavily on his shoulder, “its not looking good.”
“I need to save her, bring her back.” I pleaded with him.
“The best I can do is allow you to see her one last time from the opposite shore of the Styx. You can say you’re goodbyes and all that. I hope she made it to the Blessed Isle otherwise…” he buried his head in his hands. He was suppressing a sob. “Why do you want to bring her back? The dead is better dead, Hades let nothing leave his domain.”
Controlling my own grief I said, “Because it was my fault. I killed her. I made a mistake…” But at my words, his entire body shook and his face drained of colour as he stared at me.
“Oh my. What have you done my friend!” The sky started to darken. “I’ve given them a connection, a connection to you and you damned fool admitted your stupidity!” His staff started to glow, the wings on his shoes started to flutter. “I can hear Erebus demanding justice!” He added meekly, “you’ve given her to the Furies by telling me this…”
“I don’t understand…” but I could barely speak, the roaring sound of a car drowned out my words and its lights stinging me and holding me in place. He was gone, already flying into the black stormy sky. Before the truck hit me, I saw her face, in the driver seat, an awful black aura burning of her deathly beauty, rage and revenge.
After all the votes were in the font used in “Option 2″ was the winner. More than a few people said they’d have voted for “Option 6″ if I modified it a bit, but after playing with that font for a while, it wasn’t working. Anyway, until I spend money on a genuine graphic artist, this is my working logo:
I could spend time messing with effects or by adding colour, but I think for the time doing it simply will be fine. Now all I have to do is setup the webpage!
(Strange… Wordpress seems to be stretching the image in the post, but if you click on it, you’ll see the original).
I’ve been trying to pick a font to use for the logo of Lost Heroes RPG for the new website and I’ve settled on these few. What ones do you think work? (You can vote in the poll at the bottom)
Option 1
Option 2
Option 3
Option 4
Option 5
Option 6
Option 7
Option 8
(poll after the cut)
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