Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Option 5

Option 6

Option 7

Option 8

(poll after the cut)

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(Hopefully this post comes out alright on LJ, I can never be quite certain how my Wordpress posts translate to LiveJournal style anymore)

Demon Icon

Olympians Icon #3 (Colour)

Olympians Icon #2 (Black Background)

Olympians Icon

The second image I’ve only barely finished. This again was intended to be part of my Lost Heroes RPG project. It’s meant to represent the Olympian and associated Gods. I did quite a variety of designs, finally settling this one. But I’m still not completely happy with it. In fact I did two further varianets of it, which you can see below. The first one I wanted to highlight the rose more so I used solid black for the background and tried to add texture with some hatching lines. The second one, I used colour to highlight the rose, a big departure from the previous icons I’ve done. I’d rather keep to the black and white motif (easier to print) but the colour would does look quite nice. Perhaps I should play around with using greys as well as black?

(More new art and a poll after the “link”)

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Part of the reason I enjoy doing these icons is that it helps focus my mind on the next section of writing for Lost Heroes. It drags me into it, into thinking about what is important to represent in that section. Strangely most of my work these days is focused around Lost Heroes, even that which isn’t directly intended to be part of the project. For example, despite losing some of the access to my place to write, I did manage to complete this very short story: Laura and the Stalker with the Golden Blade. While it stands alone as a piece of fiction, it is embedded very much in the mythos and setting of Lost Heroes displaying many of the themes I want to put into the project.

So when I started just drawing for the sake of it, I came up with this on the right. Again the iconography and themes of the art is all Lost Heroes. I like the composition of the piece though I think it might have worked a lot better using ink instead of pencil/charcoal. Though charcoal is fun to use, dirty and messy and getting your hands into the piece. This piece on the right shows a much earlier incarnation of the same idea. I don’t know if I have “improved” since then, but I do enjoy more.

I also did one final image. It was sorta rushed but I did it on the wave of the previous piece. It’s a scene I keep imagining in my head (again, based off Lost Heroes). This rendering doesn’t do it justice, but the composition and layout of elements is there. Again done with the messy pencil and charcoal, though I think it would really work with striking black and greys.

I know I haven’t posted in ages. I’ve been going through a few things recently and it’s just been too heavy to write so openly about it. This whole year since John’s funeral hasn’t been easy. When he passed away everything went dark in my life. It made just getting out of bed in the morning a nightmare, waking up in that big empty bed was a stark reminder I’d never see him again. Our huge house became cold and eerie where before I was always telling John to tidy up his gear because I was always tripping over it. In those then empty evenings I found it easy to finish a full bottle of wine listening to bad romantic ballads to starve off the tears. I know, cliché.

I became intensely private, didn’t want to go out too much, barely talked to anyone outside of work. I got fed up with people asking, “are you alright? Is there anything I can do?” and it became easy to pall of friends’ worry with a fake “I’m fine. Just tired.” Well I was tired (shattered, destroyed, exhausted and so on) but I was also not fine. All I wanted to do was wallow in my private sadness. At the back of my mind, I thought that was as low as I would go and I would just thread this depth of depression forever. Then something happened and I found I could go much deeper.

Two months after John’s funeral, I was restless in the middle of the night. I just couldn’t sleep, every time I closed my eyes, I started to dream and that was something I desperately wanted to avoid. I didn’t want to think much either so I huddled up in my big duvet to fight the bitter cold because I no longer bothered putting the heat on at night for just me. I liked the quietness of the late of night because it felt somehow eternal, never-ending, a way to forget forever. But a screaming cat broke the stillness and I stuck my head under the corner of the curtain to see if I could spot the annoying minger. And that’s when I saw him.

He was standing outside our house, on the pavement, looking straight up at my window; a homeless man with a dirty tattered coat, a mottled blue woollen hat, black beard, scruffy and downright freaky. For ten minutes, I watched this guy but he didn’t move. I turned on the light and in that brief distraction to find the lamp the man was gone. Puff, disappeared like a magician in smoke.

I was quite shaken up. It reminded me of the night John died - I was home late from work that night. I remember coming in, throwing my shoes off and calling out for him, but he wasn’t there but I didn’t worry, just assumed he’d be home later. And then there was that knock at the door, two Gardai standing in the doorway, the blue light of the police car flashing in the background. I remember John’s body, cold and motionless, laying in the white room and me nodding, saying, “yes it’s him,” but not hearing the words actually come out of my mouth. It made me freeze, deep inside. Something went dead in me right then, but also another part of me wanted to run, wanted to buck everything, escape the nightmare. But this night, when I saw that homeless man, that part of me reared up again, yelling at me to get away, to escape, that it wasn’t real. My heart thumped vigorously for hours. But he didn’t appear again that night. If that was it, I would have been okay. I would have dismissed it, a once-off, that’s all.

The days after, I was a little paranoid, looking over my shoulder all the time and jumping at everything. I started to relax, started to forget the incident. Three weeks later, I had worked late again and on the Dart home, the train carriage was nearly empty. I was sleepy, nodding off for a few seconds at a time. That’s when I caught sight of the mottled blue woollen hat. I jumped, turned around and there at the other end, he was sitting looking at me. I stood up moving backwards and toppled into another traveller. I panicked at the door-open button and luckily the train was stopping at that moment. I got off, didn’t care where. I looked back at the train as it moved off from the platform, but I couldn’t see him any more, even though I knew he had moved.

I was a wreck then. I watched everywhere, but I never saw him. It was only when I wasn’t looking that I would see him. I tried to work as much as possible from home, avoided travelling anywhere. When I did travel, I always did it when loads of people were around such as at rush hour. Weeks passed and I couldn’t keep it up. I couldn’t keep hiding. But it was when I relaxed, when I wasn’t really looking, that I saw him. I saw him once when I was shopping and I hadn’t been concentrating on what I was doing, he was there in another aisle, staring motionless at me. Another time, when I was dozing at my desk, I spotted him outside my office, the crowds flowing around his motionless watching form.

I did contact the Gardai about it, but, as usual, they couldn’t do anything about it. The freak hadn’t threatened me, hadn’t even approached me, no breathing down the line or dirty calls. My stalker wasn’t considered a critical threat according to them. But I felt my life was under siege. I was trapped in our empty house and when I let my guard down, he would be there, watching. Once, late in the loneliness of night, I imagined that the stalker was John, come back from the dead for he was about the right build and height. That just shows you how fucked I was getting, all Helsinki-Syndrome.

I couldn’t live like this, a slave to my own fear. So it was one night, when I had been woken up by the screech of that annoying minger cat, I felt a strange determination. That part of me that wanted to flee was strangely quiet. It was replaced with something hard, something curious, something fearless. Without much thought, I grabbed my coat and walked to the front door. I paused briefly with my hand on the doorknob. I didn’t know what I was doing, just felt it was now or never, that I either stand-up or forever crawl into my bed in search of the bliss of forgetfulness. It wasn’t cold that night but there was a wind that nearly pushed me down the street. I had to hold strong and compose myself but then I followed it. I don’t remember how long I walked, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was only when a gruff a voice called out “ho!” I turned around to face the voice and I stumbled in shock. My eyes were deceiving me for I saw two scrawny monsters approaching towards me. They appeared generally human in form, but one had only a huge gaping mouth of sharp awful teeth instead of a head, the other one had two wailing bunch of tentacles instead of arms. They were approaching me slowly, like predators approaching a trapped prey. I couldn’t scream or even run, all I could do is watch these two things zig-zag slowly towards me.

Then the mouth-head leaped at me, its mouth wide open so that I could see the awful tongue that danced in anticipation of biting down on me. But there was a sudden flash and the mouth-head was rammed against a wall. Something was ripping into it, I saw a glint of a short but broad golden blade, striking down so many times I couldn’t count. Blood splattered the wall. The tentacle-armed freak seemed to move back in fear, and then this something with its golden blade was tearing into it. In less than a blink of an eye, I saw it gut the tentacle-armed freak in two, its innards spilling all around.

And then I recognised who this something was… the mottled blue woollen hat, the dirty tattered coat, the black beard… he turned towards me, in his hand the golden blade dripping thick red blood. I started to move away, my cold determination slipping away, lost in his fury of the blood. My stalker stood there, blood splattered across his face. He looked like he was waiting for something from me, he stretched out his hand for me. I was horrified, shocked and when he saw the fear in my face he recalled. I swear I saw tears as he pulled away. And in a flash he was gone and I fell unconscious to the pavement.

When I awoke, I was in a hospital bed. I was thankfully unhurt. A Gardai in plains clothes was sitting there asking me questions about what happened. Apparently the two “monsters” I had seen must have been a trick of the light or some weird delusion of my paranoid state. They had been two old drunk guys looking for trouble. They asked a lot of questions about my stalker and I told him everything, I told him how shitty he had made me feel, how locked in I felt and he just listened. And for some reason, I felt unburdened and when I went home, I dared to say, I felt free.

Three months later and it brings me up to today. No sign of my stalker, the fucker seems to be gone. I even went out with the girls last week for the first time since John’s death. I smiled today. It has been a year and a day since John’s death and it is beginning to feel like I’m coming out of the dark tunnel and letting light back into my life.

I woke up this morning, physically worse than I went to bed. Nose is clogged up and running, my head is aching and I had to get up twice during the night to take care of the baby so I had a distrubed sleep. But at the back of my mind, I was working through some system-design aspects of Lost Heroes RPG, unrelated to the writing I finished last night. I was getting thoughts and ideas and spent much of my work morning, writing up notes, when I should have been coding.

I finished V for Vandetta last week for the first time. (Not as good as Watchman, but still excellent. I’m spooked by the futuristic vision of Britian that the English government are so deseperatly trying to make happen… like this “for your own protection”). There was an article at the back of the graphic novel by Alan Moore about his creative process for V for Vandetta and he described the experince of knowing that you have something but you need to get at it and work it to get there. Waking up with those thoughts about the system design of Lost Heroes RPG was exactly that, my subconsiousness saying, “hey, you got something here so get off your arse and finished it.” It’s not mind-blowing and my subconsiousness failed to convince that I have something amazing, but at least I’m going to keep working on it.

It seems to be a slow process and the current volume seems gigantic compared to previous revisions. Maybe I should start putting pieces of it up as I go though I had hoped to get someone to read over it before I put it online. The website is certainly sitting there, waiting to be setup.

The second was that our main desktop computer stopped working. There is a light on the motherboard, but the fan doesn’t start, it doesn’t boot, no lights on the front etc. Now I normally write using my laptop, but the desktop computer is used a lot by my wife and with out last night, she was left restless. So ended up catching up on lots of our recorded TV.

But the best (and final) reason is that I got two new books. A gift from an anonymous Internet person for my free Wordpress plugin: tdomf. Both Alan Moore Graphic Novels: V for Vendetta and Watchmen. I’m not a comic person at all, but I have a few graphic novels (including all the sandman volumes).  And Watchmen is good, so I ended up spending the evening getting completely engrossed in it. 

I needed a short break from writing anyway. The bit I’m working on for Lost Heroes RPG currently was digging into my brain a bit and there was one night last week I couldn’t fall asleep, because I knew I’d have nightmares and I kept waking myself up (I lucid dream occasionally and can pull myself out of a dream when I need to… the really scare dreams are those that won’t let you wake up… but then there are other techniques to use). Is that a good thing that I have scary dreams about what I’m writing? Not even sure the writing in Lost Heroes is that good even. I’m desperate to get it finished and put it online. It seems to keep growing, the more I cut out, the bigger the rest of it gets.

Hmm… I just watched the trailer for the Watchmen movie. I haven’t finished reading Watchmen but I was able to recognise each scene that was shown in the trailer. What I found odd about the trailer was the feel of the presented scenes and the order they decided to present them in: it made Watchmen look more “action-packed” and “classic superhero saving the world” than how I’m actually find Watchmen which is more like “Taxidriver” for the superhero genre. But then trailers are made to sell a movie to people who may know very little about the original source… so it probably is misrepresenting it a bit. Not that I’m too pushed, chances of me seeing it in the cinema? Slim to none.

Of course, that doesn’t particularly sound impressive but I only realised today that I have managed to spend at least 10 minutes (if not up to an hour) writing every evening, after the kids are in bed, since coming back from my holidays in August. That’s pretty good going. I haven’t watched much TV, played much Wii or done much blogging because of it, but I don’t think that’s a great loss. TBH I felt last night I was justified in not actually doing any writing. A bronchitis and a fever are a good excuse aren’t they? 

Which means my long-time “secret” project Lost Heroes RPG is moving forward. I didn’t think it’d be this big (in terms of volume), I’m only writing up the setting. But once I’ve completed the setting, I’ll be making available for everyone to read. Hopefully writing up the rules and traits sections won’t be as long.

I think I’ve gone about it all screwy on this project because from the last few batches of new roleplaying games I’ve bought, they’ve gone for tight set of rules and small (or slight) setting. And here I am writing up this behemoth. In fact, looking at the volume in those games, I could split it into four-six separate games with the same set of rules, but we’ll see how far I get with this mythic-sized version.

I’m thoroughly enjoying it regardless. The great thing about it for me is that I keep finding myself coming up with stories and characters so easily after each large bit of writing. In my head I have a number of complete-plotted short stories and material for two novels… so even if my RPG barely gets noticed, I think I’ll find a good use for it. I’ll probably put together at least one or two short stories.

Anyway, I’m signing off so I can do some more writing!

PS. All this writing has made me forget to mention that I’ve setup the Monster FudgeRPG Feed blog. This is a blog that aggregates loads of feeds from blogs, forums, wikis and mailing lists about Fudge RPG system. Stuff every day in the feed. Since the demise of the FudgeList (and therefore the badly-named River-of-Fudge feed), I need something that pulled in all those existing blogs and forums.

Looks like we may finally shake off that “Drudge” misconception! Ann Dupius of Grey Ghosts setup this yahoo community: fudgecommunity and it’s been busy ever since. A lot of Fudge projects came out of the wood work and I even end up revealing some of my “secret project” LH, which is cool because I’m planning to get it out there in a free-ish format soon anyway. There is certainly a lot more openiness and sharing and I do hope it lasts. One of the best things though was that Ann spent several days online in the “official” chat and it connected a lot of the members, made the list a lot more personable.

If this is what killing off the FudgeList did to the community, then I wish they had done it earlier!

I still have Reboot, though I should kick Brad about where its at. Also my “secret” project L___ H_____ was a Fudge-based roleplaying game, that I’m quietly working my way through to putting it online, in some form of free (though originally I had planned to try and get it published). I’ve even already put some of it online on here (here and here) and even had Chris of Seraphim Guard interested in buying the rights for the Story Hooks bit. But I admit that I was beginning to feel that the FudgeList wasn’t going to be the place to announce it. In short, I’m not stopping being a fan of Fudge.

In the meantime, I plan to setup a small website that generates a monster FudgeRPG feed pulling in the known FudgeRPG feeds out there since the phoneyx.net one disappeared quite a while ago.

BTW for those reading from the Fudge community, you can see just my Fudge posts using this tag (or even better Fudge and Roleplaying posts using this link).  There is even unique RSS feeds, so you don’t have to read about Fringlish or TDOMF updates.

See ya all on the other side I guess, where ever that might be.

I also did some new ones, continuing to base them on my “secret” project L___ H_____:

I also pulled out my charcoal and pencil again, concentrating on contrast, making sure my pencil lines are right (kind of taking my tips from my ink work). I like what I produced, though I feel should have placed it in a background. I’m also getting a bit annoyed about the scanning process, it always seems to take from my pencil work. I should really look into improving it.

The first was a design I had been doodling for while, an icon for this website in fact, I like it so it may be appearing soon as a part of this website design!

This second one, was something more of a experiment with shapes and I liked what emerged. It’s very, em, primordial I guess.

I then decided to try and do an Icon for my L___ H_____ RPG project:

I really like it. It might even work on the front cover of a book, maybe. So I ended up trying to do a few for the different types of Gods in L___ H_____ RPG:

I had done a third one, but the lines came out wrong so I plan to redo it. The second one here also is unintentionally phallic so I think a redesign is in order. The first one works though and it’s quite cool too because you can turn it upside down and it still works!

I’ll probably do more, it’s sort of enjoyable way of design and drawing: methodical, creative and surprising. However, seeing them on the computer screen does change them a bit. If you like them, drop me a comment!