So I’m going on holidays tomorrow, for a goodly period of time (but not too long). Can’t wait to get out of here and stop worrying about the recession, work, weather and everything else for a little bit.

I’m looking forward to it, not least because it’s time with my family but also because it’s time I get to indulge my creative hobbies, normally my drawing, writing and coding. No deadlines, no plans. In fact I finished off my One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge early because having a deadline was definitely focusing me but to the exclusion of all my other creative interests. Of course my family takes first place in practically everything (and I can’t wait to see my daughter again as she went ahead to spend a week or two with her French granny), but there generally enough time to get into stuff I don’t do at home.

I’m bringing my trusty/quirky 10-years-old laptop with me, but I won’t have internet access or even local TV. That’s fine for me. I’ll have a local webserver installed, so if I feel like it, I may work on TDO-Mini-Forms Wordpress plugin (not bug fixes though, but additional features and refactoring). I’ll have my sketchpad, pencils, paints and bright clear weather to work by. I already have a number of projects I’d love to attempt. And my old laptop with OpenOffice and an install of Bazaar allows me to write away with few worries (and I have a score of ideas and projects just waiting to be cracked open). I’ll even have the time to read tens of books, compared to the measly one or two books every few months I do the rest of the year.

I’ve also been recently getting into twitter (@thedeadone) and using it quite a bit, more so then I blog. But I’ve found I can twitter from my underpowered non-iPhone mobile so I may be sending some tweets and pics from my holidays. I’ve even setup my Wordpress blog (so that I can post from my phone too (thanks to a cool plugin called postie), so possible expect some short updates and photos here.

See you in a while!

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!

If only it was true. My nephew introduced me to his cousins by announcing I could draw anything. I wish. However I did, over the Christmas period, drew for him Spiderman, the Hulk and Batman that he could colour in. Certainly nothing exceptional, but fun to do.

I’ve also taken to doing lots of really quick sketchs these days. I carry a sketch book, a pencil, pen and eraser in my bag now. Sadly I don’t really get the chance to sketch everything I’d like to sketch, its simply not possible with small kids. You can’t tell them to sit and wait for five minutes while I do some scribbles on a pad. So in some cases I’ve taken to snapping a picture on my phone and then when I have a quiet moment, sketching from the image on the screen. Not particularly great, but the best I can do.

So I gathered up some of my best sketchs:

I find it’s fun and liberating trying to rush the sketch and just get something down on paper and at the same time trying to find the right details to capture what made you pick up the pencil. Something like the way to beat procrastinating about writing: just write something, anything, as quickly as possible. I’m finding more and more that I’m not just sketching the object, but whats around, beside and behind it.

I particularly like drawing the buildings in Paris. You just keep adding details and the picture gets more and more elaborate, the longer you’re at it.

The great thing about sketch books is that they are not just practice, not just reference, but also inspiration to yourself. In fact I’ve ditched my electronic PDA as my note taker and reverted back to an ordinary notebook and pen for those reasons. I can do little sketches, draw lines and arrows beside my text and the notes themselves become inspirations for my writing. And now that I’ve finally got my desktop back at home, I can finally get back to doing some serious writing again.

Unfortunantly I haven’t been able to write much these few weeks. The main reason is our desktop PC at home is waiting to be repaired and my laptop has become the only computer left in our house – so to keep myself and my wife sane, we’re sharing it in the evening. This forced me off the sofa and digging into my art stuff again.

(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’ve read a number of books on how to write and on the creative process of writing and the one piece of advice I’ve kept with me is that you should cultivate the things that inspire you and avoid the things that demotivate you. The trick is identifying what inspires you and what has the opposite effect. For example, a badly written book can be a great inspiration because after reading it, you think “hey, I can write something ten times better then that.” But for me, I find myself becoming demotivated when I read reviews of roleplaying books and blogs of prominent roleplaying designers and writings. I feel I can’t reach their standards and so it discourages me from writing my own roleplaying game/book.

Last night I finished a large section of Lost Heroes RPG, but I started thinking: “whats the point? I can’t write as well as the guys behind XYZ or that blogger over at that online community”. I literally fell asleep beside the laptop then, my body and mind saying, enough is enough, stopping pushing yourself, you’ve got a cold, you’re tired, life sucks, kids are asleep, give up. But I had to rouse myself and get the kids bags ready for tomorrow. Oddly this activity is even more depressing, my mind wanders as I’m getting everything in order, as if my higher level functions are not really needed for the chore at hand so they are free to evaluate and drift among my memories and feelings and I find myself getting even more down about my writing.

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.

I think I’m going to have to start a new section of my website: “Reasons why I didn’t write last night“. This week there was three pretty good reasons. The first was Alice, our four year old, got sick in school so I had to take her home early and work the rest of the day from home. (She’s fine night after a full nights sleep). Which meant I was tapping away on my laptop till late enough and seeing I use my laptop to write, it wasn’t looking like it would be enjoyable to spend the rest of the evening, tapping away on my laptop, writing instead of coding.

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.

Nothing at all. Not one typed letter. 

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.