Observations of the Fox

It's been a busy month outside of the blog, but it has regularly been the case that I've had over 1000 daily visitors here (sometimes 1500+, occasionally 2000+).  Three things have happened this month that are newsworthy.  I've managed to get back in contact with Sasha Morgan, and this will allow a few more images for the SNAFU projects (the "Cookbook", the. "SRD", "Familiar", and "Walkabout"). I know I mentioned that in the last post, but a few more images have arrived and I'll be happy to share them soon.    My design protege, Erin, has received her first payment for a game on Itch. She has been making monthly games for about a year, offering them as free downloads. However, it looks like someone decided not to just download a game for free an has actually purchased it for the suggested $2 price. It may not be much, but I remember when I sold my first game about 30 years ago, and the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing I'd done so...

A few months ago, I showed Erin how I'd been doing some images to get an effect that looked like  etching or a woodcut. In the last couple of days, she's been working through a few pictures of her own. These will probably end up being used as a part of the Inquisitrix game that I've basically handed over to her. She's got some good ideas, and if she's happy to run with them, then I'm happy to let her. At the moment she's got more traction on Itch through her online presence there , ad I'm more than happy to support a designer who is enthusiastic.  Anyway, here's what she's been working on... I've also been getting a trickle of images coming through Sasha Morgan, from one of my old collaborators in the "Beneath the Glass and Steel" zine. They've been developing some interesting grungy pieces that will probably end up being included in the Walkabout game, and the SNAFU documentation that goes with it. 

Back in October I posted this ... It was the "soft launch" of Sceletus.  In the time since then, the little game that Erin and I designed has seen over 400 downloads. So that's a good sign. Like FUBAR, which has always bee free and has seen almost 10,000 downloads in the 15 years it's been available, I've discussed the idea with Erin, and we'll release a few paid supplements to expand the game in different ways. I don't know if these will sell, or if it's just the novelty of a free game that's drawing attention. But it will be a useful experiment to see if this is a worthwhile game to keep developing. I'm probably going to redevelop some ideas I've been finding in my notebooks recently, and offering them to Erin as a part of the ongoing development of this project. There's so many ideas there, and Sceletus is a big void waiting to be filled with wonder and nastiness.     

This notebook was filled with illustrations for the "Familiar" game I've been working on... I did it during one of the Inktober runs one year, but deliberately didn't use the specific Inktober prompts. Instead I combined two lists and whatever the pairing of word might have been, that was the direction the illustration went. Some of these pictures have been published already in various places (including here on the blog), others are being revealed for the first time (I think). A few of these were photocopied, distressed, spraypainted over, and modified in other ways before being sold as one off artworks for the Incognito Art Show last year (a cause that raises funds for art therapy and art classes for disadvantaged and disabled people in Australia). I'm happy with maybe half of the images in total, there are plenty of other images that aren't even being shown now. I might modify some of the images 

I knew it was coming soon, and it's like that thing where you watch the odometer of the car ticking over.. ...then...    ...I missed the moment.  There's actually been a higher number of views in recent months than there has been in the 16 years that I've been writing this thing.    I think the last milestone of 1.5 million happened some time last year, after a period when I though the views were subsiding and I was just going to give up on the whole thing. But all in all, it's just a number. I'll keep doing what I do, and if folks are interested they'll come to have a look.   

I'm pretty sure it was 2018 when I started working with alcohol markers, and like my last notebook, this one is the starting concepts for a comic book. This time rather than going directly to a laid out story, I began with a few character studies.  However, before we get to those bits, the first few pages set the context for the notebook. I can see an address which clearly suggests the year, because I was only living in that small town for 12 months, and some design layouts for some furniture I had intended to build because other pieces of furniture had died during moves of house.  Now we get to the character study... This was generally intended to be one of six characters that the comic was going to be centered around, where each of the characters interacted with two or three of the others, but none knew the whole group of six, and none knew the entire complexity of the story unfolding around them. The only people to know the whole story were a a narrator figure, and the audi...