I received the print proof for The Stork the other day. It looks really good. It will look even better with the UV coating on the cover. There was a minor issue on one page (a thing strip of the image was in greyscale instead of color). Once that is resolved, the printer can do the full run. Continue reading →
Update 3/12
This was a short week as the first half was taken up by a wonderful trip down to Big Bend. And then I had to get caught up with everything the rest of the week. Continue reading →
Brief Update
Just a short status report on where various projects stand… Continue reading →
Taking Flight
At the time of this writing, The Stork has been funded for $1310, which is $210 above the goal. I am overjoyed and humbled and astonished by all of the support from friends and strangers alike.
But when it was only funded for $500, I felt the dread coming on. I worried that things wouldn’t work out and I’d let all these people down. I imagined all the sympathetic looks and the “ah, well at least you tried”s. I made up all kinds of things about what it might mean if the project didn’t get funded.
Then I recalled something someone said in a blog post a few weeks back. Excuse me, what I said in a blog post. About acting like it is a done deal and not giving up. A lot of things I write are directed at myself as much as they are towards other people. It is like having an emotional savings account to fall back on during rough patches.
So I decided that $500 was nearly halfway there. I decided that there was plenty of time and lots of people were just going to contribute later. I decided that someone was waiting until the right moment to make a dramatic contribution. As it turned out, all of these things were true.
I want to be less afraid. I want to trust any process I have set in motion. I want to have more faith in myself and in other people. It is happening, step by step, with the occasional explosion of wings unfurling.
Remapping Arrakis
I have made some progress on my custom version of Dune. I’ve got quite a bit of the board artwork done. I hadn’t decided on a particular style at first, but I knew I needed to at least have all the board spaces drawn out. So I re-drew all of the locations from the original board. As I did so, I started playing with textures, colors and effects. I went with more abstract outlines for the regions, more like something you’d see on a Risk board. My goal was to differentiate the types of regions and still maintain the desert planet look.
I still need to add some iconography and I may add additional texturing, but this is getting close to something I am really happy with.
You can click on the image for a larger version.
Here is the original board from the game, for comparison:
Talisman Revised
As a child, one of my favorite board games was Talisman, game of fantasy adventure that changed every time you played. There were even these things called expansions that let you add even more characters and monsters to the game. As with most things I liked, I took it upon myself to improve the game by adding my own hand-made cards and rules.
Even as a child, I recognized that there were flaws in the game and that it wasn’t realizing its full potential. The rules I came up with essentially turned it into more of a role-playing game, something more along the lines of HeroQuest. It wasn’t really Talisman any more. Continue reading →
Absolute Terror Field
I know this post should contain an update on creative projects, and there is a tenuous connection, but mostly I will be discussing fear. Also, I will be spoiling part of Neon Genesis Evangelion. But, you know, statute of limitations, folks. You’ve had 15 years.
While Eva is not my favorite anime, I believe it is the most important one. Its messages are manifold and continue to resonate. The series presents the concept of the Absolute Terror Field, or AT Field, as a protective barrier generated by the soul. It is one’s personal space to the umpteenth level. In an effort to protect itself, the soul has created individuality and even a physical shell to avoid contamination from otherness. As the name implies, it is generated by fear. On some level, the person, the individual, is always afraid of things that are not itself and must constantly assert itself from atoms to attitude. Continue reading →
Shout Outs to the Stork Video Supporters
I am grateful for my friends who took the time to either send in a video testimonial or let me record them for the Stork promo video. Here is a little bit more about them, in order of appearance.
Kristina Arntson – Kristina is one of the kindest people I know. She has her own acupuncture practice where she also offers adjunctive therapies including cranio sacral, massage, direct moxibustion, and nutrition. She can be found on Facebook here.
Marc Majcher – Marc is a busy guy. When he isn’t doing improv at the Hideout Theater or designing games under the Gizmet Gameworks label, he is cranking out code, which he will happily do for those inclined to pay him.
Kris Umlauf – The lovely Kris hosts fantastic parties and will give you the lowdown on restaurants all around Austin.
Reed Oliver – Reed is the front man for World Racketeering Squad, Austin’s premiere producer of nerdwave tunes. Go check out one of their shows and/or buy their album!
Thanks again, folks!
Origins of The Stork
When I went to see Pixar’s WALL-E, there was an animated short called Partly Cloudy before the film. It had to do with a stork who got stuck with delivering really challenging packages. It got me thinking of some shadowy agency which employed people called Storks to deliver metaphorical packages to people. Perhaps this guy shows up on your doorstep with a lost memory from childhood.
Then I thought maybe I could make a role playing game out of it. The players would play characters in this agency delivering packages as a way of working off a debt, kind of like the reapers in Dead Like Me.
But then it occurred to me it might be more interesting if it were a live action game like Killer or Capture the Flag, where teams of people had to make sure a package got delivered to its destination.
I’m not sure how it happened, but when I sat down to write down some notes for the rules to this potential game, I instead wrote the manual that became The Stork. It was one of those rare pieces of writing that I transcribe more than write. It just flowed out, almost fully formed. I made some tweaks to it, but the first draft ended up being really good as is.
Some part of me wants to create these shared experiences, these abstract dreamlike ideas. I’ve found the best way to communicate them is to squeeze them into the shape of a story or a game. The structure is just a handle or a frame, a label so that other people can (hopefully) understand what I’m trying to tell them.
The Stork has launched!
Thank you Kristina, Marc, Kris, and Reed for the testimonial videos. I edited everything this morning and put the video up on the Kickstarter page.
Time to launch!