Art For Midwinter (Patreon)

Dear Heroes and Friendly Visitors,

Having a fresh newborn is a ride. I definitely recommend trying it out. You'll find reservoirs of strength and resistance to sleep-deprivation you never knew you had!

It took my wife and I a couple of weeks to find a pattern of cooperation, where the children remain fed and (mostly) abed and I can also prepare art and gamestuff for the stratometaship (and the OGA crowdfund). But, fortunately (and more thanks to my wife than me), we did.

Sometimes handling machines feels like three golem androids in a space bunny suit.

The big part of what I've been getting done over the last ten days or so is reviewing all the comments from the editor on the Vastlands Guidebook (the player handbook for the UVG and OGA). I had about 550 comments left to check (I'd finished about 200 before Baby MkII was born in December) and I got down to the last 2 now. These are on the content front, so ... art first.

I actually got a few pretty cool pieces done in the background. You might have seen them on some other social medias, but here they are again. OGA has blimps ... something UVG didn't really do. Still sparse on rules ... but they look nice among the ruins.

Some, like these yellowland quadribrachs, are still waiting for their scan-and-color moment.

Some overly-creepies probably won't even make it in.

other pieces are definitely making it in (though I might not be sure where).

as the editing gathered pace, I got around to doing spot art for the VLG. I know I'd plan to do no new art for it, but ... uh ... plans turn out to be incorrect.

Like these fellas here. I think that's a splintersuit on the left (next table) and the fella in the back is wearing an assault suit (also next tables). The other three are dryland weave, GRD, and chitin cuirass in order.

So, as mentioned - the guidebook. Right. I think I'm at the "plugging in spot art" phase.

... and coloring some BW pieces because it's surprisingly relaxing while watching over a baby with a sleepless-potato-brain.

so, uhh, is this update just art?

ayyup. Pretty much.

haha, look at that - scan artifacts on the edges.

Anyway, thank you for picture-reading this far.

Next week is lunar new year week here, which means I'll be taking care of the kiddos pretty much non-stop till the 30th of the month. There's a chance I'll prep a TSKNS or Map post just for the heroes over the next couple of days, but it's not a sure thing.

What is quite a sure thing is that they'll see the nearly finished beta - version 3.34 Dust Day (I've taken to naming and numbering versions for redundancy and out of sheer silliness).

I'm quite proud of it. It's looking good, the text is great (thanks editor and eagle-eyed heroes and goldenagers on the discord), and ... from the perspective of an inveterate tinkerer ... I've saved 7 pages for ... uh ... anything I choose to put in there!

Once I share that, it'll be your chance to get your ideas turned into random tables and such, haha.

Ok!

Pasta la vista, good humans! See you after the lunisolar event.

—Luka