This is the strip we did on stage at PAX East. Typically its manufacture runs virtually the length of the time allotted, but with all the extracurricular sketching he's doing it was like forty minutes or something. The cold was real, though: I had to bring someone a pass, outside, and only a few seconds out there triggered a fight or flight response. I felt the surface of my eyes freeze.
As someone outside all the traditional production-y roles for visual stuff, I find this kind of thing really interesting. Steve Hamaker, who did all the coloring on The Judging Wood and a bunch of other rad stuff, all over the place, everywhere, recorded himself coloring the last page and it's pretty fuckin' wild. My son winced when I typed the f-word there, but I assured him that this is how the truly hardcore comport themselves.
I’m still on my post PAX vacation but I wanted to post a few sketches since it’s Monday. First though I wanted to say I hope you enjoyed the Trill comics. I know our stuff can be a little hard to follow sometimes. We don’t like to start at the “beginning” of stories and we rarely stop at the”end”. I can’t speak for Tycho but I know for my part I like to leave room for people to interpret their own stories. What we do is intentionally loose and I know that’s not for everyone. I really love Trill and her birds and drawing her was so much fun especially in this last page. I guarantee she will be back again at some point. For now though we will be returning to your regularly scheduled PA strips.
The Judging Wood is only five parts - well, this side of the equation is, anyhow - and here is Part Four. I had to "know" a lot of things to work on the book, and some of that stuff is in this stuff.
I usually try and pick up a new game or two at PAX and I grabbed some good ones at East.
Part Three of The Judging Wood is now available, with a lush cameo prowling over from the other Daughters project, "The Tithe." We are the luckiest fans of this setting, I think.
We just wrapped up another PAX and I celebrated by sleeping until almost noon. I always have a great time at these shows but this one in particular was great. This year's Acquisitions Inc. will go down as one of my favorites. We had a few thousand people watching live in the audience and then another 15 thousand folks watching at home via Twitch. I cannot believe this is my job!
Part Two of The Judging Wood is now available for your perusal. One of the interesting things about having worked with Steve Hamaker as opposed to handling the colors in-house like normal is that his choices would not have been our choices. If we pull somebody in, though, we actually want to collaborate with them; it's not a straight up work for hire thing. I'm fairly certain the Owl here wouldn't have had dark feathers - I believe Grib was thinking of a snowy owl - and blonde hair with wildflower streaks weren't in the cards, either. We tend to use a more grim palette in general. This is a cool way to think of the Eyrewood.
It can be found right at this link! There'll be stuff there all weekend basically - including Sunday's Acquisitions Incorporated adventure, live at 1:30 Eastern Time - so give it a whirl.
Tycho mentions being inspired by a doodle in my sketchbook. This is the one he's talking about.
Professionals have a tendency to talk about weather in these sweeping, biblical terms. I had every reason to believe that I was walking into a situation like that in The Thing, a mostly inescapable ice hell, minus the super gross spider head thing. I guess I don't wanna jinx it or whatever, but jeez. There are piles of snow, old snow but it's melting. That's creating its own problems, particularly if you have an old roof, but I was expecting some Fortress of Solitude type shit and it ain't that.
Harmonix just announced Rock Band 4 this morning which is awesome. You can hit their site to read all the details. Tycho and I have always loved the folks over at Harmonix and I'm really excited to say that I got to design a guitar for the new game.
Like the comic says, PAX East is a big step for us in terms of testing Thornwatch. Previously we have run the game ourselves or trained Judges ahead of time so they could run it for folks. This time we're just giving people a box of pieces and a few pages of rules. Starting at 8:00pm in Tabletop on Friday and Saturday night we will be doing unguided playtests. If you'd like to play, watch or just see me go crazy, please come on down. We will also have a Thornwatch panel on Saturday at 1:00pm in the Dragonfly theater. Sadly this is not a "streaming theater" so there will be no Twitch broadcast.
It's all true, actually; the new Thornwatch playtest is completely hands free. Well, hands free for us. You will probably need your hands to roll dice, move characters around, or to physically strike allies who miss vital rolls - preferably with a gnarled old cane. Every other playtest he's ever done has been rigorously controlled, with hypnotically conditioned gamemasters whose subconscious programming ensures an optimal experience every time. Every couple months this process gives him an opportunity to feel terrified in a completely new way.
I know that usually Gabriel does these, but he is drawing a comic at the moment, and it's got every limb of his operating at 100% capacity. Here's the banner: