Tag Archives: Chaosium

Tuesday Night Party Club #46

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Gallery – Strange Aeons

Ah, Strange Aeons 2. The project that launched my most read blog post. If I’d had had sense this either would have been my last project with Chaosium or I would have insisted on being paid upfront from then on. If I had had sense …

Chaosium’s assignments were always fun and they gave no significant editorial oversight so I accepted further commissions. And had to deal with further late payments. Silly me.

Strange Aeons 2 was a collection of Call of Cthulhu scenarios by different authors set in different time periods in different parts of the world published in 2010. The variety made the project fun. My complaints only occurred after I’d done the work.

Story Seed #95
The Price of Redemption

How does a monster find redemption? I’m not referriing to nonhuman monsters – King Kong, dragons,giant ants, whathaveyou. Forces of nature don’t have sins that need absolving. They can smash a city in one story and save humanity from alien invasion in the next without causing a lot of cognitive dissonance in the audience. Human monsters, villains, shouldn’t get such an easy pass. For people, hurting others is a choice. Choices are conscious decisions.

Fiction, especially the adventure genre, is filled with villains. A good villain makes the story more interesting. With series (novels, comics, television, movies) the hero usually faces a different antagonist each episode with a few “archvillains” making repeat appearances. In horror fiction, the “villain” is often the most interesting part of th story. Whole movie series are built around the villain with the hero rotating out with each new installment. Villains become “anti-heroes”.

A bad guy who becomes popular often has their sharp edges shaved off. They get a tragic back story that explains why they’re driven to do bad things. We might learn that their victims were also bad people – perhaps worse than our popular bad guy. Our bad guy might start acting more decently. The really horrible things they did when they were first introduced aren’t mentioned. Those actions get forgotten. Our bad guy “reforms”.

Except that’s not really reforming. The popular bad guy gets a pass for his bad actions because now he has fans. They themselves don’t address their own past actions. They don’t come to terms with the damage they’ve caused. “I tortured and ate your family? Oops. I don’t do that now. I only kill evil people these days. Get over it.”

There are stories to be told of how a human monster comes to terms with their past and makes restitution to, if not their victims, then to greater society. Stories less about how they are forgiven than about how they become forgiveable.

Recommendation

Yes, I did the cover illustration for this book. Buy it for that reason if you like. I’m recommending the book because it’s well written and very funny. For more info and a chance to pre-order, click here.

Local News

The cold and the wet has returned to the Pacific Northwest. Our station manager managed to get our start time moved back to 7 am from the 7:30 we’d been stuck with for the past few months. Maybe I’m getting a cold. Maybe my body is just complaining.

When I started working at USPS I Ididn’t have time for much other than the job. I did very little art. I put a hold on commissions because I had no idea when I’d be able to finish them. I didn’t post here for a year. As I got used to the job I started working on black and white images to get used to drawing again. Quite a few of those featured the Mighty Nizz aka Little Red.

I’m currently adding color to those illustrations and adding them to my portfolio at Redbubble. They are a bit of an odd size. When I originally did them I was thinking about getting art done not where that art might end up.

This:

Becomes this:

This:

Becomes this:

I’ve got another half dozen in process. I will post them as I finish.

Thank you for dropping by. May you have good books to read, good food to eat and good friends to keep you company – even if you can’t see them in person. See you next week!

Tuesday Night Party Club #44

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Gallery – Terrors from Beyond

Terrors from Beyond, in 2009, was my third interior illustration project with Chaosium. This time I got to do a lot of ull page illustrations. That made for some breathing room in the art.

Story Seed #93
Wake Up New

You go to sleep. You wake up in someone else’s body. The body might have belonged to your next door neighbor or it might have belonged to someone on the other side of the world. You have only your memories not those of your new body’s original owner. So if you were a 30 year male taxi driver in Pittsburgh when you went to sleep, waking up in the body of a sixty year old woman goatherder in Botswana would be quite a shock.

This happens to everyone. You can put off the transfer by staying awake but you can only stay awake so long. Go to sleep, wake up someone new, somewhere else.

At first, civilization is going to grind to a halt. Civilization relies on skilled individuals doing specialized jobs. Communities and cultures rely on people sharing the same languages and customers and general knowledge. At first there would be panic.

But then?

Human beings are adaptable. We can manage change if we put our minds to it. What kind of society could grow from a people who are someone new, somewhere new, every day? Could we develop a common language? Could we manage our complex infrastructure? Are there skills that can be used regardless of the body you find yourself in? How do you prove you’re you? Does it matter?

Recommendation

Storyink Studios is the Etsy shop of Teresa and Jeff Swenson. They are delighful, creative people. They make stickers. Take a look!

Local News

Today is the final day to vote in the USA. Normally election seasons mean that I have to manage a lot of political flyers and advertisements. This season was surprisingly light, at least in my USPS station. No stacks of mailers for either presidential candidate. No stacks from either candidate for the Governor of Washington State. There were mailers for a couple initiatives but even these didn’t seem as overwhelming as mailers have been previously.

And that’s fine. I’m still doing overtime but mostly on my own route. General mail numbers have gotten higher lately. Amazon continues to send us a large volume of parcels. Many of those parcels are oversized boxes that can’t be carried in my satchel and so require me to take the extra time to car hop the parcls directly to the delivery address.

Artwise, I’ve finished both the pirate character illustrations and the cover for the novel. I’ll share the cover when the book is actually in print. The final version is likely to be different that the last version the publisher sent me. My job was to do the illustration. They were handling the type layout and design.

Next up is a portrait of someone’s RPG player character and some concept sketches for another person’s novel. Then a series of character illustrations for an RPG sourcebook set in North American Colonial times.Given that the mail and, especially, the parcels are only going to get heavier from now until January, that project will likely continue sometime into 2021. Does that throw off my plans to just concentrate on producing work for and marketing my online stores? Of course! But adjusting to change is life.

Daylight savings happened on Sunday. My body will be taking a few days to get used to it. I’ve woken up an hour before my alarm both Monday and today.

Thank you for dropping by. I hope that your week goes well and that you are able to celebrate some victories. I get through the days by celebrating the small ones. A sketch finished. A meal made. A bill paid. A swing completed on my route. Big victories are stacks of small ones. Celebrate your small victories.

 

Tuesday Night Party Club #43

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Gallery – Mansions of Madness

The first interior illustrations I did withr Chaosium was for Basic Roleplaying. My gallery of that work can be found here.

My second interior job was in 2007 for an updated edition of Mansions of Madness. I illustrated a scenario featuring of family of inbred weirdoes.Some of these folks were hideous but harmless. Others would happily have you for lunch.

 

Soty Seed #92
Floating

Have you ever had a dream where you remembered that you could float? You start to swim through the air. You never get very high but, as long as you remember you can do it you can move without having to touch the ground. When you forget you can float gravity pulls you gently down.

Imagine that people develop the ability to … not exactly fly but to defy gravity as long as they think about it and make some effort. They can still walk and stand and sit but they can also swim through the air. How would that affect the world? How would that affect the way we interact with each other?

Recommendation

I know that Halloween hasn’t passed yet, much less Thanksgiving, but if you’re the sort that likes to get ahead of things you’re already thinking about Christmas. And if you the sort who likes sending weird Christmas cards take a look at these offered by Studio Wondercabinet. I used to have breakfast with a lively group of folks including Heather and Daniel on a regular basis. They are talented, delightful people and well worth sending your money to.

Local News

The biggest thing that happened last week was me starting to wear my new glasses. My sight has been getting dodgier in the last year. Things were appearing blurrier in both the near space and the distance so I finally got my prescription updated.

I got two sets of glasses, a reader pair and a pair with graduated lenses for general use. I didn’t use either pair at first. I’d gotten used to drawing and working at the computer without them so I kept forgetting about the reader pair. I really only started wearing the reader pair after I started wearing the general pair delivering mail.

About a third of my deliveries are mounted – that is, I drive my truck to a mailbox, pull the mail out of trays on my left and then insert the mail into the box through my right side window. The weather has been gettig grey, more clouds and light rain and, with evening arriving soon, most of the daylight has been dim. It’s hard enough to read the 10 point (sometimes 8 point) fonts on the mail in regular light much less twilight. I was starting to have to hold the mail up to my face before I passed it into the mailbox. Not only did that make delivery slower it felt embarrassing.

Wearing my glasses while doing the mounted part of my route makes a huge difference. I can read the addresses in the trays. I have to drive a little slower because I’m not used to how the glasses make the rest of the world look but that’s fine.

Once I’d started wearing the glasses at work I thought to try them out at home. And now I can see the details in the television shows we watch in the evenings. And I can read the titles of the books in my library from across the room. Walking while wearing them is still a little weird. I don’t wear them while doing the walking parts of my route. They throw off my proprioception.

I hope your week has gone well. Thank you for reading. Take care of yourself and those you care about. Practice floating.