deep ones - Skookworks.com

Some Fridays arrive heavily. Today is one of those.

I’d already set up part of this newsletter, the parts with the art and my comments about it, earlier in the week so I’ll lead with that.

A Quiet Seaside Town

If you’re read H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” or have played enough Call of Cthulhu then you get the joke. Explaining it won’t make it funny.

The colors evolved quite a bit as I worked on this design. I originally went with representative colors but that didn’t come across as either funny or creepy enough.

I put a green layer over the image but that didn’t improve anything.

I finally decided that simpler was better and a monochrome in conjunction with the color of the text worked best.

This design is available on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Process GIF

I like making GIFs. I like posting GIFs. If you thought I was done sharing sharing those sketches – sorry. I made GIFs for all of them. Here’s the first one. Another will be post each week until I run out.

These Days …

So.

Yeah.

A dear friend of mine will be gone soon. She’s been in hospice since April. Sarah used to talk to her every day. I talked to her as often as I could. I texted her every night. She hasn’t responded in a week. I’m not grieving yet but when she goes I know it’s going to hit. I can’t talk to her anymore. I’m told she’s mostly unconscious. Strong pain medications to handle strong pain. I’m writing down my memories of her and what she means to me. If I write something coherent, I will share it here. I know that many of y’all knew her.

Be good to those you love. We’re all just passing through.

It’s time to Friday like you’ve never Fridayed before!

These Days …

I made one of my customers’ HOA newsletters! Specifically, one of the residents took a photo of me as I put mail into one of their new CBUs (Cluster Box Units). For more than a year a big condo development on my route has been undergoing renovation. The buildings were constructed in the 70s and, almost 50 years later, needed some serious work. Construction crews have been tearing off the sidings, the roofs and pretty much everything else – replacing the old rotting materials with new shiny ones. As part of the renovation they installed new CBUs for the mail.

The CBUs come without master postal locks. Those locks have to installed by an official USPS locksmith using locks and keys specific to the zip code where the CBUs are located. In Seattle, I’m told, there is only one guy who installs those official locks. None of our stations get to keep locks on hand. In Seattle there’s a construction boom. New buildings are going up everywhere. New buildings mean new mailboxes.

Those new CBUs were installed on my route at the end of 2022. The locks for the CBUs were installed in April, 2023. But only for the boxes on 25th. The boxes on 26th are still waiting for their locks. Hopefully they won’t have to waiting until 2024. The old CBUs on 26th are a mess. I’m really looking forward to seeing them go away.

The Unpublished

For this week’s pictures I’m presenting galleries of illustrations from a couple of the adventures from that never to see print book of WW1 Call of Cthulhu scenarios. These two had nautical settings.

Medusa’s Garden

These illustrations were for a scenario in which American sailors discover the weirdly mummified bodies of a troop of Japanese sailors. The goal of the adventure was to figure out what had happened to the Japanese while avoiding the same fate.

In Which German U-boat Sailors are the Good Guys

During WW1 the Germans got painted with a lot of negative propaganda. In this scenario, the German characters got to be heroes, facing down halfbreed Deep Ones, a corrupt bishop, a cadre of worm sorcerers, and rescuing some orphan kids from sacrifice – twice. This is assuming the players succeed. In Call of Cthulhu roleplaying, success is not guaranteed.