It feels appropriate that this New Moon in Gemini a great number of things that have been in the works will truly be beginning, if only to serve as a springboard into something more… and I’ve been hard at work juggling what I could this week in preparation.
For my disclosure on this or any of my posts or pages… please visit my Disclosure page.
The big relief in a way was that I managed to at least get the B&W character sketches for the four PCs wrapped up in time for tomorrow’s big debut of Episode 1 on the Red Moon Roleplaying site/feed. It looks like Ep1 will debut with the new moon and Ep 7 will complete on the 2nd full moon of that 7 week period… I couldn’t have planned it all better on purpose.
So, while I’m fairly happy with how these drawings turned out, my plan was to actually clean them up much more than this, and also color each of them, so as to them be able to mock them up slightly differently each week to create the promo for the latest release… but I had other concerns this week (later on that) and knew I wasn’t going to get to all that by Tuesday, but with these done at least there’s something to share/post as well to help promote the episodes…
Jenny and I have had plans for a while now to go camping this weekend with friends way out in Western Maryland at Rocky Gap State Park, which actually proved to be an above-average campsite for Maryland. Our friends also serviced us each with a stack of lucky wish paper she’d picked up while in China, which we gratefully fed quite a few pieces too, though I also held onto a few for later use as well…
It’s a yearly tradition of ours to spend at least one weekend roughing it, and while we had the usual nature-based challenges (like it raining the night before we left) my absent-mindedness this week meant I forgot to pack more than a few useful items I wound up missing, and my inner Scout’s motto of “Be Prepared” was chiding me all weekend. Thankfully Jenny was all over this trip, and prepped the hell out of it, making sure we’d be set for all the eventualities… and more than once we totally were.
And while we were sure to take in a bit of the natural beauty the park had to offer, I’d actually brought my drawing supplies along with me to camp, and so while our friends were off hiking, and the wife was partaking of a mid-afternoon nap, I was able to hammer through enough of the shadows and tonal work of the character sketches that I’d eventually be able to get them somewhere serviceable once I got them into the computer…
Magi Dante Harkadies: aka “The Swarmer” (voiced by Red Moon Roleplaying’s Hjalmar Nordén) with Nix his falcon familiar
Virgil St. Frostkiss, the Inquisitor (voiced by Red Moon Roleplaying’s Craig Austin)
Could you tell I used Facebook pics of each of the actor’s actual faces when creating their character’s alter egos..? Well, I did…
But, even though I’d made decent progress with the PC art, that wasn’t enough, and the whole trip I was totally paranoid about not having any promo art for review before the show debuted. Mattiaz ended up suggesting an idea I’d also considered, and so ended up pursuing it, and used the actual cover art to the Well of Worlds anthology (where the original To Baator and Back adventure appears) as the basis to mock up the promo art we’ll all end up using to promote the episode come tomorrow…
Maybe not exactly what I was hoping to put out Week 1, but I think it’ll do…
In truth though, the real reason I wasn’t able to work on the art more this week is I was busy putting together some writing proposals I’m hopeful will lead to some more work. I don’t dare risk saying any more than that, except I spent the week fleshing out a handful of story ideas, both from my
Pitch List, as well as writing out a handful of new originals from off a page full of brainstorming…
It’s off to the editor in question now, and so that material will be his exclusive purview for now at least… though sooner or later I’ll be adding all the new/updated material I’ve created to my list, which I’m hoping will get even more exercise in the future…
But, all this excitement aside, I’ve got other stuff to plan for this week as well. Aaron and I are planning to try and knock out the recordings of two episodes of Adventure Hook this week so we’ll be able to build up more of a backlog of material. We may also try to get a Legend Lore done this week as well… or we may just release the (previously unreleased) Part 2 of our Legend Lore discussion concerning Red Moon out instead, and push the next Ravenloft masterclass to next month…
Aaron was also supposed to have finished the edits on Episode 26 last week, but his new duties at Vertigo comics have to take priority, so the 6/3 iTunes release date is definitely getting bumped…
Which is actually OK, as I wasn’t even able to get Jim to schedule the game that will eventually become Episode 26 of Blackspire (which technically should have come out on Patreon this week) until this week. BUT, as this is supposed to be an Epilogue episode anyway that bookends the end of Season One… and sets up that releases won’t be a regular thing in iTunes anymore, just on Patreon… it doesn’t really NEED to release right away.
I’ll get it out when it gets done and not before. I’m also excited for this next episode with Jim, as we’re going to bring Jenny into at least part of the meta discussions, as we talk about where and how we want to go into Season 2… before we play out the Epilogue adventure: “Kippa’s Big Day Out”.
And then this Saturday I’ll be running Blackspire Side Sessions 3: Killing Zarathusa (Part 2) which will end up Patreon only stuff. Last time it was getting a little edge-of-your-seat exciting) and this session promises to be downright epic. I’m mostly already prepared for that session already, but wanted to refine a few things a bit before we started play again.
Hopefully with all of Adventure Hook, all of Blackspire Season 1, and now with the Red Moon stuff dropping I’ll finally start attracting some real support, both just on a like/review/share/subscribe level, but particularly Patreon, where it’s just my storytelling alone that’s enough to get people to want to listen, and even engage and help to shape and grow it.
It’s got so much potential. And I feel I’ve put in so much work now to help it reach it. I’m sure there’s more I could be doing. Should be doing. I just don’t know what that could be, so I guess there’s nothing left to do.
Time to let go and let it do its thing…
Go do your thing.
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Monday 6/3/19-
Sun: Gemini–
Moon: Gemini (NEW)
If you’d like to start from the “beginning” of all this… you can read from my first blog post.
For my disclosure on this or any of my posts or pages… please visit my Disclosure page.
