Drawn of the Dead

Believe it or not this project is still not dead; it just goes into frequent hibernation.

I pulled my graphics files off my flash drive onto my laptop's hard drive, making them more conveniently accessed. Consequently, I've gotten back into the swing of rebuilding the card graphics again.

It's slow going; there's a lot to rebuild. The last couple of evenings saw me make progress in the form of rebuilt Card Back designs, and reasonable progress on rebuilding the resource card faces. The resource icons are done; they were fully recovered, thankfully. But the actual resource card faces were not fully recovered; on a positive note though, there was one complete resource card face, and a partially complete resource card face recovered after the flash drive crash.

Last night, I prepared all five resource card faces for completion. The titles, shield colors, and main icons are in place; all that remains to complete them is to appropriately revise the building cost lists in the lower banners. Where the resource card faces are concerned though, that's actually the tough bit.

Hopefully I'll get the resource card faces rebuilt this weekend, ready to move onto something else soon afterwards. I know I still have to rebuild the Hex Tile Number Chits; those will be easy enough once I get to them.

Well, enough rambling from me for now; I ought to get back to work on it all.

The 7 Month Itch

I've been sitting idle on this project for a few months now; but the itch to get back onto it is setting in. I've got a significant desire to get back to work on this project. I haven't even rebuilt all the graphics that I lost when my previous flash/micro drive died on me; so I think that's the place to start. I'm also considering moving my project wiki to the new GRHG portal, if for no other reason than to just get a bit more content in that portal.

I'll post more when I actually get something significant done on the graphics rebuild work.

We Can Rebuild It; We Have The Technology

So, the long work to rebuild the collection of graphics I had previously created started tonight. Fortunately, thanks in part to this blog, I at least have most of the graphics I created in raster iamge format, that I can use as guides to recreate the images as vector graphics in inkscape.

I started simple by recreating the 'Iroquois Confederacy' border pattern that appears on the card backs, and on the Building Cost cards. It's a small start; but it's a start nonetheless.

Lost, But Not At Sea

In a most horrible twist of fate, this custom settlers project has suffered a serious setback; the flash drive on which all of the latest graphics files for the project were stored is pooched! Of course, being the bonehead I can sometimes be, I haven't backed up the drive's contents for over six months.

I'm lucky enough to have a much older version of the icons SVG file on my office computer; that file, at the least has the complete version of all the icons, and the resource card face design for at least one card. The card back designs, the Building Costs cards, the tile number chits, and my soldier graphics are all gone. I've lost a whole lot of work. Fortunately, I've got the one working SVG file; I've still got a bunch of my original inspirational/resource images; and I've also got the images I've posted to this blog to help me rebuild all the graphics to the point I was just before the flash drive crapped out.

I'm discouraged; but I'm not giving up. I've already ordered my new flash drive; it's a solid state flash drive, which ought to be more reliable. I'm also gonna be more diligent in backing up my flash drive, from now on; at least once a week.

Once I get the new flash drive, I'm gonna transfer the few files I still have and rebuild the project folder so that I can get back to work on recreating the graphics I had already done, and continue the project.

An Eye for Details

I finally managed to get back to working on the graphics for this project; specifically, I'm still working on the soldiers.

I had previously done a lot of the fixes to the soldier's eyes, to make him look better. Today, I decided to rough out a soldier card, and print it out at actual size to see just how it looked. As suspected, the soldier, once on the card ends up being so small, that a fair bit of the detail I put into the face becomes indistinguishable. Furthermore, the soldier just doesn't have the same whimsical style as the icons; ideally, I think that's a style that I would like to maintain in some fashion throughout the game's artwork.

So, I think it's time to simplify my soldier before I get too far along on him and end up wasting countless hours on details that just won't be visible, and that will create an inconsistent look.

I don't have an image to show this time around; maybe next time.

Soldiering On

It's been a while since my last update. Between the overtime, and the not quite up to par new laptop, it's been difficult to make a lot of progress on this progress. I have been working on it though, a bit at a time.

I decided to go ahead and work on the graphics for the soldiers. That's been a very interesting learning experience. I've never been very good at drawing people before; but the work I've been doing on on my first soldier is causing me to rethink that opinion.

All I've got done so far is the face; I still have to add the hair and ears before moving on to the rest of the body. Nevertheless, the result is very encouraging so far. It's more realistic looking, and less iconic, than the resource icons; but I don't think that's such a bad thing.

Have a look see at what I've accomplished so far:



I don't know how many hours I've spent on this one face so far; it's quite a few, that's for sure.

Of all the graphics to be done for this game, I get the feeling the soldiers are gonna be the ones that take the longest to do.

I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong with the eyes; or rather, I know what's wrong with them, I just don't know exactly to to fix them. I'll be working on that soon.

Aren't We Resourceful?

A couple of new developments to mention in this post; I'll start with the less visual one.

The playing card blanks arrived a couple days ago. They're thinner than I expected; reminiscent of playing cards you'd buy from a dollar store. However, it is definitely the kind of card stock that would be used for playing cards; so I've got high hopes for how things will turn out. The only thing that concerns me about the card sheets is the way the rounded corners of the cards are punched/perforated. The cards have a very tight perforation like most business card sheets; but the corners are not perforated, so much as they are punched, so the corners are kinda loose. I'm just hoping that doesn't pose a problem for the printer that I'll be using to print the cards.

Now that the cards sheets are in, I'm probably going to ramp up my search for a suitable coating medium. I may email the company from which I got the card sheets to find out what they recommend; in the abscence of the coating spray that they sell.

Now for the next bit of news, which still concerns the cards (gee, what a surprise). I finished up the design for the resource card faces. As I mentioned, I added a section at the bottom of the cards that shows the building costs for elements that can be purchased/built with each particular resource card. It looks pretty sharp, and should be nice and helpful. The icons in this bottom section are quite small, so much of the detail is lost; but when printed, they're still nicely legible enough to work.

Have a look see:



The resource card face design is pretty simple; it's the same shield shape as the logo on the back, with banners top and bottom for the resource name, and the building costs respectively. Simple, but elegant. I think this face design sets the precedent for the rest of the cards too.

So, other than finalizing the color of the card back patterns, I think that about finishes off the resource card designs; now to move on to the development cards. I'll probably design the five special development cards - the ones with the various buildings. I think those will be the easiest to design. Either that, or I'm gonna bite the bullet and get working in earnest on the soldiers. The way I figure it, I've got at least three designs to do for the soldiers; a french soldier, a british soldier, and an aboriginal/native soldier. I may want to do more than just one design of each though, so I might end up with a total of five or six designs. It's gonna be a lot of work, and I think that's why I'm reluctant to start the soldiers next.

Well, we'll see what I decide to start next, when I get to it; I'm ready to start the soldiers or some of the development cards.