Time for a quick update!

All the text on the cards were wrapped up by Sunday night as hoped!  This included the 30 something painted cards and a blank placeholder for the ones that have not been painted yet.

It turns out that there will be 8 blank cards in the set so I’m thinking of making them a couple of rule summary cards instead of leaving em blank.

With the basic decks assembled, I ordered a copy of the game from thegamecrafter.com (as the designer I only have to  pay manufacturing and shipping which makes it more affordable in case I need to do multiple iterations of some core mechanic (which I don’t think so .. but you never know))

So I just got the shipping confirmation email and the UPS guys say it should be here by Friday.  So that gives me a couple days to catch up on some pet projects and freelance stuff.

The plan is to get non sheep stuff moving in a very close to complete direction and then playtest over the weekend and then illustrate and paint like a madman starting some time next week with lots more play testing over the next month and a half.

Look forward to unpacking  photos this weekend and playtest impressions.

One final thought that’s been percolating is that the shipping container is supposedly kinda crappy so I’m seriuously contemplating adding a 10×16 board in the game that contains 2 full color tuckboxes (one for the cards and one for the tokens and die)  that the user would then cut out and assemble.    The downside is that it’ll make the price jump up.   So I’m thinking there will be a basic and ‘deluxe’ version for sale one for 25 and one for 30.  My profit will be about the same but one will come with a the rules printed out on cards and tuck boxes.

That’s it for now on the Card Game front.

However on the video game side of things: Stardock’s Elemental (their spiritual successor to Master of Magic) is nearing beta, which you can get in by preordering.  Also Section 8 seems to be developing momentum as they’re gearing up for launch.  The demo servers are pretty packed and clans are moving in already,  it could be the tribes 3 of the year.

Art wise:

Man, canvases sure are expensive.  10 bucks for a tiny 8″x8″ museum canvas at Michaels?   Well I dug around  and found a site misterart.com where they have way better deals (above 8×8 for 4.69)  So I ordered 2 8×8 canvases for GFW and bought myself 2 12×24 museum box canvases (less than $10 ea vs 35 at michaels)  that I have plans for.  But never having used the site before I’m hoping they arrive in once piece.

Ok so much for a short update.

Whoa, I’ve been a bad blogger.  It’s been over two months since I updated this thing.  Time to get back in the swing of things then.

So after finishing the monster of all paintings, creativly, I was a bit drained.  So I spent about a month not really doing anything.. just recharging the old batteries.  Then via Raph Koster’sblog I heard of something super exciting!

A couple guys had gotten together and done a Print On Demand website.. where you can print Games!

Consequently my brain went into hyperdrive and threatened to explode.  I glanced at  one of my little doodles at work ( a gigantic 3 eyed sheep stomping around a landscape) and my next pet project was born.

So here I am, a little over a month later, over 50% of the way there with the final art (drawing and painting in photoshop 125 sheep is a lot of work, it turns out.)  And the cards are 90% of the way defined.  The immediate goal is to have all the cards put in their final state by next Monday, and then order a playtest set, for tweaking the numbers and mechanics while I wrap up the art.

Here's some of the cards

Current statistics:

• Total Cards: 125
• Cards Drawn: 64
• Cards Painted: 44
• Cards Text Written:  75