Thursday, July 27, 2006

New Story Started (Kinda . . )

Well, I have some good news and some “bad” news (depending on how eager you are to see the new story). The good news is that I created the first page of Magnus Black, and I think it looks pretty good. The so-called bad news is that I won’t be able to work any more on the story for at least the next couple of weeks! The reason is that I’m maybe going to be moving to another city for a new job and I’m going to be without my computer for a while. The details are up in the air and I still don’t know if I’m getting the job. However, if I do get it, the job will start probably right away which means staying in the new city for a time while my wife and I arrange to move the rest of our stuff. Soooo, in other words, I won’t be able to do any more pages until all that is sorted out.

Of course, I could just put the single page up, but I’d rather not do that. My original plan (and what I will do once I get things going again) is to post 2-3 pages per week each Monday. However, I want to be sure I can do that on a dependable schedule so people won’t be wondering where the new pages are (if I’m unable to post them). Sigh. Well, in a few weeks hopefully all this will be water under the bridge. We’ll see!

Sunday, July 23, 2006

New Tshirts

I didn’t work on Magnus Black at all this last week – instead focusing on redoing the print version of Alexander and creating some new tshirt designs for my online shop. I also didn’t work on Imperium War! – well, I did a little, but not much.

As for the print version of Alexander, I completed the work on Part One and Two, and uploaded it to Lulu.com. I also worked on doing a combined book that would contain the entire comic. However, I ran into technical difficulties when I tried to convert the file into a PDF (both on my own computer and the one offered on Lulu). In both cases, the PDF attempt failed. At the moment, it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. As an aside, my wife told me that her nephew in Germany recently discovered the copy of Part One that I had given to his parents as a gift. Even though he doesn’t really speak English yet, I guess he liked the pictures. I will try and send him Parts Two and Three when I have a chance. Maybe somebody could read it to him.

As I may’ve mentioned before, I haven’t exactly been selling a lot from my online store. In an effort to increase my inventory, I decided to create a few new designs and redo some of my old ones, specifically the ones related to Imperium Chronicles. I had been doing an animated gif for my redesign of my homepage, which involved picking out some good images from Alexander. Using that as a basis, I created three new tshirt designs. I also enlarged the Imperium Chronicles logo on the shirts to make it more visible. You can see them here!

Lastly, I haven’t worked on my strategy game except for a few week paragraphs. Seriously, whenever I have to do any prolonged writing anymore, I can’t seem to get myself motivated. As I’ve said before, this was not always the case. However, now it seems to be a real problem, perhaps psychological in nature. I think I’m just afraid that nobody will want it and it’s just a big waste of time. The only question is whether I’ll make myself do it or just chicken out completely.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Magnus Black Title Logo

I got the print copy of the third part of Alexander the Prince (which includes chapters 10-13 and the Epilogue). There are a total of three printed parts, but the first two came out pretty dark. For that reason I used a little different process with the third one, and it turned out pretty well. The pages are much brighter (almost too bright), so it’s a lot easier to read and see the detail. I will go back and do the same process for books one and two so they’ll be as good as part three.

I’ve also been working on stuff for Magnus Black: Born in the Grave. I picked out a font for the regular text and another couple of fonts for the title (see below):

I also worked on the template that I’ll used for each page of the new story, and I even did some preliminary work on a redesigned main page for the website as well as the nav bar.

Lastly, the strategy game I mentioned (Imperium War) is coming along very nicely also. I’ve done the maps and the counters, and now I need to sit down a write up the rules. Frankly, that will be the hardest part, but I’m hopeful I can get through it.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Epilogue Now Online

It took me a little longer than expected (as usual), but I published the Epilogue this evening. This means that Alexander the Prince is now officially done!

Of course the question is: where do I go from here? As I already mentioned, I’m going to work on a new story called Magnus Black. However, I do have some other things going on as well. For example, there’s the long delayed and sometimes-ignored role-playing game based on Imperium Chronicles. And, most recently, I’ve been working on a much simpler game called Imperium War! This one is a tabletop-style strategy game about the war between the Imperium and the Magna Supremacy. It’s much less complex than the RPG so I’m hopeful I can get the strategy game done sooner and sell it on the web.