Art Progress and a Special Note...

Hi.

Sunday brought us a single writeup from Geoff (the Merkava Mk V) with a new Notables section and a few needful additions and changes.

We also received the final draft of the Forge, which Jim is sick of looking at. He’s been working on it for quite a while now, and the bugs were finally run out of it. Looks pretty good to me, Jim, but I haven’t been staring at it as long as you have!

I shot a message off to James Devlin, our layout man, but have not heard from him yet. Some folks do their email at work, so he may not have seen it.

The Pea-man is working hard on his Leopard VTOL. Preliminary work and our conversation so far fills me with confidence on this one. I just finished shooting off a long letter discussing things pertaining to the layout of the machine. We are working off a pencil sketch, which makes radical changes a lot easier. I am also taking time on my laptop to more adequately describe and discuss the various features, so communications are better as well. I send letters as attachments, rather than trying to put everything into an email. I can discourse at length and Momma is happier, too.

Gotta work on the Blackjack feedback now; JP is in the inking stage for the Thug. I have an issue with the way the Blackjack appears in action. It’s like the damn thing is made of Legos! Perhaps I should have commissioned this one to David White – he’s the resident authority on making Legos look like they could get up and run. Have you seen his site? He does work for the Lego people. Pretty darn good at it, too.

No, seriously, JP has the job and from what I have seen of his work, is more than equal to the task. Sorry, David!

I have updated the TRO status report and will send it to anyone who is interested in the actual progress of the TRO in more detail than we give on this blog. Leave a note or send an email.

Doug, thank you for the tip on the publishers. I will see what they charge and what they can provide, and balance it against my budget. It’s a bit too soon to make any judgments, as I have not got a reply from James. All will depend on the final page count and whether or not he can create a separate print copy. After that, it is a matter of picking which options I can afford.

One more thing.

I want to make it perfectly clear to everyone reading this blog that the TRO: 3063 is not for sale in any format whatever. It will be published in PDF format and passed around the Internet for free. The intellectual property belongs to Catalyst Games and sundry other institutions. It is not mine and I cannot make a profit from anything I write about it at all, ever.

Ever.

Got that? So – if I offer artists and writers the option of getting a printed copy for themselves (and that is not a hard and fast thing yet), I will charge the individual for the price of producing the print AT COST. No more, no less. You will benefit from whatever price breaks I can wangle, but neither I nor anyone else will make a nickel from this work. And that is as it should be.

Yes, I have poured an impacted assfull of money into the art (about $800 and counting). Yes, we all have dedicated a few hundred man-hours to the writing and whatnot. Many of you are creating sterling work at prices far below what you would normally charge, and I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart.

Nevertheless, it is a hobby, a pastime, and I am sure there are many of you reading this who have spent more on your own hobbies – fishing comes to mind – so the idea of putting all that into a work which will fly around the Web for free really isn’t that strange. Consider it work experience or advertising, if you will. Which is why I (and many others) take such pains to make sure it is the best we can do.

Weather is a bit rainy today, but the grass needs a drink once in a while, too. I will post here when more work rolls in.

Take care and thanks for stopping by.

Steve