A summary of the week...

Hey howdy!

The past few days have brought some additional edits on Periphery Vehicles by Geoff; additionally, he tackled the Federated Commonwealth’s Cheyenne III and Dragonfly. These last two have been tweaked for readability and accuracy, including the technical bits which describe the unique lift arrangements. The Cheyenne is modeled on the Bell XF-109, among others. The Dragonfly is modeled on a tail-sitting French design, the Coleoptere. Both read quite well and are based on actual machines which might have worked quite well if blessed with the fruits of 31st century technology.

They look even better now that artist Mike Sullivan has finished working on them. ‘Sweet’ does not begin to describe these pieces; you will have to see for yourself what this man hath wrought. He begged me to give him a break from VTOLs, which is fine since there are none left to illustrate. I will send him the Crinos I tank. A quad track design, I think it will be intriguing to see what he creates.

Our inimitable Lee Madison has been hard at work, but real life issues have forced a bit of a break. He is currently creating the Cortes and the preliminary sketches look good. It is not easy to make a six-ton tank look effective in 3063, but he is pulling it off with panache.

The Pea-man has also been busy working on the Leopard VTOL, a conventional rotorcraft whose art is anything but run-of-the-MIL.

I have issued emails to our other artists for an update on their progress; there should be some response in the next day or two. Forgive me if I lapse and forget the initiative is on my side (ie: I was the one who was supposed to contact you with the feedback or new writeup) . Losing the main computer along with all my tools is a bit of a shock. However, all of it was backed up to a thumb drive and that is my working platform for now.

Our layout man, Jim Devlin, has sent me a two-page mock-up of the layout art. There are some issues and fine-tuning to be done, as might be expected. It looks really good, though white letters on a dark background will play hob with the printed version. We’ll work things out.

One benefit of the two-page mockup is that I discovered issues with the writeups he used and have gone back to correct them. Otherwise, his presentation of the designs was excellent, especially the section which lists information in the same format used by Rick Raisley’s Heavy Metal Pro and Heavy Metal Vee building programs. It should be a snap for folks to enter this data into their own copies of HMP and HMV (and others like them) should they care to use the TRO’s machines in their own game.

Wow, it’s sprinkling out. About time.

I finished the text for the back of the TRO. Sent it off to Geoff for the usual butche… er, editing. No, really, he will take what I am shooting for and improve on it immeasurably. Speaking of things which cannot be measured, Dan Eastwood of the blog Giant Battling Robots has kindly tweaked my Trebuchet writeup (all to the good, naturally) and even gone in and brought the art up to par with the listed warload. It looks nice. And since what he added was round and very like a balloon, I am 100% behind it. Medals for everyone! If you want a look, go over to his blog and have a look at the latest post. I think he did a great job, and you have to look really hard to see what was changed (hint: the MRM launcher tubes in the left arm).

He did so well, in fact, I have debated sending him more writeups; effectively he will be another proofreader. Yes, I know. We already have some. Well, a few more won’t hurt, as there are 99 pieces to work through. We’re only about half way there in terms of ready-to-press writing. What do you say, Dan?

I have an up-to-date list of the people I owe for finished work and all debts will be paid by 31 July 2009. No, really. The check is in the mail!

Right. Well, my Inbox is distressingly empty and the weekends are not known to be especially productive in terms of finished work rolling in, so until next Monday or Tuesday, take care and be well. Have a good weekend and thank you for stopping in.

Steve