Progress on ALL Fronts! And new Art!

Hello there!

Sorry for the tardy update, but I was waiting on several things in order to present a more optimistic blog post. Hopefully my artists and writing partner do not disappoint!

On the artwork front, several pieces of good news:

- Our layout man is still alive and his significant other is working on layout art. But more importantly, we now have an understudy training with him who already knows how to make what we need. However, the new guy is still somewhat rough around the edges - thus his status. These two, together, should be able to do a good job.

- Eric Ou has finished the two replacement versions of the Privateer. I am asking him to create a tank as well, but that will have to wait on other commission work he has to finish.

- As you can see from the illustrations (click on them to enlarge), we have permission to use art already in place for several pieces. Nathan Carlisle (ShamanX) and Dave Reynolds have been gracious and while we do not have new art from them, we don’t have to toss the original work Vlad sent. That is six pieces I do not have to sweat and which will not delay our schedule.

- The Lyran Vagabond writeup is done and is ready to go. The art is already complete. Whew!

- Ian Stead has created the basic chassis of the Roland Omni Tank.

- I am staying on Eric to finish the second version of the Isometrus. So far we have a pencil sketch, but he lost the original so he has to use my copy for inspiration.

- We are hard at work on the Battleaxe writeup, a Capellan machine that I mentioned before as the replacement for the Emperor.

- I believe I have gotten Alex Iglesias to either commission a new Percival or, failing that, get his permission to use the piece we have which is based on a piece he did a while back. I actually prefer the second option, as Alex works primarily in color and we’ve topped off on color pieces. And, well, Alex and his fine work do not come cheap…

[Update: Alex came through in record time AND in black and white. Thank you, Alex (as I flinch at the thought of the bill...)]

[New Update: Alex gave it to us gratis, no charge. THANK YOU!]

More Remains...

As you can see, I am making good progress, though there are still eight machines awaiting art. Specifically, there is the Panzer X (to be commissioned to Karl Olsen), the Katana, the Montgomery II, the Tomahawk, the Roland (commissioned to Ian Stead), the Percival (awaiting Alex Iglesias), the Urugan and the San-Ku-Chu. Some of these are mildly derivative, others blatant copies, and still others mimic current military machines. We are currently in need of a good black and white aircraft artist to re-do the Urugan jet fighter.

The ‘Mech art is under control – we’ve replaced copies with new art and I believe only one remains to be completed – the Isometrus.

Still on the back burner are the second draft of the Battleaxe and the daunting task of updating the TOC, Introductions and Index to reflect the new machines. After that, I will inspect the new writeups and generate the necessary PDF forms for our Record Sheet Annex.

Got to go!

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve