Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Incoming art!!




Welcome back!

Good news on several fronts – Geoff is finished with the Periphery edits and our hard-working proofers have finished the Lyran and Capellan vehicles.

The layout mockup made use of the Heavy Metal Pro and Vee listings, meaning I have to go back and redo the listings for the vehicles of the Draconis Combine, Lyran Alliance and Free Worlds League, as they were originally (and laboriously) laid out in Word for a completely different format. I am nearly done with that, and have found some tweaks and so on during my journey through each House’s writeups. These should be easy for James Devlin to drop right into the final layout.

ERIANCE IS BACK! And he just dropped off $100 worth of good stuff. There is the re-done Federated Commonwealth Centurion and the long-awaited Capellan Culverin OmniMech. The Argus is in the wings and will be the last ‘Mech to be illustrated. I took a shot at getting an interior plate done by Eric, but this one will be in black and white. Eric is mostly into manga and anime-style work, so for those of you who are aware of BattleTech’s roots, this will be a tip of the hat to the origins of the big stompy robot.

Jeremy Pea should be coming up for air soon. He’s already submitted rough sketches for the Diatryma armored car and it looks promising. Likewise James Devlin, who has all the feedback he needs to make a go of both our online and print layouts. You’ve seen JP Sphagnum’s work; he’s working on the Zhukov. Mike Sullivan has his work cut out for him with a redo of the Crinos. Lee Madison did a stellar job with the Cortes, which was the header for the last post. Yes, the scale is correct – that is a six-ton tank you are looking at, with but a single crewman (eating peaches). Lee is busy with more good stuff.

Jim Lafferty is hard at work re-doing the art for the Fox, and has submitted sketches for that art. Meanwhile, I am making room in my budget for the final push. The interior plates are back, sort of. I put a six-week limit on their production, meaning the TRO will not appear before 1 November 2009. It will take that long to come up with the money anyway. As mentioned before, Alex Iglesias will be doing at least one of them.

I have sent several emails to Daniel Cherng and have not heard back from him yet. Although we have another six weeks to complete the art, I feel his lack of response bodes ill for the CM-33 ammunition carrier, and am going to commission it out tomorrow to a different artist. Sorry, Daniel. You had your shot.

On a related note, it was announced a few weeks back that several core pieces of old-school ‘Mech art (and their accompanying likenesses in pewter) were going to make a re-appearance. According to the Catalyst Games blog, there is a bit of a snag; without going into detail, it seems that a number of the most popular ‘Mechs taken directly from anime cartoons and movies are not going to show after all. The Marauder, Warhammer and a few others have been expunged from new Catalyst Games publications due to this unforeseen difficulty.

You all know my take on the Unseen, so I won’t abuse your eyes or your sensibilities with further rants. Suffice to say that this development will disappoint a few of you, but I took steps a while back to ensure we would not be caught with our knickers down around our ankles if the Unseen remained – well, unseen. It is one reason why I re-did the art for the Lyran Griffin.

That is all for today, folks! Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

4 comments:

Karyudo said...

I had a feeling that the Macross mechs would be trouble since Macross is still a running series out there. That doesn't bother me though. Love the mini-tank too. Almost reminds me vaguely of metal slug.

Anonymous said...

Love Eriance's work.

I've seen his other work on his deviantart page. What are the stats of the other "versions" of Centurion he had done?

Jeff

Doug said...

Check your email, I forgot about you for about a month. Racing and work can do that I guess... :(.

How do you plan to get your money back on this project? It seems like you are spending a good amount of money on this fan project.

Steven Satak said...

Well, I cannot sell it in any form, so I guess I will have to be content with the smiles of happy gamers and BT fans.

If you are really worried about my financial loss, just grin a little wider, eh?

Steve