I’m super excited about my newest creative project, Building the Game: A Documentary Podcast. I’ve partnered with Jason from Imminent Entertainment to do this. check out the website to learn some more about it. Our first episode will be released June 4th.
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Almost two years ago my wife and a couple of her friends started a non-profit company to try to raise money to help pay for the funerals of children who had passed away unexpectedly. The Keriann McLain Fund for Children and Young Adults (the KMF) was named for my wife’s younger sister who was killed in a car accident in 2009. I am so proud of the work they’ve put into the project, and happy that they’ve trusted me to design so much of the visual presentation of the company. I’ve added a few things to my Graphic Design gallery that were put together for the KMF. The events they’re advertising have passed, but if you have a minute please visit their website and make a donation if you can.
Rob
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Ahoy there friends!
I’m back in the saddle here. I apologize for the long hiatus. We had a rough Fall and Winter with some real bummer stuff keeping me away from fun things like this. But I’m back in business. I’ve got a lot of new artwork to post. And an exciting new project launching at the end of May. So stay tuned!!!
Rob
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Just a quick update today. I’ve uploaded a copy of a sketch I did for my recent D&D game. It’s a tattoo that the players discovered on Mad Mathoth’s chest. I won’t go into details as to what it means, because they might read this! 
As the story goes, the “SVZ” mark at the top of the image was given to Mathoth by an evil Vampire Lord, known as Strahd Von Zarovich (D&D fans out there will recognize the name). With the mark of his House, Strahd gave Mathoth the ability to travel through magical mists that border his Domain. But Mathoth became intoxicated by this freedom and wanted more. So he traded his sanity to a Gypsy witch in exchange for the ability to travel even father, across dimensions and to other planes of reality. So the Gypsy added her image to the mark of Strahd, using its magic to make Mathoth’s desire come true. The consequence to Mathoth, apart from going insane of course, was that he could no longer pass through the mists. If he did, Strahd would find him and punish him for his trechery. So while Mathoth can travel at will to heaven or hell, he can never return to his own home.
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Good afternoon! Just a quick post today. I’ve added a new page to the site titled “Other Projects”. It’s going to be a place where I can put info about other stuff I’m working on. This is going to be mostly personal stuff, like maps I make for my D&D campaign. Or whatever woodworking project I’m in the middle of. I prefer to differentiate it mainly because of the personal nature, but also beacuse it’s not going to always be my original stuff. For example, the first thing I’m posting is a map for my D&D game:
This map is an original design, but most of the images and textures that I used to make it were pulled out of Google Image Search. I think its important for me to make that clear, so no one thinks I’m stealing anything. But also so no one thinks I created all of this from scratch. Creating maps using Google as a resource is a quick and easy way for me to put together a one-time use map for a one session game that still looks better than black lines on a wet-erase mat. Still, that all said, I’m really happy with the end result. Especially with the light from the gothic window arches on the floor. If I wanted to be extremely picky, I would’ve adjusted the position of the sunlight as it hits the tables along the top edge, since those tables are theoretically higher than the floor. But because this was for one short game, I didn’t worry about it.
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I’m back from Gencon, and what a great weekend! This was my fifth year in a row, and definitely the best one yet. I’ll try and talk about some of the great stuff I saw later. But really quick, here’s a quick list of the stuff I came home with:
Stone Age
Quarriors
Sentinels of the Multiverse
Hey, That’s My Fish!
Paizo GameMastery Faces decks 1 and 2
Plus a bunch of free stickers, lanyards, and random neat stuff. I also managed to either play or at least see almost everything from my list. So in addition to being a fun trip, it was exremely successful. I also met Jerry from Obsidian Portal. And bumped into Brad Talton, creator of Mystic Empyrean. He gave me a free preview copy of the new game! I’m looking forward to reading through it and hopefully doing a playtest.
Tomorrow I’ll be starting a new Ravenloft campaign with some friends. I think once that first session is done I’ll add a page on here where I can keep track of the maps and things that I design for this and other D&D games I run.
That’s all for today!
Good news! My business cards arrived today, so I’m ready for Gencon! If you’d like a free copy of the Business Card Board game, find me and I’ll be happy to turn it over. Send me a Twitter message and we can meet up. @poorly_designed
Thank goodness it’s almost here. Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading up on a lot of games and books that I’d like to buy/demo/check out and made a list. Here’s what I’ve got:
1000 masks book
Asmodee – Claustrophobia
Mage Wars
Glowfly Games Impossible Machine
Sentinels of the Multiverse
Closet Nerd Games - Cambria
Closet Nerd Games – Hibernia
Cryptozoic – Penny Arcade
Cryptozoic – Food Fight
Fantasy Flight – Deadwood
Flying Frog – Fortune and Glory
Hive
Paizo GameMastery Faces deck
Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond box set
Small World
Stone Age
The Downfall of Pompeii
Wizkids – Quarriors
Z-man – The Ares Project
Zombie State Games – Scavengers
Zombies of the World
So I have some goals. But who knows what’ll actually happen once we get there?! Damn I love Gencon!!!
It’s been business card central around here lately. We’re getting ready for Gencon, the most fantastic gaming convention in the world (my opinion, and a fact).
I was standing in the shower yesterday trying to wake up. My wife was at work. I was all alone. My new business cards had just arrived from VistaPrint a couple days before:
My Business Card - 2011
This design went through a lot of changes before it got to this. I wanted it to be striking, but uncomplicated. Ultimately I settled for working with part of a ph0to I took of a campfire during a camping trip, and combined it with a silhouette of my wife’s eyes, based on a photo taken at a death metal concert. I’m pretty pleased with the end result. Still, I couldn’t help but feel like I missed out on doing something more colorful.
So I was standing there in the shower when it hit me. I’m going to a gaming convention. I’m going to be passing out cards to people who are in the gaming industry. My business card should have a game on it. A complete and playable board game all on one business card. But could it be done?
I called my buddy Jason, a fellow gamer and Gencon enthusiast, to bounce some ideas off him. Together we talked our way toward the rock/paper/scissors mechanic. It’s simple and familiar and easy to communicate in a small space. Then I got to work. The end result is what you see here:
The Business Card Board Game
I’m really happy with the finished design. I tried to make it sort of comic-booky in the lettering and graphic elements, with the gesture symbols hopefully reading clearly despite their size. The back of the card is devoted to the rules. It took a lot of careful editing and rewriting to make them fit, but I think it works. 24 hours later, it is complete.
Now I just have to cross my fingers that I can get the cards delivered in time.
-Rob
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Wow, it sure is hot out there. Yikes. My office is on the second floor of our house, with no AC. I don’t have a thermometer in here, but it’s gotta be in the upper 90s. Now that the KMF project is finished, I wanted to buckle down and sort through our photography to get that page in good shape. But with this kind of heat I really can’t spend more than 20 minutes on the computer without sweating through whatever clothes I’m wearing. So for now I’ve taken the Photography page down. I’ll get back to it later in the year.
In the meantime, I helped my friend Jason out by putting together some business cards for him. Here’s the final design:
Imminent Entertainment Business Card
It’s a pretty simple and clean design. He really wanted his logo big on the back of the card so it would be really striking. I suggested that if he was going to do that on the back, maybe he didn’t really need the logo repeated on the front. Jason agreed, so I came up with an alternative for the title. I pulled in an element of the logo by using an ink stroke for the background, some really bold cinematic lettering, a heavy dramatic shadow, and a taper to the text which mirrors the taper of the ink. Of course the most important part of a business card is your contact information. So I chose a crisp and clear type.
Jason is the director of Atrophy, an independent film project currently in post production. I’ve done a lot of work for Jason and Atrophy, and you can see examples of that on the site.
That’s all for now.
I’ve been busy getting the Keriann McLain Fund’s site up and running lately. Take a look:
Now back to my own site. I updated the banner graphic. I have a feeling I’ll be doing that a lot. I also managed to add my Twitter feed over there on the sidebar. I sure am learning a bunch about WordPress. It’s about time I learned something about WordPress. I’m overdue.
Anyway, the next project is to get the photography page situated. Wish me luck.
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