Mighty

This blog is about me, the stuff I do, the things I like, and whatever else I want it to be about. Today I want to talk briefly about something that happened yesterday, completely unrelated to anything I normally post here.

Our dog Thor has died. He was a very small chihuahua. He was about 12 years old.

For the past year, he was very slowly declining. It started when he stopped being able to jump up on things. We got a dog ramp, which helped. But lately he was even struggling with the ramp.

But he was still pretty spry. He had a healthy appetite and barked a lot. He was fully mobile other than vertically.

He was my pal. If I was on the couch, so was he. He was not a player... he didn't have toys. He only had his people. The other dogs are toy fiends, but Thor couldn't care less about that. He wanted the treats and the snuggles and to bitch about the neighbors.

I loved him. It was a sudden, unexpected death. Based on our timeline, he was barking at the neighbors and doing his thing, then he was dead less than an hour later. When I found him, he was still quite warm.

Rest is peace, you annoying little friend. The house feels emptier.  

Artists I Like: Alexi Gorboot

Alexi Gorboot (Алексей Горбут) is an artists I know almost nothing about other than seeing his work on Instagram. It's van art ready-made for a blacklight and done up in a comic book style I really adore. He doesn't appear to have a website, so his main point of contact is socials like Insta and Facebook.

He has an intentionally classic-looking comic book art style with flat, vivid colors in the vein of someone like Skinner or Jason Galea. But I think his primary inspiration is simply old comic books. The colors in old comics are famously very flat and vivid (though faded and halftoned, depending on the era). I think Alexi is consciously emulating that vibe. I dig it.

Sketchbook Caramel

Another batch of recent sketchbook drawings.

 

Artists I Like: Frederick Moulaert

I was a teenager in the 80s when Helloween dropped. We didn't say "dropped" back then. I was 16 when I saw their video for Halloween on MTV's Headbanger's Ball. I'm quite sure being on the Ball is what propelled them into fame.

But this isn't a post about Helloween. It's a post about the artist Frederick Moulaert, a Belgian who drew lots of fun cartoony art for the band Helloween. I had completely forgotten about those ad spots and CD case drawings. But dammit, Frederick was killing it in those days. The one that stands out in my memory the most was of a woman leap-frogging a pumpkin. You know the one, you metalheads out there.

So it looks like Frederick has his time in the spotlight in the late 80s, in terms of doing heavy metal art. Then he moved on to other things and currently I believe he's mostly a website designer. My selfish brain badly wants him to do a bunch more lowbrow comic art, though.

In terms of style, he's solidly European. He did some art for Fluide Glacial and Spirou. His work would fit perfectly into an issue of Heavy Metal, but I'm not sure he ever did anything for that magazine.

Sketchbook Warble

A batch of sketchbook faces.

 

Sketchbook Upchuck

Another batch of sketchbook drawings.

 

Artists I Like: Waldemar Kazak

I can't remember where I first laid eyes on the work of Russian artist Waldemar Kazak, but I know I liked it. His paintings are like looking at "what if Norman Rockwell painted beautiful women, airplanes, and weirdos?".

From perusing the artist's Facebook page, you can see that he draws a lot. Like... he puts everyone to shame with how much he draws. His approach is naturalistic. He posts a lot of color sketches of local parks and scenery, life drawing, as well as his whimsical illustrations. And he is able so shift between that immediate, naturalistic style to a more commercial, vibrant style with extreme cartoon exaggeration.

He also posts a lot of concept imagery of some unusual cars. I don't know what's up with that. I think he is a professional concept artist.

Check him out.

Sketchbook Rampage

Even though this Vanrtto sketchbook is kind of a piece of shit (the binding is falling apart), I've enjoyed trying to fill it up with random doodles. Here's another batch.

 

Doomslakers RPG 02

A brief note about adventures and "game support".

I like making game books, then moving on to the next thing. I never made a GOZR expansion or source book partially because of this and partially because holy shit that game was labor-intensive. Hand-writing an entire RPG is kind of fucking hard. I am proud of the work. It's probably my favorite single book I've ever created. But I'm not likely to do a follow-up any time soon.

My biggest regret with GOZR is that I didn't include an adventure. In my mind, I was including tons and tons of adventure ideas and resources. Hell, the whole book is a toolkit. But I think including a fleshed out example would have been good.

Anyway... this is one area where I hope to do a better job with Doomslakers. It's still very early in the process, but I'm hoping to create at least 1 or 2 adventures for the book and another couple of adventures to publish as follow-ups.

But also, I know me. Once I finish this game and publish it, I will likely want to work on anything else OTHER than this project. I'll need some space from it. So the goal, right now, is to finish the book and some adventures at the same time rather than try to circle back and do the adventures after the fact.

Sketchbook Roundup

This Vanrtto sketchbook has toothy paper, which I complained about earlier. But I'm having fun with it. I think when I realized it was so toothy I didn't care about what I drew in it, which was kind of liberating. The grainy paper gives a nice, organic feel to the brush strokes.

Here's a batch of recent doodles.