Whew!

It's been a bumpy few weeks on the creative side of things, but I think I'm back on track... here are a few updates:

1. The Shakespeare Deathmatch cards took much longer than I expected, and were more labor-intensive than I imagined they'd be... and I'm still not sure they're going to print correctly. I spent several nights playing with Scribus to try and get the layout going there, to no avail. I think that might be the single most counter-intuitive program I have ever used. I tried a number of tutorials, and every time I'd get close to getting a card layout finished, I'd click in the wrong spot, select off the field I was on, and not be able to get back into it to make adjustments and fix it. I know that there had to be some way to fix it, but none of the tutorials aligned with the version I was using, and I ended up wanting to throw my computer into the backyard several times... I have a policy of not posting when I'm mad - and I haven't posted much the last two weeks... I ended up ditching that program altogether and putting cards together 'the old fashioned way' (with the simple graphics software I usually use)...

2. Because of #1 above, I fell behind on updating cards and background material that I planned to get done for my Army Ants webcomic! January was going to be the month of getting all the file cards up and a 'story so far' page done, and I only got about half of the cards I wanted up. This means that cards will carry into February as I start the new story, and I'm going to try to squeeze out the 'story so far' segment this weekend. I can use the original pages from my two graphic novels as the visual framing and 'narrate' the transitions to get a big page together, so this shouldn't be too labor-intensive.

3. However, I now feel like I have my feet back under me. The Shakespeare Deathmatch card deck is at the printer to get a proof copy (cross lots of fingers for me, please!) and I've posted a new file card to the webcomic. I also have created another half-dozen maps for my dungeon crawl, and I've started a set of notes for my next 'big project'... which may be something in the OSR... okay, it is almost definitely something in the OSR, using the world's greatest game engine, and putting my own spin on things. More about that to come...