The Struggle is Also Work (Patreon)

This week's post is mostly a behind-the-scenes look at how a lot of art got made. Pace, no new direct game content, mes heros.

Dear heroes,

Welcome to July. I had hoped to post the finished one-shot adventure Let Us In today, but life and work had other plans. As some of you may recall, I've been wrestling with Holy Mountain Shaker for OSE nearly a year now (I'm going to have to double-check when I can share the full pdf for it). I've talked about how it was very personal, because it plays with some hyperlocal legends and myths from my home region. I suspect my mild perfectionism has also gone wild on it, because I wanted it to look just as good as it could.

Well, I wrestled it to the ground and managed to walk away from it yesterday.

The amazingly talented Anna from Doubleproficiency has laid out the book, there was some final wrangling and trimming to get it down to 48 pages, but it got done.

And then came the time to finish the spot art.

So, what is spot art?

Once a book is laid out, there are "spots" left in the layout. Like so:

At that point, the artist can take layout and add art to match. So, I took screenshots of the layouts and plunked them into files I'd set up to fit the page sizes on procreate, and worked straight to the layout.

I'd start by sketching around the text.

Then lineart.

And finally colours. Because, did I mention, I decided to colour everything? I did.

And then the designer Anna makes a pretty mockup for sharing.

Now, the long and the short of it was that ... doing all this art in full colour took a little (three times) longer than I thought. It was fun and enjoyable, but ...

The Struggle is Also Work

Sometimes even when work is fun and enjoyable, it is still daunting and the dread sets in. By late last week I was realizing, I'd be very short on time for finishing Let Us In by the deadline I'd set myself.

I spent part of the weekend drawing, but polishing pieces is also surprisingly exhausting. Part of my brain tells me it should be easy ... after all, I'm enjoying myself while drawing. But another part of my brain tells me that I'm exhausted. Then that first part feels huffy, "But you had fun! How can you be exhausted from fun? Maybe you're just lazy and hopeless!"

I had to shut that part of my brain over the weekend by explaining to it (i.e. to myself) that I had written, laid out, and illustrated about 450 pages over the last year.

It slunk off to a dark corner, muttering to itself that it didn't like I'd done that much actually.

"But I have!" I repeated.

It huff-rrumphed.

Over the weekend I decided to put Let Us In aside until I finished the art. Ok, aside from this cute little item for seacat:

But, despite this, I started this week with some big dread. It was a real struggle to get started on the work I wanted to do: the maps for Holy Mountain Shaker. The main reason was that:

a) I knew it was complex and I would have to comb through the text to make sure I got the connections right.

b) I had an idea for an illustrated background for the map that I knew would take at least a day of drawing (it took nearly three).

Monday I spent basically thinking about how to do it.

By the end of Monday I felt disgusted with myself.

"Time is running out!" shouted Brain.

"I know," I whined.

"You're a slug! A lazy slug!" it shouted.

I had no response.

That evening, my wife kindly reminded me that struggling to figure out how to do something is also work. I suspect that's a reminder that many of us could use more often - I certainly could.

Then, from Tuesday to last night I worked on the maps - despite the worry that nobody would actually find them useful, because of course Brain would come up with that. It still does, even now as I write this text.

The first part was sketching out the regions and connections and secret connections. And I still missed one (fixed it last night at 11pm on the final map).

Then came a few iterations of figuring out how to structure the map so it would fit on a spread. See, a spread has two areas one's got to be wary of: the fold in the middle, where all art disappears never to be seen, and about 5mm at the edges, where they might get trimmed off or other printery stuff.

Then I started on the art for the regions of the pointcrawl. I wasn't completely sure I wanted to go all digital, because I draw faster with pens on paper, but ... in the end I did.

Here we were, more layout done. Looking nicer ...

All I had to show for a whole day's work. Quite dispiriting (Brain, Brain).

Closeup of the city. Doesn't look too terrible, right? Then came all the detail background work. A day and a half. Seriously. Gahh.

This one has a fixed missing connection ... spot the difference!

Labelled for the layout artist.

And once that was done, the last "dungeon" map ...

The God Fish. And yes, I used a reference picture of a carp. Of course.

And yes, spoiler alert, if the adventurers are super daft, they can explore the entirety of a gigantic divine fish. I mean, why would they do that? I don't know. But they could.

But I didn't forget Let Us In ...

This is probably one of the best ways I know for figuring out how to make a short work. Paper and pen and thumbnails.

But, but, but ... that is probably a story for next time, once I can share Let Us In with you. After my holiday.

And I will let you know what and how I can share the completed Holy Mountain Shaker, too. Because it looks yay nice.

Right.

Enough for now.

Let me know if you can find the capybara or the duckrabbit or the wrong rabbit in the big map (see attachment).

Peace and health, everyone.

—Luka