The Grinder

Assorted bits of internet, selected from a stratified sample, sorted in ascending sequence, collated, assembled in logical order, then just sort of thrown in a pot and given a good hard shake. Completely by accident, I seem to have a fine selection of game design articles for this edition. How did that happen?

--- The Grinder - August 2011 ---

PAXsims - The latest Game Design blog I am following. Some good stuff here I need to check out.








IO9: Robot Art Wallpapers

A Fafnir crashes the party

Wargamer's Notebook: The Moment  -- "I wish this was something I experienced more often. The point during a wargame after several plays or turns when things magically click. The moment when the scaffolding of the the rules and latticework of the bits fall away and the narrative zooms into the foreground and you - as the player - are completely absorbed by the game. Events occur that could not have been imagined, but that are totally plausible. Victory hangs in the balance. And you are not moving counters or playing cards, but making choices that give you hope of victory."

Space Disaster!

original

Genius Sir!

original

More irreverent humor to be found at Perry Bible Fellowship.

Desert Scibes brings us a bit bit of gaming history at Supergalactic Dreadnaught:

The Making of Starfleet Wars

NOTE: Scott R. Spicer (credited as "S.R. Spicer, Lt., TFSF"), along with his father, Ron Spicer (R.E. Spicer, Lt. Commander, TFSF), developed the Starfleet Warsminiatures line for Superior Models. As you probably know if you've read this blog before, the SfW universe contains five starfaring factions, each with a distinctive design style. Curious about the origin of this game and its minis, I emailed Scott Spicer about his work on these spaceship models. He was gracious enough to reply to my inquiry, and his response follows in its entirety ...

Make your own custom dice (with a bit of work).

From SMBC: (If only it were this easy!) 

Gamasutra: Game Design Essentials: 20 Real-World Games

Chess, Go, and Life. Which one is the Best. Game. Ever. A nice bit of gamey mathiness from Patterns in the Void.

Finally, this is just cool.

Doug Chaffe

Update [7/14/11]: Catalyst Game Labs is hosting a sale of Doug Chaffe original artwork at Gencon 2001.


Randall Bills writes about the passing of Doug Chaffee. Better go read that first. Here is Randall's opening paragraph.

In 1994 I walked into a game store and beheld BattleTech’s CityTech Second Edition on a shelf. The cover was by an artist I’d not seen before, but it was action-packed, evocative, and wonderfully done…everything a fan could ask from a cover. Of course I left with it under my arm. For the next 15 plus years Doug Chaffee would be an indelible part of crafting the visuals for BattleTech.

I confess I didn't know anything about Doug Chaffee before this, but Battletech players should know his work on sight ...

Image: Chaffee Studios

... because it is nothing short of iconic. Much more to be found at Chaffee Studios.

Here are a few links that my be of interest:
Battletech Wiki: Doug Chaffee
Book Illustrations

The Grinder - Christmas Edition

A selection of items ground into mincemeat, just in time for the holidays!

Like spaceship art? Check out Concept Ships.




And as that isn't cool enough, there is also Concept Robots. I think I already ground this up a while back, but it's worth a second pass.


A while back I wrote about a Wired article How the Allies used math against German Tanks. John Cook has a follow on post about how America tried to do the same thing with Soviet bombers in 1958, but the Soviets were wise to the trick:  Military Intelligence from Serial Numbers. [From The Endeavorer]

Mathematics in Movies - with short video clips for most.





[from IO9] A problem that every parent faces - you know what I mean - sooner or later you have to have talk to them about that difficult subject ... you know the one ...

... Star Wars

[From Web 2.0 RC1] Sparkley Dice!


A calculus joke from Proof: Calculus and Transformers

Also from Proof:

Q: what do you get when you cross a mosquito and a mountain climber?

A: nothing. you can’t cross a vector and a scalar.

{Drum-riff-cymbal-crash}

Merry Christmas!

"Mister Eastwood, how about THIS Trebuchet?"

Steven Satak sent me a "taste test" of some of the new art for his TRO:3063 project. Steve figured out early on that I have a sweet-spot for this particular Mech.

The work of kSeth.

And, if I'm not going insane from lack of sleep, Steve has recently given his blog layout a thorough redesign: Nice work! I'll have to ask him where he got that beautiful banner art.
Comments on the recent post indicate I'm not going insane, but I was worried for a second.

This and That

Various links of interest (I hope).



Review: Masters Brush Soap from Corbania Prime -->
I use this for my brushes too, and I second the recommendation.

<-- Some cool robot art at IO9.






Gratuitous Space Battles (review) --> This might be my next computer game purchase, and my first in a long time. (Thanks Peter!)



Troll, a language for specifying dice-rolls (Article)

and the web site for Troll. I've been itching to look at this but haven't had the time. (thanks to Ken!)



Details: Basic materials for basing <--- At ++From The Warp++

Also some good commentary on Social Contracts in gaming.

Meet the Sims …
 and Shoot Them --> in America's Army 

Metallic Inks for Miniatures

I went shopping at Michael's Saturday and found something new; metallic inks from Ranger Inks. These are alcohol based inks (note: not for kids!), they apply very easily with a brush, leave a near perfect metallic sheen, and thin/clean up easily with a bit of rubbing alcohol. I can't begin to tell how impressed I am with this product; I added some silver ink highlights to some spaceship minis that I had already highlighted ... and WOW did it make a difference. The reflectiveness is much greater than I get with metallic paint, and really makes the minis pop.

This is a product created for rubber stamp collectors, but I think it make have great potential with miniatures painting too. Click thru for a demo video.

[Update: added photo and link to photos]

2009 Chicago Golden Demon Winners

Perfect timing! Just when I was needing some inspiration to get back to my painting, the 2009 Chicago Golden Demon Winners are announced.

[Note: This link may redirect you to the Games Workshop front page instead of taking to to the pictures. If this happens, select your language, and it should take you to the Golden Demon article. If that fails too, come back here and try the link again. - D]




I don't play Warhammer, but I do appreciate the work that goes into these miniatures. Some of these are simply fantastic.







I made my copies of these image small and low-quality. Consider that a suggestion to go see all the originals from Games Workshop.

UPDATE2012: The old links no longer function as intended, wither broken or redirected. Try this: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=13000009a
If you are redirected to the GDW front page, use the drop-down there to identify your country/language, then try this link again.

Six Days in Fallujah

I just heard this on NPR this morning;

Gamers Can Experience Battle Of Fallujah

by Laura Sydell

July 28, 2009

A new video game has upset the families of some Iraq war veterans. "Six Days in Fallujah" takes gamers into a simulation of the 2004 battle. The creators say this is entertainment with substance. Critics say war is not for the amusement of others.

It's a good listen: Pertinent to recent history and current events, and very relevant to the topic of game design. Go Listen!

[UPDATE] A few links to go along with my comments below about games as art:

1. Games Design Concepts: Games and Art
2. Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, and his TED lecture.
   

A New Trenchbucket for Trebuchet

In response to a previous post, Steven Satak sent me something to review; a page of text and art from the upcoming fan-produced TRO:3063 Vehicle Annex.


This drawing is by artist Vadim Antonov (Vladimir3D at Deviantart, where you can view his Battletech gallery).


Steve wanted to know if the writing was up to snuff compared to the other Battletech TROs. It is; the "Trebuchet TBT-8K" is a fine addition to the Battletech universe, and the writing style nicely fits with the official TRO series.

I offered a few minor suggestions for the text and noted a minor technical bug in the artwork. I offered to try to correct this bug, and Steve took me up on the offer. The results of my efforts are on the left.


These images are intentionally of reduced size and of low quality, because I don't want to take anything away from the project itself. I've always enjoyed the TRO series, and I'm very happy I got the opportunity to contribute in a small way. I am excited about seeing the finished results. I will be posting occasional updates when more news is available.

Paper MadCat

I've heard of a paper tiger, but somehow this isn't quite the same.

A paper MadCat model. You can download your own to print/assemble yourself from Nebula Station.
[Hat Tip 2 Papercraft Paradise]

ORIGINS 2009: Day 3 - Painting Red

You know you are really getting into the Con when you absolutely do not have the energy to do one more thing that day. Friday was such a day. [Note: this post has been back-dated to approximately the actual time of this session.]

Painting Red: This was an ORIGINS Art College session with artist Bethany Gecina (some of Bethany's work can be seen at that link). The previous session had been full, but I was the only one that showed up for the second session. Bethany was very patient with her only student, and patiently answered every question I could think to ask her.

This poor mini! It suffered terribly at my hands, first undergoing several layers of red as Bethany showed me a series of techniques for reds, then getting spattered with greens and yellows as my questions lead us astray into other parts of the color wheel. The last thing I wanted to try was a "flame" effect, and the only part of the mini left to work on was her hair. Needless to say a flame effect on hair, even when well executed, probably looks kind of odd, and my effort is unrecognizable as either flame or hair. It served the purpose of letting me try the technique though, so it was educational even if it does look awful.

The miniature for the class was provided by Dark Sword Miniatures, and is a beautiful sculpt by Dennis Mize. More pictures like this one to the right can be found at the Dark Sword Miniatures Gallery. You can see it looks much better when a ham-hand like me doesn't get a hold of it too. Their whole miniatures line is very impressive, and is well worth a view.

More Giant Robots, More Joy (Avatar)

From IO9

According to a tipster, this is a closer look at the AMP Powersuit from James Cameron's motion capture film Avatar. This concept art, supposedly by James Clyne, is set to be included in a brochure promoting an Avatar tie-in game for Ubisoft. And it'll appear in Titan's upcoming book on The Art Of Avatar. That's assuming it's real concept art, of course. It hasn't been confirmed by Fox, so take it with a grain of salt.

Actual concept art or not, it's still pretty cool.

Understanding Comics

This book is one of the optional texts for Ian Schreiber's Game Design Concepts class I signed up for this summer.

Ian Writes: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, by McCloud. While this book claims to be about comics, many of the lessons within can be applied to game design and other forms of art. It also happens to be a comic book itself, and fun to read.
[image scottmccloud.com]

Ian is correct, it's a great little book and I can easily see how most of it can be applied to games as well as comics. I did a little web searching on Scott McCloud and quickly came up with even more good stuff: Scott McCloud's Web Site including a blog and much more, Scott McCloud's TED lecture, and of course you can pick up your own copy Understanding Comics for $16.55 + shipping at Amazon.

Here is the Scott McCloud video from TED:

Art of The Battery

The art of Greg Broadmore and Warren Mahey at The Battery.

Much more to see at The Battery.