I've worked up at least ninetween new pieces of illustration for the game and messed around with layout over the past week or two. I've been -super- productive and feeling good about it.

Now, when I say I'm "making art" that means I'm taking existing illustrations and mixing them together to make something new or new-ish. For example, the above artwork has this as the base:

A perfectly innocent tatting session from some old book or another. That's the background.

This lady hoisting a baby becomes the upper body of the woman on the left. Notice the arm in the back–I had to replace it with an arm from another illustration, then redraw the puffy sleeve so it matches her dress.

The woman on the right was threading a needle but I wanted her to be blocking her face from the light/reflection. I went through a LOT of lady hands, trying to find one that fit properly. Above is the hand I settled on.

Then I fill in all the gaps with good ol' fashioned drawing in Photoshop. The mirror/silver tray I drew from scratch. What else did I modify... The woman's face, though I don't like her squint yet. I replaced the lacework in their laps with a book and a scroll–the scroll and the book each have a little viking ship picture with a C on the sail. Maybe they've uncovered a clue? I added the Victorian-era mystery solving board thing in the background, complete with yarn connecting the pieces of paper.

Almost everything I borrow gets reworked so it fits together as seamlessly as possible. That means the texture, the etching lines, the joint between two different sources. It means a minute adjustment to the eyes of the woman on the left so she's not staring a few feet to the left of the other.

Adding the shadows is a delight–I love modeling three-dimensional shapes by laying highlights and shadows over them. Placing accurate shadows (or purposefully inaccurate) is something I starting enjoying when I was doing the proto-work that became A Collection of Useful Exercises. I'd found a gruelingly technical perspective 1950s drawing manual for commercial illustrators and the shadow rules were the closest I've come to deep, arcane knowledge.

I'm trying to generate more illustrations that are ambiguous. Is the woman on right shying away from her lack of reflection Hammer-horror Dracula-style, or flinching away from reflected sunlight, or is the woman on the left just being a jerk? In my favorite of the new illustrations it is unclear who has what role or motivation.

Other illustrations are just gory or obvious in intent, and that's okay too.

Side note:  I'm not naming sources for the illustrations I'm borrowing. That's intentional. My act of changing the original art around has nothing to do with the sources of the art. I'm not deconstructing The Idler when I lift an illustration from it, so crediting the source isn't necessary. If I was pulling apart the work of living people I'd give a credit to the original illustrator, of course, but these folks are long dead and won't have their feelings hurt if I don't. As it is, I do my best to leave their signatures intact.

Other business:

I discovered that my Shopify-served newsletter isn't actually arriving for some folks who are considered 'low engagement' by the Shopify metric. I'm absolutely enraged by this because this issue was happening earlier and I was told it was fixed. It ain't fixed, I learned, and won't be fixable any time soon. 

"Low engagement" means that you signed up for the newsletter but haven't bought anything which, holy shit, is a heck of a choice because they provide a widget that allows folks to sign up for email marketing. Why is that widget there, even? Why let me collect email contacts if you won't let me use your system to email those emails? 

I can't fool the system, either. I exported a test customer with zero purchases, modified the record so they had a bunch of purchases, then reuploaded them. They were still considered zero engagement by Shopify so I guess the site keeps 'true' records hidden on their end. It's all the more confusing because I have test customers with zero engagement that successfully receive the emails. 

Practically speaking, this means that I will have a lot of duplicate info here and in the newsletter.

A possible solution would be for me to make a free digital item available in the shop. You 'buy' that and maybe you'll show engagement? Maybe I'll give that a test.

I'm planning to send out another newsletter this week. If you care about getting it and don't get it then let me know at [email protected]

The project funded and is done, thank you all!

Over the next few months I'll need to keep you all updated on the game's progress. I don't know whether to do that here or in the mailing list, or both. I'm thinking both: Here is where I give the appearance of competence and progress, the mailing will be where I voice self-doubts and share more in-depth stuff about the making of the book.

I worry about this because, again, you folks who backed and are on the mailing list are going to get announcements for both. Such bother to get TWO emails that are similar.

This week I dug in on making art, which means taking existing book illustrations and modifying them to fit SYMA's theme. I'll share a couple of pieces here and will break down how they were made over in the newsletter. If you aren't on the newsletter you can sign up at the bottom of thousandyearoldvampire.com.

These aren't 100% finished, but:

 

So yeah, above you can see an all-but-finished piece that was made out of four separate, pre-existing artworks. This still needs some adjustment. The pope looking guy's staff needs to be moved to the left so it isn't kissing the umbrella edge, I will work on the flowing robes. I'm realizing that the final image is a little out of date–since then I've fixed a lot that's wrong with the shadows on the ceiling. 

Thanks again,
Tim H