City of Heroes sketchbooks! Signed! Bid! Now!
Last year we (as in, the Creative Concepts team within NCsoft Europe headed by me) put together a limited edition City of Heroes Sketchbook, and very happy I was about it too, as you can tell from this picture taken with the first one.
Anyway, while I know many of you who attended cons we were at (particularly Bristol ’08) probably already have a sketchbook, not many of you will have it signed by the artists whose work is inside the covers!
Well, now’s your chance to own one of ten sketchbooks that have been defaced by artists like Dave Gibbons, Doug Braithwaite, Mark Buckingham, Andie Tong, Phil Winslade, Bryan Talbot and many more! Oh also there are pictures.
All you have to do is bid on this charity auction, with all proceeds as ever going to EveryChild!
Seriously folks, this thing is lovely, with loads of sketches inside depicting the well-known signature characters from City of Heroes, including Statesman, Back Alley Brawler, Ms Liberty, Sister Psyche, Lord Recluse, Ghost Widow and more. If you don’t believe me, click the image on the right to see some thumbnails of the imagery inside.
Considering the sketchbook was only… Continue reading
Right then, Friday is it?
As I mentioned yesterday, starting my week on a Thursday after a West Coast US-South Coast UK transition threw me for a bit of a loop, so much so that I was convinced it was Monday for a while. Today I didn’t think it was Tuesday, but naturally it didn’t feel much like a Friday either.
Again, slowly getting back up to speed today. One thing that’s been making that whole process feel a bit ‘different’ is this:
Yes, it’s an iMac, which I am now (as of yesterday) using completely as my primary work machine, as opposed to the screen I turned to when I needed to do a nice presentation, or perhaps check my receding hairline (it’s very shiny, you see, like a mirror). This has meant that I’ve had to re-learn how to do my email (I’m using the built-in Mail app, not Outlook) and even how to use Word .docs too. So that’s been a bit slow. Thank God the web works the same, wherever.
What did I get up to today, though? Mostly email catch-up, and I also spent quite a bit of time writing this and this.
Yes, we’ve finally announced what we’re… Continue reading
I am so outta there
Last day in the office for a week. Three weeks until the MiniCon. Holy crud do we still have a lot to do.
- Started the day in the coffee shop, trying to power through the schedule a bit more. We’ve had to divide the busiest days into half-hour blocks because we’re trying to fit so much stuff in.
- Back to the office and straight in to trying to knock down my to-do list before I go.
- Chris/Aero finishes the final, final mix and cut of the first podcast episode; fingers crossed it’ll be live next week, while I’m away and can’t hear people laughing at my voice.
- We make it out to lunch and talk over what we still have to do; it’s a lot. I make calls on the way back to the office and apologise to answerphones that I sound like I’m in a wind tunnel.
- Get a nice sketch from Andrew Wildman for the sketchbook; he must have been picking up my mental projections… Chris reminds me that we still need plenty more, but we’ve got a month.
- Struggle to finish the official announcement story for the MiniCon. Four days of ‘stuff’ can be hard to shovel… Continue reading
And breath…
Fast, fast day. For some reason listening to a 32-year old interview with Gene Roddenberry (I don’t even like Star Trek… but hey, I like my pop culture trivia) has made me slow down.
- Get another sketch in first thing… well, ‘sketch’ isn’t really fair, it’s more of a painting. Al Davison continues to impress!
- I joke with Andrew Wildman via email that he now needs to ‘raise his game’ – he hasn’t done a sketch for the sketchbook he’s really happy with, yet. A conspicuous silence.
- Straight into a meeting with my boss and our Biz-Dev manager at 10, in which I manage to get said Biz-Dev manager squirming when I suggest that we should do something for no money “because it’s good for the community”. I actually feel kind of sorry for him… but I also win the argument. Yaaay!
- Bounce emails back and forth with Andy at Omega Sektor, and chat on the phone with another Stephen, the ‘Omega Sektorian’ about his presence on our official Forums.
- Start working on the inevitably large announcement story about the MiniCon for our official sites…
- … half way through, get an email with Melissa Bianco’s flight details. She’s going to… Continue reading
Some days my job is awesome
Quite a few days, actually… but then some days I get things like this in my inbox:
Even being a small part of making that happen… well dang, I feel pretty damn good.
(It’s another image for our sketchbook, by the way, by the amazingly, stupidly talented Andie Tong. Ta Andie!)
How did it get to be 6pm already?
One of those days.
- Spent the morning tweaking and adding photos, photos and then more photos to a presentation I have to give at Sussex University on Wednesday. Didn’t finish. Finding the right image takes too bloody long sometimes.
- In the middle of that, get the image I mentioned earlier. Jaw literally drops and hangs open for about five seconds. Stunning….
- Lunch with Jen where we both vent about different things… and talk about this blog, as it happens.
- Back to finalise and post details about the ‘Hero Pass’ for the MiniCon, then I duck into a meeting about said MiniCon. As the words come out of my mouth I keep thinking “So much to do, so much to do, so much to do….”
- Get back to my desk to find Forumites frothing about not being able to get ahold of Hero Passes, as the phone at Omega Sektor is ringing off the hook. Try to calm them down.
- And suddenly, it’s 6pm.
“Day ain’t over yet….”
Wednesday? Thursday?
Being ill on Tuesday gave me a feeling of ‘Must get more done!’ all day… and left me unsure which day it actually was.
- Early on, find out that Andrew Wildman’s posted all of the sketches we’ve had done so far for the DTWT sketchbook on his blog! I suggest he take ‘em down and preserve some mystery…
- Figuring the cat’s out of the bag I post a teaser to the COH EU Forums – the Statesman (1930s era) that Ian Churchill did (seen right). I start to wonder just how many of the original sketches I may have to bid on when we put ‘em up for auction. Possibly all of them… and I’ll get beaten by players, I just know it.
- Call Andrew as scheduled to discuss secret stuff. That leads to an internal conversation about that call, more emails and probably a meeting next week.
- Hear our iMacs should arrive next week. Just in time for my hols. Dammit!
- Get a sketch in from Mike – someone he’s drawn before, but in colour and in a style I’d not seen. It’s lovely stuff. I email him to say thanks and subtly remind him he owes me a… Continue reading
Today
At this rate I’ll be writing posts about the future before too long.
- First thing, open up another sketch for our secret Draw the World Together sketchbook project. Is nice.
- Second thing, get the go-ahead from our IT Manager to order new desktops for me and Spaff. New iMacs, baby. One trip to Apple’s online store later…
- Mercilessly tease players on our official CoH forums about the upcoming Secret Event. This isn’t entirely because I just like to tease… we don’t have all the details yet so I can’t spill. It’s good to get people’s blood up though.
- Thanks to an eagle-eyed Forumite, suddenly find out our secret sketchbook project isn’t so secret now, as the Bristol Comic Expo has posted about it. D’oh! Their artist list includes Dave Gibbons, Doug Braithwaite, Ian Churchill and Mike Oeming. Well, at least one of them is in it right now.
- Book car and hotel for Secret Event scouting trip this weekend.
- Go forward, backward and then forward in time (playing City of Heroes! Zing!) during lunch as I do the Orobor.. Oobiedoo… Oreo… I’m too lazy to figure out the spelling of that. The time travel arc, the first one.… Continue reading