Sneak peek: colors!
3 months ago
– Tue, Aug 20, 2024 at 11:08:10 AM
To change things up a bit, I'm going to show you something different: the "color test" swatches A.C. sent us.
(Since I know we have a few very arachnophobic backers, the image below does contain one recognizable, albeit very small and very messy, spider.)
The Faces and Masks will be unified by overall composition, but the rest of the cards could potentially risk wind up feeling like a random grab bag (even though done by a single artist). To give it a more coherent feel, A.C. sorted the cards into groupings of six apiece, and gave each group its own palette:
Don't adjust the resolution on your monitor; these aren't blurry versions of the finished cards! They're just rough mockups to plan out what colors will be used where. (But if you peer closely enough at them, you might be able to guess what a few of them are . . .)
Rather than try to say something about this myself and botch it, I'll just quote (with permission) A.C.'s comments during our discussion:
I grouped the cards primarily by color scheme and element. We have a set of six red/fire cards, followed by six green/plant themes, and so on with blue/water, brown/earth, and lavender-grey/air. Then the last couple sets (including the special character cards and the clan cards) mix it up a bit. It helps me make sure the colors are distributed fairly evenly across the whole deck. But you're both absolutely right, it was also to help set up repeating motifs, elements and shapes.
A super clear example is The Peacock's Web, House Vargo, and The Kindly Spinner. There seemed to be a through line from Varadi, the clan associated with crafters represented by a spider, to Vargo and Peabody/Alsius with their deep connections to textiles and arcane magic, which in turn connects to The Peacock's Web, representing secrets and riddles and, of course, spiders again. I wanted to suggest the relationship across all three cards using color and shape. So all three repeat a dark, bejeweled purple/blue/green color scheme as well as diamonds and arcing lines that suggest loose threads, draping cloth, or webs. Maybe you or Alyc picked up on all this already! I just wanted to nerd out about it for a second haha. This kind of work reminds me of something I enjoy about making comics, setting up separate panels and images to relate to each other even pages apart. It really was fun trying to visually weave (heh) together the threads of this rich world you created.
So this reinforces one of the things I've mentioned before, the way we're trying to set up links between the cards which someone might draw on in their reading, finding a resonance between two positions in a layout because of some resemblance in the art. Sometimes that's overall compositional balance -- a single focal item at the center, or a diagonal layout -- while other times it's motifs, like the repetition of birds, or the sun, or cord/rope. Color organization gives us another system that cross-cuts the threads themselves, making the whole thing, as A.C. said, more interwoven.
We're not yet to the fully painted cards yet, though. When we next circle around to A.C.'s corner of the work, I'll be sharing some of the inked drawings -- the point at which you can properly begin to see the compositional detail!
--Marie
We'll be Guests of Honor at BayCon next year!
4 months ago
– Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 12:28:42 PM
Mark your calendars: M.A. Carrick will be the Author Guest(s) of Honor at BayCon 2025!
This will run from July 4th-7th next year, in Santa Clara, California -- part of the San Francisco Bay Area -- and it’s doubling as Westercon 77, so we’re doubly excited. It’s going to be rare for me and Alyc to get M.A. Carrick gigs of this type, since we’re kind of one GOH for the price of two, but given that we’re both local to the area, the con isn’t on the hook for two airfares.
And ohhhhh, do we have plans for this event. You see, once upon a time, we intended to have a big ol’ launch party bash at the World Fantasy Convention for the release of The Mask of Mirrors. Unfortunately for us, that release was originally scheduled for . . . November 2020. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Nor did it happen on the delayed release date of January 2021 . . . nor the publication of The Liar’s Knot in December 2021 . . . nor even for Labyrinth’s Heart in 2023, which was the first point at which a launch event might have been even vaguely reasonable to consider.
So it’s our intent to have that party at last! If you think you might attend BayCon next July, start planning your costumes and masks now, because we’re hoping to host some kind of fancy dress ball. (Separate from the convention’s usual costume contest, which we’ll be participating in as judges.) That’s in addition to the usual things you can expect from Guests of Honor, like readings and panels, and I might have some of my photography for sale!
Actual details will come much closer to the con -- I doubt we’ll be planning anything for certain until we’re at least in the same calendar year. But we are super excited by this, and we hope to see as many of you as possible there!
--Marie
Sneak peek: The Face of Song
4 months ago
– Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 04:16:28 PM
I am back from vacation! It was delightfully relaxing, despite various things going wrong during the actual travel stages (canceled flights, lost luggage, etc). It seems fitting, then, that the card I was planning on sharing with you all today is the one that represents love and peace.
We had some interesting challenges with this one! I had, in my initial writeup -- and in my ignorance of art -- described it as "a feathered face with birdlike eyes." Avery did her best in the sketch set, but as you can see, leaning too much into those descriptors turns out to produce some . . . interesting results:
Fortunately, after we talked it over, we managed to arrive at a look that achieves the right feel, without being quite so odd or creepy:
The bells were Avery's suggestion, to give another sense of "song" to go along with the "birdsong" principle I had started with. I like how they break up the overall look -- and now I want to do things with bells in Vraszenian culture! Which is exactly the kind of feedback cycle I'm enjoying with this project, seeing how what our artists create influences my view of the world of the deck.
--Marie
Sneak peek: Hundred Lanterns Rise
5 months ago
– Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 08:08:44 PM
There's been an interesting feedback loop between the pattern deck and the world it exists in. Many of the cards are named for things we know are important in the setting . . . but sometimes it goes the other way: we named a card with a phrase we liked, and someday we'll figure out how to work it into Vraszenian culture.
As you might guess, that's the case with the card we're previewing today! Alyc and I both really love the tradition and imagery of East Asian paper lanterns and floating them into the sky, and that felt like a really good match for the card of release. The phrase "Hundred Lanterns Rise" sounded nice, so we went with it -- but what exactly does that refer to? Some festival, probably; when and what it's for, we have no idea. Someday we'll work it into a story . . .
. . . because that's just lovely, innit? It'll be particularly gorgeous once it's colored, with the flames warming the lanterns from within.
As a reminder, I'm going on vacation, so there will be no update two weeks from now! I will be back as usual in a month.
--Marie
Maps for sale! Also other things!
5 months ago
– Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 09:24:32 PM
Maps!
Some ages ago, Alyc and I bought prints of the map of Nadežra (as depicted in The Mask of Mirrors) from the artist, Tim Paul, so that we could frame them and hang them on our own walls. But we had the clever idea of buying more prints at the same time, so we could use them for promotional purposes . . .
. . . and then, uh, we completely forgot about them.
Courtesy of a fan on our Discord, however, we were recently reminded! We only have a small number of prints, but we've decided to offer them up to you, our loyal Kickstarter backers, in case anybody would like to take one off our hands. They come in two sizes, small (13"x16" / ~33 cm x 41 cm) and medium (17"x21" / ~43 cm x ~53 cm), and at this point we have one of each available; the small will run you $30 and the medium is $40, plus whatever shipping may come to. (Fair warning to anybody not in the U.S. that shipping will cost an arm and a leg: there's really no getting around that anymore, unfortunately.)
Anyway, because we have so few, I'm not going to go to the effort of adding these to our BackerKit store; instead just contact me, and it'll be first come, first served. Let me know if you'd like us to sign the map before we mail it!
Books!
We recently got yet MORE author copies dropped on us, and they're starting to take up an unconscionable amount of space in my house. So if you missed out on picking up signed copies during the campaign and want to nab some now, again, contact me! $25 plus shipping, and I will be grateful to you for reducing the overstock.
Reminder: Quotes!
Since it's been a while, here's a reminder that we're on the hunt for quotes! Our intent is to include suitable epigraphs from the novels and short stories in the guidebook for the pattern deck, so if you can think of anything that seems to fit a certain card, just fill out this form!
Coming up: Temporary radio silence!
And just to let you all know, although there will be a regularly scheduled update in two weeks, after that I will go dark for a little while. I'll be spending about two and a half weeks in July on Actual Vacation, during which time I intend to do absolutely no work whatsoever if I possibly can -- and that includes writing Kickstarter updates. I should only miss one, though (jet lag willing), and after that we'll be back on schedule.
Until next time!
--Marie
