Preview: The Constant Spirit!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 01:17:49 PM

Thank you to everyone who has sent in suggested epigraphs so far -- we're grateful, and keep 'em coming! And if I may indulge in a bit of news not directly related to this Kickstarter, today also marks the release of my novel The Market of 100 Fortunes, the conclusion of my Legend of the Five Rings trilogy. If supernatural enigmas, queer romance, and Japanese folklore sound like they're up your alley, the whole series is available now!

For today's preview, we're checking in with A.C. again. I've previously shared with you all some of the thumbnail sketches they made, extremely rough scribbles meant to give us a general idea of the composition before they start in on the more detailed versions; since then, they've sent us the pencil sketches, which are the next stage in the process, and more refined than the early thumbnails. To show you what I mean, here's the initial concept for The Constant Spirit, the card of the Meszaros clan:

Full of energy, but obviously that's just a vague gesture in the direction of "horse goes here," without a ton of concern for anatomical precision and the like. Here's the pencil version:

Not only has the pose been flipped, but now it is clearly an actual horse. Although the precise details of e.g. exactly how the mane will be flying in the wind are likely to change before we're done, this is much closer to what the finished version will look like. Which means that as we go through these, Alyc and I are getting shivers as we see the deck beginning to take shape!

--Marie

Quote hunters wanted!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Feb 06, 2024 at 10:49:17 AM

A slightly different kind of update this time, because art is not the only thing in progress right now! And read to the end for how you, yes you, can make your mark . . .

I’ve started work on the pattern deck guidebook -- in fact, I have a mostly finished rough draft. It’s going to stay rough for quite a while, because apart from the card images, one of the biggest things it’s lacking is the full rules for the various games; those await some design and playtesting work before I’ll have anything to write there.

Working on this has required me to operate in a different manner than usual. Normally I prefer to write in a plain ol’ document, just the single-spaced Times New Roman that is the default, and worry about formatting later. For this guidebook, however, formatting is going to matter a great deal: above all, in order to make sure we have a nice layout where the card images are on the left side of a two-page spread and the interpretations for those cards are on the right, the text of the latter has to be kept to a single page maximum. So this time I did the formatting first, and then I’m writing the text within those constraints, to make sure I don’t run long.

But there’s one more element we want to include there, and that’s where you all come in!

Alyc suggested that to add some flavor to the card interpretations, we might include quotes from the existing Rook and Rose fiction. We already know what some of these will be -- for example, it’s 99.99% certain that the quote for The Liar’s Knot will be “Trust is the thread that binds us . . . and the rope that hangs us” -- but with sixty-seven cards in the deck, that’s quite a lot of quotes to gather.

If you would like to help us hunt out suitable lines for the guidebook, here’s how to play! Both the novels and the short fiction are fair game. Quotes should ideally be on the short side -- say 20-30 words max, and ideally less than that -- though if it’s longer, go ahead and send it in. Alyc has created a handy-dandy form for you to use, where you can give us the quote and where it comes from, plus (optionally) your name and which card you think the quote is good for (full list here). Yes, that means you can submit quotes that you just think are cool, without worrying about matching them to a card! You’re also welcome to suggest more than one card you think it might fit, or multiple quotes for a single card if you later come across another option you feel would be good. Basically, the more the merrier; sorting them out for the guidebook will be our job.

Also, this isn’t something we need immediately. The guidebook won’t be finished until the art is, so you have months in which to re-read (or read for the first time) and pick out interesting lines. I’ll include reminders every so often in these updates, and I’ll definitely let people know when we’re getting close to the finish line.

Happy hunting! And next update I’ll be back with something new on the art front.

--Marie

The Face of Glass + another Kickstarter!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 11:21:17 AM

Before I get to today's sneak peek, I wanted to point y'all toward the Kickstarter currently underway for The Inkbrush Rune Deck. Like our own pattern cards, this is an oracle deck rather than a tarot per se, which I always find appealing; as the name implies, this one uses Norse runes for its content. I find the artwork really intriguing:

Given that I know some of our backers were drawn here by an interest in such things, I thought this one might appeal! You've got about three weeks left to back it.

Now for our own project, I have another preview of samples from Avery, and an interesting aspect I really hadn't considered before she brought it up.

Understand, I'm not really a visual artist. I do photography (check that out on my site!), and yes, that's a form of visual art, but it's a pretty different beast from drawing/painting/otherwise creating the picture from scratch yourself. And while I don't have aphantasia, my visual imagination is not super highly developed, so the mental images I have of the Faces and Masks have always been vague at best.

Which means it threw me for a loop when Avery asked whether we wanted the faces to be the same between The Face of Glass and The Mask of Mirrors -- as in, the facial structure. I . . . hadn't really thought about it? To me, many of the descriptions I gave her (e.g. "this one should be all feathers") overrode such considerations, since the end result was not going to look much like a normal human. But her question is extremely pertinent, and I'm glad she asked it!

We're not sure yet what the final answer will be. From a worldbuilding perspective, it makes sense to give the same facial structure to each pair, since the Faces and the Masks are two aspects of a single deity. Having there be an underlying resemblance, even if it then gets covered over with feathers or pared down to a skull, reinforces that idea. But there's also the question of aesthetics and which of the samples Avery sends us that we like best in its own right.

For the one I'm sharing today, we don't have a final answer yet. But here are the six sketches she sent for The Face of Glass -- which general design do you think we'll be using for the finished card?

--Marie

Happy New Year from The Face of Stars!
about 2 years ago – Mon, Jan 08, 2024 at 04:27:48 PM

Happy 2024, everyone! May this year be better than the last -- a sentiment I think can always apply, regardless of how you feel 2023 went for you.

As I believe I promised last time, for this update we'll be taking a look at the process for the Faces and the Masks! Avery takes a different approach from A.C.; rather than providing a single rough sketch which then might be revised or replaced entirely, she sends me and Alyc six sketches . . . though honestly, I think "sketch" is almost the wrong word for this, given how detailed and polished they are.

And then we basically play Mr. Potato Head with them! If you're not familiar with that reference, it's a kid's toy where you can snap on different mouths, eyes, noses, and so forth; well, we do more or less the same thing here. Avery takes a range of different runs at the concept so that Alyc and I can select what features we like best from each one: the face shape from here, the hair from there, etc.

As you can imagine, this gets labor-intensive! But Avery insists it's the approach she's happiest with, and for us, it's a delight to see all the different variants. We wind up thinking a lot about small details and what vibe we want each card to have. In this case, for The Face of Stars, you can see that some of the variants look kind of ominous, which we decided wasn't right for the card that signifies good fortune -- though part of that vibe came from the dark backgrounds many of them have, which the finished card won't have. (All Faces and Masks will have the light, neutral background you can see on the existing card for The Mask of Mirrors.) In the end, our Mr. Potato Head fiddling leaned mostly on variant #1, with a bit of the hair from #3, resulting in this:

. . . and that's still just a sketch! Avery will be executing this in color for the final, with the "blind contour" technique mentioned back when we did the artist interviews. But it's absolutely gorgeous, and a great sample of what you can expect from the rest of these cards.

I'll have another example for you in a few weeks!

--Marie
 

Preview: The Hidden Eye!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 12:34:24 PM

Before I get to this update's card preview, a quick plug: there's a Story Bundle running right now on the theme of "Assassins and Rogues," which contains a contribution from yours truly! There are ten items in the full bundle, but it's actually more than that; mine is an omnibus of all the works in the Doppelganger duology (my first two novels Warrior and Witch, and the prequel novella Dancing the Warrior), and K.J. Heritage has also provided an omnibus, so you get a total of fifteen works for whatever amount you choose to pay.

As is usual for these things, we've also chosen a charity for the bundle: you can optionally choose to donate 10% to Mighty Writers, an organization helping kids learn to write better (a cause near and dear to my heart!). So if this sounds at all like your cup of tea, check it out!

The Hidden Eye

The Kiraly clan card is one we didn't have a very distinct image for at the outset. We knew it should include a raccoon, since it's their clan animal, and we knew it should suggest their virtues and vices (glossed in the brief writeup as "clever, dexterous, confident, mischievous, secretive, covetous"). But how it might do that? No idea.

This wound up being a rare example of a card where we went back to the drawing board after the initial sketch. Here's what A.C. sent in at first:

This just didn't click for us the way their other sketches had. There's nothing overtly wrong with it -- the finished painting would be perfectly fine -- but for an oracle deck, you really want the image to immediately evoke its significance, and this didn't feel like it was doing that as powerfully as many of the others.

We went through all the card sketches during a video chat, getting clarifications of images I couldn't parse as well (I don't speak fluent Rough Thumbnail) and suggesting tweaks, and this one led to a whole conversation. What we wound up with . . . well, I'll just show you:

Somewhere during that conversation, one of us said "raccoon as cartoon burglar," and boom, we had our design. This makes us giggle when we look at it, which brings in the sense of fun we didn't know we wanted until we arrived at this idea. We're delighted with the result!

Until next time . . . which will probably be in 2024! In general I'm trying to send out previews every two weeks, but since I'm also trying to take some time off around the holidays, the next missive likely won't come until January. At which point I'll be back with a peek at how Avery is approaching work on the Faces and the Masks!

--Marie