TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. Have you ever heard of Chronicles of Drunagor – Age of Darkness? I have. I have a new copy now of the massive several kilogram game box from a wonderful early birthday I just got back from. My father’s side of the family and I had a nice day and some very rich buttery cake. I am going to see if some of my friends in the city want to come over and play the 30 or so session long board game on a regular basis. Oh, right, the social life thing I’ve been looking into is meeting new people online. I wanted to know how to broaden my friend group. I have some board game friends but we needed a new board game to play. I’m going to have them track down the full five players it can handle. It’s a strange game that I’ve been looking into for about a year and it has about eight expansions. I might do some news here about playing it if the team agree. It’s been a wonderful birthday so far and I’ve got an actual birthday day planned for the actual day the 22nd of July. I’m also ...

 Hello. C J here. I don’t know if this is just me but I like a good graphic novel. It’s hard to find a good graphic novel. Like, I’ve never found one that I didn’t feel ran out of steam part way through its long and really strange release schedule. There’s a ton of free online ones in a variety of fantasy and furry fandom genres. I have tried for ages to find one I like that can maintain its pace and also style through the many stages required to finish making a story. Really, I can’t think of one I’ve finished. There’s one exception. Ages ago I wrote a twelve page graphic novel and paid someone in the furry fandom to draw it. I’ll eventually post it here for download. I like that graphic novel a lot. It worked. It sold well and now I’m relying on Patreon more so I’ll make it free to advertise the Patreon. It’s called Snow Day. It was great but I already know the ending so it’s not really as exciting as read or buying one. I have most of my company’s budget for the year left over. ...

 Hello. C J here. It’s non stop animation asset creation mode around here from now on. I’ve got a trial run sample of a background for my two upcoming Ascala animations. I can reuse backgrounds but making them is fun enough that I might not do it much. This is the bedroom of one of the less known Ascala heroes, Vaun Silver Kin. Vaun Silver Kin is going to star in some of the animations I’m working on along with some of the other characters I have that I haven’t used yet. Next I’m going to have to start designing outfits for him and his friends. I might put compilations of these animations on USB and sell them later but mostly I’m expecting them to be great marketing for the Patreon. The Patreon is still being set up. This background required about an hour of work and is done entirely in digital fountain pen, chalk and oil pastel. Then I ran it through Krita to get the lighting and mood right. It’s dawn in Ascala, a week before Summermoon. Summermoon is the Summer Solstice festival ...

 Hello. C J here. As of soon Dragon Engine will be fully planned and I'll know how to make all of it. Past there it will be a job of slowly making the 3D assets, coloring them and using free tools to make menus, quests, combat and similar. I am ready to start planning my next batch of work. Dragon Engine will see regular updates for pretty much forever but they will be built on the same core concepts. This is 20 years of planning done forever. Next? Animations. I have such a hard time finding things I want to watch. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I'm going to be making a number of hand drawn, fountain pen art animated series. Yes, I'm bringing movies and TV back to their roots and hand making everything including the backgrounds. I can reuse frames both for characters and environments so the actual workload is a lot smaller than you might think. Here's my plans. I have two educational series planned. Food of the World will be animated and yes, I'm hand draw...

 Hello. C J here. Strongly I did not have a post planned for today or now. Strongly this is not my fault. I was experimenting with AI art and I found something. AI art is really good at modern day and also retro coal based Victorian totally legitimate interior design and home decoration planning. Art can now depict fictitious cultures with their own Victorian apparel in all of its steam fuelled grandeur. I wonder if these now real because the internet made them real cultures have their own IKEA. STEAMKEA? Great. Also what the utter hell is this software made out of? Here’s some inspirational art of mostly kitchens. Really though, what? C J Mcpherson  

 Hello. I've got one more set of concept art for the week before the weekend. Here we have five images depicting some of The Astral Ten eating food in Ascala. The Starter Set features the five most popular Ascala food items and I thought I'd see what they would look like if I ran them through AI. Here's the art.  C J Mcpherson  

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got more concept art for today. Here we have the concept art for Ascalan Armoury, the weapons and armour that come with the Starter Set. This are here will help me to draw the Ascalan Armoury items for the Starter Set in hand drawn digital fountain pen later for the game’s final release. This is saving me months of planning and work for the product line as a whole. The images have the weapon and armour names if you want to know what goes with what stat line in the free Quantum samples. All of the stat lines for the Quantum cards here are free to download. C J Mcpherson