I'm pretty excited- my proof for Volume 1 of The Ursus Verses arrives tomorrow! I'll be honest- there were some red flags in their system when they set up the file and told me how it looked. But I did the best I could, with the tools I have. Hopefully it looks fine- something I can be proud of. I'm nervous too, and it was way worse earlier today when I was sure I'd made the hugest tactical error I could make.

See this die? I made it! By doing exactly everything Nick does in a Logos By Nick tutorial. But even so, pretty proud!

I had no idea you could do this stuff without artistic skill. I'm not being falsely modest- even artists who have immense skill wouldn't actually have to use that skill to create this! It's amazing, really, and maybe every school kid knows this already but for me I am amazed. I just want to increase my competency at InkScape, to help with future volumes and different stuff. So I thought why not be productive while I learned:

Ok, so, the trees aren't mine, I didn't make them. I got them at Vecteezy where you can use tons of stuff for free with attribution. But the xmas balls are mine- again made by following Nick step-by-step. Though I added the amateurish meeple in the middle and the thing that holds the hook. It's a worker placement spot! Pallas and I designed a boardgame years ago, and it has sat on our game shelf ever since, where we occasionally take it out and playtest it. The board was just ugly ugly sketches by me, so I decided to use my newfound skills as well as existing assets to make some nicer art. In game prototyping you don't want to get too fancy with the art, since it is never final, and should a publisher pick it up, they will change everything anyway. So all I want is a playable prototype that doesn't look like ... well, like I drew it.

Fun right? I went to print it out and this was the alarming result:

I knew InkScape had issues with CMYK, (printers need a CMYK colour profile rather than the RGB profile of screens, since print doesn't quite have the same range of colour as pixels) but I didn't expect it to be this bad! No big deal, right? Except... I created the cover for my chapbook in InkScape! What horror awaits me tomorrow when the proof gets here? I felt that knot in my stomach, and even though they said it looked alright and they could work with it, I had a doubt. Urg! But proofs exist for this very reason- to correct problems before the print run is made and you are stuck with it forever.

Still, though, that little guy yanking on my guts wouldn't shut up. I tweeted the two pics above, sort of to show how much I have to learn, not to complain or anything, and an InkScape programmer saw it and replied with some helpful advice and to also say, basically, "looks like you're out of blue ink, dude" and sure enough, he was right. Lol. The new page looks way better.

Alright. Worry Guy is silent. Excited again!