What I've been up to...
Monsters, books, comics, and games
It has been a while since I wrote one of these, hasn’t it? Well, a lot has happened since October last year, so I really hope you are safe and doing well wherever you are on this precarious little planet. Let’s get into what’s been happening on my end.
DURF Expanded
When I last wrote about it here, DURF Expanded was being funded on Kickstarter. I’m happy to let you all know that it was successfully funded and that I’ve been hard at work getting the book made for the past months. If you missed the campaign, you can pre-order the book and the adventures on the pre-order store.
Ava has been hard at work editing the text I wrote, and I’ve been drawing a lot of monsters for the bestiary over the course of the last three months! Here are some of those creatures:
You can find more of these on my Bluesky and Instagram. There are around 50 of these I have done now, so I won’t be able to post all of them here. Here is a picture of all the inks before I colored them:
I’ve been really enjoying doing so much art and I’m looking forward to seeing how these look once the book is printed!
Other work
I’ve contributed some of my labor to other projects as well. I’ve been doing a bunch of layout work for the Legacy of Kain RPG: Scourge of the Sarafan.
I’ve also written and illustrated a short pamphlet adventure for Flights of Fancy, a Mausritter adventure collection. It has players exploring the inside of a buoy that has been converted to a floating pirate hideout!
Books & Games
Lets do a quick fire of the books I’ve read and games I’ve played since my last newsletter.
Books:
Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville. The setting and prose were a treat.
The Mercy of Gods, by James A. Corey. I liked the concept and thought one of the main characters was interesting, but not as strong as I’d hoped. Curious to see if the sequel adds some more meat to the story and characters.
Livesuit, also by James A. Corey. Short, standalone novella in the same setting as The Mercy of Gods. More compelling and doesn’t overstay its welcome. A quick sci-fi read with a fun unsettling reveal.
Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Did not finish this one after reading about half of it because it was just incredibly boring. Initial concept seemed fun, but the pacing and prose were rough.
Comics:
Coda, by Simon Spurrier and Matías Bergara. Fun characters and setting. Matías Bergara’s art is vibrant and dynamic
Coda Little Bird and Precious Metal by Darcy van Poelgeest and Ian Bertram. Good dystopian sci-fi story set in post-apocalyptic America that has fallen to religious fundamentalists. Incredible visceral art.
Precious Metal World Heist by Linnae Sterte. Beautiful story about thieves stealing a pocket world to explore. Linnae’s work has this wandering quality to it where it has lots of silent panels showing objects and scenery to set the mood and give a sense of place. Great stuff.
World Heist I won’t go over every comic I read the past months, so here are the others I had the pleasure of reading and recommend:
Undertow by Steve Orlando and Artyom Trakhanov
Old City Blues by Giannis Milonogiannis
Habitat and Refugium by Simon Roy
Apocalyptigirl: An Aria for the End Times by Andrew MacLean
Ultramega by James Harren and Dave Stewart
Ex.Mag Volume 01, 03, and 06 by various artists.
As for games, I haven’t played many new things. I’m currently running a Dungeon Inc. campaign for my friends, which has been a lot of fun! On the video game front I’ve been enjoying both Slay the Spire 2 and Sol Cesto
I feel like I’m missing a lot of things which have happened since October, but I guess I’ll just try to write another update a little sooner next time :)
Until then, stay safe!
-Emiel
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