Final "Entries" for First Circle of Hell Stronghold

My last couple of submissions for Stronghold art...

Here's #3:

And #4:

To me, #4 is similar to C.J.'s description of #1; it looks more like a place of darkness than of fiery torment. But I'll let you all be the judge. C.J., more thoughts? I can't make up my mind between #2 & #3...

New .sig Stronghold Art

Here are a couple of replacement work-ups for the First Circle of Hell Stronghold using artwork from some fantastic artists.

Here's #1:

And here's #2:

Please let me know your opinion of these in the comments section.

C.J., any thoughts? I can look for more if these aren't satisfactory...

Big Goof on the .sig Stronghold Art

So I created a Stronghold based on C.J.'s .sig card for First Circle of Hell, you know the one:

Thematically, the art is nearly perfect for the text. All was well until I saw this Seven Seas card:

Same image, I just grabbed & stretched a different part of the picture. So to avoid having 2 cards in the Guardians universe with the same artwork, I will be working up a couple of new versions of the Stronghold this weekend. Consider the old version "retired"...

C.J. Burke's .sig card #104: Iron Crag Beggler

C.J. Burke's .sig card #103: Light Saber

C.J. Burke's .sig card #102: Captain Black Nose's Ghost

Update on hi-res Champion's Odyssey PDFs

I have completed all the PDFs for Champion's Odyssey. I have also posted a single-bordered card template that you can use to print on the backs of sheets HR04, HR05, HR09, HR10, HR11, and HR12. I am developing a double-bordered card template for HR01, HR02, HR06, HR07, and HR08. I am also working on a special backing template for HR03, which needs to have a combination of rubble for Strongholds, single borders for upgrades/downgrades, and Guardians (which are the same image on both sides of the card.

Also, if you've been downloading these PDFs, you will want to re-acquire HR05 and HR08, which were changed because not only did I forget to include a couple of cards, I also forgot that creature magic items are single bordered on the back, while hand magic items and accessories are double-bordered, so I didn't want them on the same page.

UPDATE:

I have deleted and reloaded the single border and double border templates. I realized they were orientated backwards. Now you should print your card, flip the paper horizontally, and print the border template, which should result in the correct orientation. You may have to experiment based on the way your printer loads pages...

2ND UPDATE:

The custom backing page for HR03 which contains single borders, rubble, and the Guardian is now up.

Happy New Year!

I hope your new year is starting off great!

Although I wasn't as prolific in 2010 (129 posts) as I was in 2009 (142 posts), I plan on trying to top both of those numbers for 2011.

If you haven't been paying attention, there are now 10 hi-res PDFs of Champion's Odyssey cards, follow the link in the sidebar. I've run into a slight snag on one card that is holding me up (can't find the Photoshop file), and my internet provider's customer service is down so I can't see how close I am to my upload limit. For now I'll have to upload PDFs from work.

Speaking of work, they got rid of the color laserjet I was using to print cards. The good news is there is a brand new Konica Minolta color copier on site, and cards printed on that look amazing!

More to come...

C.J. Burke's .sig card #101: The Pun-isher

Since C.J. has given his blessing to proceed with alternate artists, here comes the first new card under that umbrella. Enjoy!

Downloading PDFs

It's not very intuitive, so here's how to download the PDF:

1) in the upper right hand corner of the PDF, click the little box to open the PDF in a new window.

2) In the new window, on the left side you will see two options: File and View. Click on File to open a submenu.

3) On the submenu select Download Original.

The file size is about 24MB, which is close to the 28MB of Phil's Seven Seas PDFs.

Good luck!

First Hi-res template

A new link has been added in the Sidebar called "Champion's Odyssey Hi-res PDFs". This will take you to a shared Google Docs folder containing all the PDFs.

I had to remove the PDF embedded in this post. Not only was it consuming lots of my precious download limit every time I loaded the page, it was also nearly impossible to edit the post.

And on that note, the second PDF is done...

Hi-res card template

In one of my previous "Bringing Homebrew Cards To Life" posts, I describe how printing the Seven Seas PDFs result in cards smaller than standard cards. The size of a standard Guardians card is roughly 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches. A Seven Seas PDF card measures 2.25 inches by 3.125 inches. It's a noticeable difference.

To make a 3 x 3 printing of standard cards, you get a total measurement of 7.5 inches by 10.5 inches, which should fit on a standard sheet (8.5 inches by 11 inches) of paper. But not so fast! Many printers can't print to the edge of the page...you should allow for at least a .25 inch margin on each side of the sheet. That brings the total measurement to 8 inches by 11 inches, which barely fits. That also means the cards must be up against each other with no gap between them. Therefore the PDFs will have 9 cards, arranged in a 3 by 3 grid, with no space between them. If people are against this, please let me know before I get too far, and I'll lay out a different grid (maybe 2 by 4).

I'll post some images of this concept soon.

News, News and More News

First let's start with the poll. It's gone. I really liked the concept, but it was poorly designed. I could not create it without voting myself. Others apparently cannot vote even though they were signed in. And though I don't use Internet Explorer, the poll doesn't even look correct under IE. So I have removed it until something better comes along.

Second, early opinions are that I should start working on hi-res PDFs of Champion's Odyssey and Sig cards for people to download, so I will start this soon. I thought I would need Acrobat, but apparently Photoshop is capable of creating PDFs.

Third, C.J. has given me his blessing to continue making Sig cards using other artists. So instead of stopping at 100, I will produce more Sig cards soon.

I hope you'll all bear with me on the recent changes and layout experimentation. I am committed to a goal of continuous improvement and excellence for this blog.

Trying Out Poll Feature in Sidebar

I'm going to try out the new Poll feature over in the sidebar to see how useful it is. If I don't get much of a response I will probably get rid of it. Unfortunately I believe you must be logged in to vote. I have tried hard to make it easy to post on this site, allowing anonymous comments and not requiring word verification (meaning I must police the site regularly for spam postings). For the voting, though, my hands are tied...logging in is a required feature. I could not find any other poll gadgets, so this is all I've got. If you'd like to vote and don't have a Google (Gmail) account, take a moment and sign up. It's free, relatively painless, and you don't have to do anything with it (except log in and vote, if you wish).

So the first poll will be about what I've been discussing lately - what's coming up next for the blog. The poll asks what would YOU, the reader, like me to work on next? Enter the poll to let me know.

Note: You can vote for more than 1 selection, and you can also change your vote. Please let me know here in the comments if you experience problems voting...

New design features in sidebar

I have not changed the layout of this blog in a LONG time. C.J. has made me aware of two great tools which I have incorporated into the sidebar.

The first is Recent comments that show what has been posted lately. The second is most popular comments so that you can see what has generated the most buzz.

Please make use of these features and see what C.J. has been up to. And please leave comments for him...he is, after all, the designer!

UPDATE: I have removed the popular posts but left the recent comments feature. The popular posts goes off of page hits rather than quantity of comments, and I didn't feel it added enough to bump the links and archives so far down the page. In addition, I added a poll feature for future use...