Happy Halloween from a Skeleton Pumpkin

resting on some most autumnal lumber

Why Not?

Roads I've Known

Bridge Up!

The Sounds of Day In Day Out

On the Trail

From Running

a little corny but I'm trying to get some pictures from places I run and will be posting them here! doot doot!

Have You Checked Out This Thing Lately Called

A Drive

I kinda went for a drive tonight. I mean it was for a purpose but somehow it felt like I was just driving around. It was nice. I felt calm and like I was out and exploring in the world. To be clear and transparent,  I was driving to work to drop something off and then I went to the Wegman's. The most well worn of routes. But maybe the coffee I had, the remainder in the pot that had been sitting around since the early afternoon,  at 8:45PM before I walked out the door colored the driving in a new way. I didn't explore. But driving felt nice. And the girl at the register was very nice. And I had the heat on high and the windows down. What a time, right? Is there enough writing about how good it can feel to be alive? It's a feeling of just being out in the world and and and looking at it and being like yeah. A single 'yeah' to all and to all a 'yeah' night.

Bugz0rs!

MS Paint Art

These are fun to make. I highly recommend it. Therapeutic even. 

The first one reminds me of villainous teeth. 

The second one is an inadvertent rip off of the fl.ux logo. Or however you spell it. One of those blue light filters 

In Case You've Been Wondering...

Ol Vespie here fell out of the web about a week ago and has been chilling on the dutch oven I inexplicably have on my front porch.

World Explore: The Video Game Too Unreleased for Stores!

Swarm Progress

Progress on Swarm has slowed given that I didn't have much motivation to work on it yesterday or today. But what I will do right now is go through the Spell cards and change them from Boss Monster themed to Swarm themed. Here we go!

Trepidation becomes...Trepidation. Choose a player with at least 2 more victories than you. No predator enters that player's colony this turn. (any predators remain at the entrance to that colony.)

Assassin becomes Pack Hunting. Choose a predator in an opponent's colony. Give that predator +3 life until end of turn.

Counterspell becomes Trapdoor Hatch. Choose an Action card that has just been declared. Cancel the effects of that Action card.

Teleportation: Winding Tunnels. Send a predator in your colony back to the first Insect of your colony.

Cave-In: Cave-In. Destroy an Insect in your colony. Defeat any Predator with that insect.

Giant Size: Radiation! Give one Solo Insect +3 until end of turn.

Kobold Strike: Reject the Queen. No Insects can be placed this turn. Any face-down Insects are returned to its owner's hand.

Freeze: Freeze. Choose and deactivate one Insect in any colony. (It has no damage, type, or abilities until end of turn.)

Exhaustion: Infestation. Deal X damage to one Predator in your colony, where X is equal to the number of Insects in your colony.

Motivation: Nuptial Flight. If you have fewer Insects than an opponent, you may place an extra Insect this turn. (You must declare this before any Insects are revealed).

Jeopardy: Migration. All players must discard their hands, then draw one Action card and two Insect cards.

Fear: Entomophobia. Choose a Predator in any colony and send it back to the Forest.

Annihilator: Superorganism. Give on Hive Insect +3 damage until end of turn.

Princess in Peril: Foraging. Choose one Predator in the Forest. Place it at the entrance to your colony.

Zombie Attack: The Lancet Liver Fluke. Choose a defeated Predator in an opponent's scorekeeping area. Send it back to the entrance of that player's colony. Until end of turn, it has +2 life.

Hooray! I did stuff!

More Art for Cards

I also played around with the formatting of the cards. I'm trying to make the name of the card and the effect text as large as possible because I wasn't completely happy with how the printed cards looked. I could try making them larger or standard card sized but I really like the idea of being able to fit 10 on a page. It ends up saving a lot of paper in the long run.

Welcome To

getting overly sentimental while eating a bowl of rice and vegetables because my mom gave me the corn and green beans a while ago and I made the last of them in this meal.

Some Test Cards! Wowee

How they look in real life and then in color.

Card Design

Pictures will go in the box where it's obvious they will go. Other stuff will go where it's less obvious. These look so much better already than the first game i made.

More Swarm

More Swarm drawings.  The final game should have 70 different insects. I think. 

Update on Swarm

Today I sketched all of (most of) the drawings for the insects in Swarm. See how many you can name from these poor quality, low contrast, lightly penciled photos! 

Turns Out

I was talking to Christa at work about this bell hornet and how I was going to watch it get all decomposed and liquefied and stuff and take pictures and she told me that it might be that the spider won't even bother with it if it's too big. And bell hornets are pretty big. Apparently, if the spider doesn't bag it up on the quick fast then it's likely that it won't bother.

lazy spider. doesn't it care about the views I'm after?! MY VIEWS!

Anyway, so I'm abandoning that for now and switching gears. My new plan is to make an EVEN NEWER adaptation of Boss Monster to play at my work that doesn't allow the original version.

My original adaptation was based around rooms at the school but it felt kinda clunky and lame and didn't have pictures. Pictures are important.

So I'm hoping this new version will be much more versatile and make more sense and have lots of great-good pictures in it.

I'll call it Swarm, which is likely already a game but oh well. You will play as the Queen of a colony of various insects that are uniting to defend themselves against predators.

Bugs r kool. There will be updates here so that I actually work on it. Tonight my plan is to come up with all of the insects I'll use and figure out how to adapt all the categories. The original Boss Monster has two types of rooms: monster and trap. And then four different treasure types: money, swords, crosses, and books (or whatever). I'm thinking I'll have two different insect types: hive and solitary. And then four broad types of insects like: flying, slithering, burrowing, and climbing (?). Something like that. We'll see. Suggestions are wanted and appreciated.

Hanging Round

in a spider web by myself
and I've had too much time
to sit and think about myself.

For Our Next Series:

watching this bell hornet caught in a spider web get digested!!!!!!!!

probablynotIdon'tknowMaybeWe'llseeProbablyDefinitelyyesWe'redoingthis.

he's on the ground now.

chilling with his fellow fallen homies. probably laughing at making fun of all the leaves still on the tree. until he rots into the ground where he will be that cool forever.

Join Me On This Magical Journey

Won't you?

Trembling and Tenuous

Leaves: the most permanent thing leaves can imagine

Our Boy

At this point

I'm just taking pictures out of curiosity. The joke is kinda played out and we don't need to get all existential about it. It's cool enough to just watch one leaf age dramatically from day to day.

Like what, ya know?