Schlock Mercenary

We’re in the final two days of the BIG DUMB OBJECTS Kickstarter project. I’m not as far along on my deliverables as I want to be (the cover is still a few hours from being finished), but we’re on track to get the books, slipcases and add-ons delivered on time. Click through NOW if you want to get a sketch edition. And if you need a slipcase for your Schlock Mercenary books, now is a good time to reserve yours. Those things take up a lot of warehouse space, and the margins on them are really slim, so we don’t overprint by much. We’re excited to put this book in your hands, and very happy to have overfunded enough to make some other very cool things.

Hey! I finally got back out and saw a movie! Nothing screams “I am not a real movie reviewer” quite like me not seeing movies. But some of you seem to like knowing what I think about the latest cinematic releases, and I’ve been letting you down. There just hasn’t been time. There wasn’t time today, but I went and saw Terminator: Dark Fate anyway, and I have no regrets. It’s a perfect Terminator film, and while none of the reveals were surprising, none of them needed to be. Linda Hamilton, Natalia Reyes, and Arnold Schwarzenegger were perfect, and Mackenzie Davis¹ absolutely crushed it as the augmented soldier sent back in time to stop Gabriel Luna’s “Rev 9” Terminator. Luna was terrifying, and sure, he had help from the SFX department, but his robosociopath was easily on par with Robert Patrick’s, back when the franchise introduced us to liquid metal. The film brought to mind an entire category of questions which are getting asked a lot lately: what does the rise of the serialized franchise mean to traditional cinema? What do direct-to-streaming blockbusters mean for TV? What will all these streaming services do to my VHS² collection? I don’t have any answers, but I do have a response. See, I remember seeing Star Wars in 1977, and thinking it would be AMAZING to have NINE WHOLE MOVIES telling a story, but I couldn’t possibly wait 27 years for the big finish. 10-year-old me would be pretty disappointed to learn that the central Star Wars saga would take more than 40 years to reach Episode IX, but that kid would shake off the funk when told that I’d get a 3-movie Lord of the Rings³, a 23-movie superhero epic which got told, start-to-finish⁴, in just 11 years, and that the nerdy, weird things I loved were appearing on so many different kinds of screens I wouldn’t be able to watch them all. The Terminator films are not my favorite film franchise, but they’re pretty dang cool. They’re not be-all, end-all movies, but this latest one crossed my Threshold of Awesome. I’m pretty happy to have lived long enough to enjoy this latest era of cinematic output, and I look forward to enjoying as much of what comes next as I can make time for. ¹ Mackenzie Davis played my favorite character in The Martian. She was the one who figured out that Mark Watney was still alive. It was a small part⁵, but her performance still makes me tear up a little.

I’ve been making slow, steady progress on the Big Dumb Objects cover image. The entire process is available on YouTube, and the most recent video is available on my Twitch stream. As it stands right now, the heavy shading has been been finished in the lower left, but the top of the the giant space-tree, which goes in the upper left, hasn’t even really been started. You can see the trunk of the tree winding behind Tagon, but the inks stop somewhere behind the only-partially-rendered Chisulo. Follow me on Twitch for “Big Dumb Cover Art 5,” when I’ll tackle that tree, and begin the final shading passes.

We’re running a brief social media promotion. It involves Twitter.

Over the weekend I had insomnia, and decided to stream my work on the Big Dumb Objects cover. That video is now available on YouTube. The audio wasn’t working, and it took me a minute to realize I wasn’t being heard, so I’ve positioned the video at that point in the clip above. I decided not to troubleshoot the audio, and to instead focus on making art. I’ll be doing this again, only with working audio, so be sure to follow twitch.tv/howardtayler for notifications of the live stream. The next pass of inks will really shape the picture, and should be fun to watch. We’re still on-track with the Big Dumb Objects Kickstarter, and our first pin design proofs are now pictured on the page. It looks like the pins will be unlocked as add-ons today or tomorrow, so be sure to check them out!

Yesterday we posted our first update to the Big Dumb Objects Kickstarter project. It is entitled “The Five Year Summer,” and it is an abridged account of why this project is running in October instead of in June. Which means, I suppose, it is an abridged excuse, though given its length, the term “abridged” is getting a nice long stretch of the sort Olympic athletes might get before a workout. You can read it here! It includes pictures of flood-cut walls, new flooring, and a jackhammer pirate named Val.

The Kickstarter project for Big Dumb Objects: Schlock Mercenary Book 16, is now live!

Big Dumb Objects, Schlock Mercenary Book 16, is almost ready for the printer! This coming Tuesday we’ll begin the pre-order process using Kickstarter¹. The project will run for about a month, ending shortly before Thanksgiving, and will include some fun and fancy stretch goals like Planet Mercenary content, challenge coins, and stuff so cool (but so not-yet-approved) that we don’t even dare hint at it. The project will definitely include a slipcase fitted for books 12 through 16. We’ll also do some videos for this one. The cover art isn’t done yet, so we’ll take this opportunity to stream its creation over at twitch.tv/howardtayler, starting with pencils, and moving all the way into final inks. (The coloring won’t be streamed. Travis colors these things off-camera.) We hope you’ll join us next Tuesday (or maybe Wednesday?) and help us fund the creation of a book so big we promised ourselves we weren’t going to do a book this big². ¹ We’re aware of Kickstarter’s position with regard to unionization. We support the unionizers at Kickstarter United, and agree with them: boycotting Kickstarter will hurt all the wrong people. (Yes, including us.)

Tonight at 9pm Eastern on the TypecastRPG Twitch Stream I’ll be talking about worldbuilding with fellow worldbuilders, scene-setters, and cosmos-creators Mari Murdock, Charlie Holmberg, and Brian McClellan. Our Dungeon Master is out of town, and our paladin is honeymooning, so it’s possible we’ll have a USB port open for an Art Cam! Join us at 9pm Eastern for an hour (or two!) of animated¹ discussion, Q&A², and personal growth³. ¹ Art Cam notwithstanding, there will be no actual animation. Just (hopefully) me drawing stuff.