Schlock Mercenary

This Friday, October 11th, I’ll be on the Wasatch Campus of Utah Valley University for their Book Academy conference. Kinda late notice, I know. Sorry about that! I’m on a panel, “Grand Openings And Then What” (talking about beginnings of stories) at 11:00 am in room 202, and I’m teaching “Crafting Humor for the Page” at 3:30 pm in room 229. Outside of those events, well, I’ll be at the conference all day. If you catch up with me in the hall I’m sure I’ll be helpful in some way.

Today at 7pm Eastern (5pm my time) I’ll be streaming from my drafting table. Follow and subscribe at twitch.tv/howardtayler Today’s project is the cover art for the next Schlock Mercenary collection, Big Dumb Objects. I’ll be starting with concept thumbnails, so if you show up early and join the discussion, you might just influence the final product! I’ll also be taking suggestions for future streams, and I might even work on some Schlock Mercenary comics if I get stalled on the cover.

Look at this! You can watch me draw! This video is 28 minutes long, and was created yesterday (October 2nd) for my Twitch stream. I’m experimenting a bit with streaming because they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and I’m interested in proving them wrong. Or maybe I’ll just be cited as an exception to the rule. Perhaps people will say it doesn’t count because I’m not old. It doesn’t matter. All of those qualify as win conditions for me. Follow and/or subscribe at twitch.tv/howardtayler. I’m getting ready to stream again in about 20 minutes, because today’s #Inktober prompt is “Bait” and my brother told me that if I draw anything ELSE it would be “bait and switch” so now I need to do that.

The Schlock Mercenary Buffer (the queue of finished comics awaiting their daily reveal at schlockmercenary.com) has come under siege recently, and as of this writing it’s down around 5. So, y’know… I have a bazillion things to talk about, but not much time to write, so for right now I’m just going to draw some comics. Maybe I’ll come up for air long enough to see if there are any movies playing, but let’s all agree in advance not to hold our breaths for that.

It’s Tuesday! Dan and I are back from the Writing Excuses Retreat, so tonight’s episode of Typecast RPG will have us in it again! Tune in tonight, at 9pm Eastern for the live stream of the Gods of Vareon D&D game. We’re still struggling to get the art cam working, but we’ve narrowed the problem to the USB ports on the host machine. Producer Donald is still troubleshooting it, and I’m hopeful that this week we’ll have LIVE VIDEO of me doing color sketches of in-game events. If we can’t get it to work, well, I’ll just draw things off-camera and then hold them up when I’m done. Previous sessions are available on YouTube, but if you’re there for the live stream you’re eligible for giveaways, including some of those sketches.

I don’t know if video exists¹ beyond this short clip from Brian McClellan’s phone, but for four hours on Thursday I role-played as a bard, while loosely interpreting the game on an overhead projector. It was a blast. It was also terrifying. No preliminary sketches, no templates, no “undo” function—I drew on paper, with markers, and we put all the art up for quick sale, proceeds going to the UCASA charity. For just $2.00 audience members could grab one of my sketches AND drop a suggestion in the jar, assigning an action to an NPC named Gallant. Gallant was a dog. I decided it would be fun if Gallant was that rare, hardy breed commonly known as a were-poodle. It was a risky decision, and during the course of the evening Gallant looked more and more like a demonic sheep². None of the pictures of Gallant stayed on the table long enough for me to capture them with my phone. One particularly memorable sketch featured Gallant, airborne, urinating on the paladin’s sword. Per the audience’s suggestion, of course. That’s not a thing I’d just DRAW³. The Typecast RPG Newsletter has lots of pictures in it, and will have many, many more as the game continues. Subscribe here! ¹ If you were there, and have video, send it to @TypecastRPG on Twitter or Instagram so we can share with the world.

It’s Tuesday again already? Let’s Do This. At 9pm Eastern my friends and I will be streaming our Gods of Vareon D&D game. Dan Wells is our dungeon master. Brian McClellan, Mari Murdock, Charlie Holmberg, Ethan Sproat, and I are playing, respectively, the no-healing¹ Cleric, the no-prisoners Rogue, the no-romance Druid, the no-religion Paladin, and the no-fighting-please² Bard. I’ll doing high-speed color sketches of in-game events, and new subscribers get to suggest targets for my pen, so if you’ve got an Amazon Prime account with unused Twitch subscriptions, this might be a good use for them! Previous sessions are available on YouTube, but our giveaways (including some of those sketches) are reserved for the live audience. Typecast Will Be At FanX We’ll be at Salt Lake City FanX doing a one-shot adventure in Room 255 DEF from 5pm to 9pm on Thursday. I’ll be doing the in-game sketching thing during the show, and those sketches will be given away to audience members. For reals! I’m not exhibiting at the show³, so if you’re in Salt Lake City for FanX this weekend, your only opportunity to catch up with me will be Thursday evening. And while I can’t promise you a live D&D sketch, I’ll definitely sign whatever merchandise you may have that needs my attention. ¹ This has proven inconvenient. My bard is now the party’s main healer.