Schlock Mercenary

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.

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.