Bryce's Ramblings

http://gardenninjastudios.blogspot.com/2009/12/table-top-gaming-news-readers-choice.html

Tabletop Gaming News is once again holding their annual

Yes, so go on over to Tabletopgamingnews.com and have a look at what we have to show from 20009. Go ahead and vote while you're at it.

Some of my highlights for the year have made their list. For example, their best fantasy miniatures contenders include Thagrosh the Messiah from Hordes, the new Skaven Screaming Bell from GW and several entries from Avatars of War- including the Minotaur Lord.

However, the best thing that this list is good for is introducing us to new miniatures that we might not have noticed otherwise. For example, somehow I missed Reaper's new Frost Giant Princess, and a lot of the outstanding contenders from Hell Dorado this year, including Montbard and the impressive Eurynome.

That is a lot to choose from, and that is part of the reason why TGN's awards are consistently of high quality. It does make the voting more difficult.

Of course, I might have to go out and get a lot of these minis too. I mean, just look at them.

<input ... ><input ... >

Cross-posted from the Tu Publishing website:

We've gotten a little press lately: the Galesburg, IL, Register-Mail and the Galva, IL, Galva News recently ran stories on us. Stacy Whitman, our editorial director, grew up in Galva, so the stories are local interest--focused.

Excerpt:

Galva native Stacy Whitman is starting a small press in Orem, Utah, dedicated to multicultural fantasy and science fiction books for children and young adults. The editor of more than 20 books for children and young adults, including the New York Times bestselling picture book A Practical Guide to Monsters, Whitman hopes to address a gap in the childrens book market with the company.

Fantasy has a long history of being drawn from the folklore and fairy tales of Europe, Whitman said. J.R.R. Tolkiens classic Lord of the Rings novels, inspired by Norse and British folklore, have spurred two generations of adventurous fantasy books. However, many other cultures in the world also have enthralling folklore with the potential for reshaping and inspiring modern stories.

The press hopes to be open to submissions from writers as early as January 2010. Looking for a different way to raise capital for the company, Whitman is raising money with a project on Kickstarter.com.

Also, just a quick reminder that if you intended to bid in the Kickstart Tu auction, today is the last day! Remember, every winning bid is a Kickstarter bid, so you also get the rewards from the Kickstarter level that you bid at.

If you want to head directly to the Kickstarter, we have until Dec. 14 for that.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

The most recent MISTBORN 3 annotation talks about how the Lord Ruler needed to practice when he held the power. And the most recent Writing Excuses podcast discusses world-building gender roles.

A good friend of mine, Stacy Whitman, a former editor at Mirrorstone Books and a past Writing Excuses guest, is getting ready to launch a small press named Tu Publishing that will focus on multicultural fantasy and science fiction. To get the company started, Stacy has set up a fundraiser through Kickstarter. It's the type of fundraising drive where you pledge donations that kick in after the drive meets its goal. Stacy has set up rewards you can get for various pledge levels, such as advanced reader's copies of forthcoming books.

Friends of Stacy have also donated a lot of great stuff for a fundraising auction on LiveJournal. One of the items is a Mistborn mini from Garden Ninja Studios that will get a unique paint job. That auction ends early on Wednesday, and some of the others end Tuesday night. Check it out! Stacy is a great editor with excellent taste in books (she keeps bugging me to revise Scribbler). I hope she can get Tu off the ground!

Today we've added two items to the store—the long-awaited Mistborn Table of Allomantic Metals cheap poster print, and a special item for ten days only: a steeply discounted $69.95 package of seven signed copies of MISTBORN: THE FINAL EMPIRE in hardcover that you can give as gifts this holiday season. Check it out!

http://gardenninjastudios.blogspot.com/2009/12/basilisk-tank.html

Painting camo patterns is rather interesting. When painting camouflage, there are a lot of concessions to make. If you use too realistic a camo pattern, then the minis will blend into the table and themselves. I mean, camauflage doesn't pop- that's the idea.

Here are a few real camo patterns:



















This would be far too busy for the miniature. In the end, we wouldn't be able to see how well the mini was painted. And add to this some highlighting and shading, and you really have a disaster waiting to happen.

On a mini, you have to do some things differently:


Here is a simple Basilisk that I painted a little while ago. Battle damage was completely left off of it (my client's request- I think he wanted to damage it himself).

So I exaggerated the different colored areas a lot for this. As is, I've made sure that there is enough metal on this mini to break up the pattern and make the whole thing more pleasing to the eye.

Another interesting thing to note is how this mini was highlighted up. Since the different colored areas are part of the same surface, it is important to make them look alike enough that we believe they are lit by the same source.

The final highlights for both the tan and green were done using the same color- so that the mini's highlight layer blends together between the two parts. That's really only true of the extreme highlights, but if is significant for the concept on the whole.
<input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... >

I'm addressing Christmas cards! Anyone want one? If so, feel free to let me know and email or pm me your address and I'll send one your way. :)

http://gardenninjastudios.blogspot.com/2009/12/theres-lot-going-on-right-now.html

Let's start up with some of the really big things going on. The Hordes Mark II field test is going on right now, and will continue until the 24th this month.

The significance of this is that all of us who have already seen and love the Warmachine Mark II rules can now play using the Hordes factions. That's kind of great.

Of course, I think that anyone whose been playing much Hordes should get over to PP's website, sign up and start playing right now. They'll be accepting feedback, and already it is clear that the field test has improved quite a bit of rules wording.

Another bit of news from Privateer Press, they are releasing a new extreme sculpt. This time, it is a little different. Rather than doing one of everything from each faction, Privateer has decided to release a variant on the Extreme Juggernaut with the Extreme Destroyer. From the look of it, most of the parts are the same as the Juggernaut, just with some weapon changes.

I suppose that if they weren't going to release variants on this hull, I would probably have created a few myself. Now, Khadoran players who want to use nothing but massive minis are one step closer to that dream
.
On the Games Workshop side of things, we are getting some updated Legion of the Damned Space Marine minis. I remember when the old Legion of the Damned minis came out, and I don't think they've been updated since the end of the second edition of Warhammer 40,000.

Of course, anyone could have just painted a bunch of skulls and fire on black space marines, but the new minis look like they might be worth picking up anyway.

<input ... ><input ... >

I graduated high school in 2000, so this year marks the end of the first decade of my adult life.

I've been thinking a lot about the things I accomplished in those ten years. I made a lot of mistakes, but overall, I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out. Things that filled those ten years:

Wrote seven books
Earned two degrees
Became mentally and emotionally healthy
Made a lifetime's worth of amazing friends
Married my best friend

Of course, I fell seven times doing most of those things. (#3 especially was the cause of much falling.) But I stood up that eighth time, and that's what counts, I think. It was all a tremendous amount of work, but worth every bit of it. Each of these things has been quite a blessing, and a miracle.

What's interesting is that everything on that list is something that I knew I wanted by the end of that first year on my own. Which makes me think about the things I want for the next ten years of my life. The list goes something like this:

Several published novels doing well enough
Kids
A house
A 12-year-successful happy marriage
A 12-year-successful profitable business

That seems like a lot. If I got all of that in the next ten years, I don't know what I'd work for in the 20's.

But that doesn't mean I'm not going to try.

Wheel of Time fansite TarValon.net is hosting another charity drive—this time in support of Doctors Without Borders. If you're interested, consider helping out at their team's donation page. It looks like they have a small number of "thank you" prizes as well, including one of the limited edition copies of THE GATHERING STORM.

I did a few more radio and podcast interviews in the last couple of days. They'll probably be the last in a while; if you didn't get a chance to see me on the tour (a few Utah and Idaho events are still coming up), I said a lot of the same types of things on these shows as I said at my appearances. (Though for details and sometimes videos of my appearances you can check out Dragonmount's Storm Leader reports.) Today I recorded for a show on CNN radio that should be airing soon. I also appeared on David Lemberg's Science and Society podcast yesterday, as well as another appearance on the Louie b. Free show, where I really got to go in depth about this amazing phenomenon I've had the honor to be a part of. My first appearance was on November 3rd (only the "Part One" link works, but that's the whole thing). My segment starts at the 3:03:14 mark (yes, that's three hours into the show). Scrubbing through the previous 3 hours I heard adult content disclaimers several times, so keep that in mind! My segment of yesterday's show starts at the 30:47 mark. Give them both a listen!

Then there's my own podcast. Though they did a fine job without me during the tour (such as in last week's episode about NaNoWriMo—by the way, how many of my fans won this year?), Howard Tayler and Dan Wells were happy to have me back for this week's Writing Excuses episode where we discussed mixing humor with drama and horror. Check it out.

I've gotten a bit behind in mentioning the Mistborn 3 annotations. The most recent additions mention the creation of Inquisitors and how to defeat Ruin, Spook as the Survivor of the Flames, Marsh *spoiler*ing Penrod, and Yomen's backstory.

Finally, it looks like Amazon has put up a new page for THE WAY OF KINGS—and this time it's for the real thing, unlike the old page with its hilarious reviews. The page count they list is optimistic (the text would have to be tiny; depending on how the book is designed I expect the final count to be north of 800 pages), but the rest of it, including the release date, should be pretty much right. Assuming I get my revisions done on time and to my satisfaction! Right now I'm back hard at work at TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, which I'm guessing will come out more toward the end of November 2010 rather than exactly a year after THE GATHERING STORM. Anyway, there will be more here on THE WAY OF KINGS in the months to come. Stay tuned.

I came down with bronchitis over the weekend (even had to go the hospital---yikes!) and haven't been able to post the way I intended to. Now that I'm home, I am still recovering, but wanted to remind everyone that we've only got about 2 weeks left on our Kickstarter campaign. If you've been thinking about donating, and you're starting to think about holiday gifts, consider the Kickstart Tu auction, especially for the writer or book lover in your life. They've got all sorts of great stuff, including handcrafted mugs, made-to-order crocheted Alice in Wonderland dolls, a FULL YEAR of advertising on YA (& Kids!) Books Central, out-of-print children's books and a folklore pack, and writing critiques and line edits. Oh, and don't forget the giant box of manga for that manga and anime lover in your life! I plan to add some D&D and Star Wars minis later this week, and if you're a Brandon Sanderson, Jim Hines, or Howard Tayler fan, you've got the chance to get a Garden Ninja Studios customized mini from the Mistborn, Goblin Quest, or Schlock Mercenary worlds.

In addition to winning an auction, you'll also get the rewards from the Kickstarter level at which you donate---for more on how the auction works, check out the rules here.

The auction ends Dec. 9th, to make sure that the donations to the Kickstarter have enough time to go through.

If you don't have money, but do have something you'd like to donate to the auction, please feel free. And either way, please spread the word among your friends and family---we've only got a few days left, and a long way to go!

Thanks for all your support! With your help, we'll be able to get up and running!

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

http://gardenninjastudios.blogspot.com/2009/12/lukas-trickster.html

I recently had my first commission for one of the new Space Wolves minis. This time, it was Lukas the Trickster.

I have to say, the Loki in terminator armor was quite a bit of fun to paint. I used many of the same methods in painting the face that I've talked about before- including a hint of five o'clock shadow around his beard.

The wolf pelt was painted using a method I pulled from a very old painting guide from Mike McVey. Essentially, you start out with a mustard type color, highlight up to white and shade part of the pelt with a brown ink.

Overall, I think he turned out quite nicely. I loved the detail on his face, and the expression (most Space Marines are only ever angry or shouting, this one is actually a little gleeful). I look forward to more minis like this coming from GW.



<input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... >

Yesterday we decorated for Christmas and made pretzels and watched Nightmare Before Christmas. We center our family traditions around decorating, because we're always off with other family on the 24th and 25th, so we don't get a chance otherwise.

This morning I woke up and the house smelled like Christmas candles. I turned on the lights that run around our window, over the bookshelves, and around the tree. The tree sparkled. Goreshade, my betta, swirled in his bowl surrounded by fake holly and fake snow.

And I felt warm. I'm glad we have holidays at the beginning of winter. It gives me something to be happy about.

(Post about New York is coming, if it doesn't take the rest of my natural life to upload the photos. Which it might.)

Sorry again for disappearing off the face of the internet for a bit. I'm back for a little bit at least. And to celebrate, here's what I did with my exciting Thanksgiving.

Wednesday - worked until 7:30pm, got take out for dinner (Lavash Cafe - best middle eastern in Columbus if you ask me), made pumpkin pie, set bread for filling (PA Dutch version of stuffing) out to get stale, and graded term paper drafts until I fell asleep at about 2am.

Thursday - woke up, made cranberry sauce, took stuff out to thaw, greeted AMS's sister (RMS), and graded on and off while making dinner. Had dinner around 7pm - roast chicken, gravy, filling, broccoli casserole, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, rice and the pumpkin pie for dessert. AMS did the chicken and RMS did the sweet potatoes so it wasn't too much work. We sat by the fireplace and enjoyed that for a bit with our dessert. It seems to burn wood really fast, but everything is working right now that we have the flue open vs. flue closed worked out. Then graded papers all night.

Friday (the day that didn't exist) - still awake, I finally finished grading at noon and took a shower before presenting myself to AMS and RMS. Went to RMS's friend's house and almost made it without falling asleep. Came home and made pizza for dinner. Watched "Kisna" which has been sitting on the TV from Netflix for about three weeks. I had seen this one before and wanted AMS to see it. It really is comical how absolutely helpless and danger-prone the heroine is. Still it is a nice story about Indian history and culture with some action and dancing thrown in for fun.

Saturday - had breakfast at Bob Evans because RMS wanted something from Ohio. Incidentally, what is local Ohio food? At the suggestion of RMS's friends, we went to the Short North to see all of the interesting shops. Lots of antiques of varying price and quality. Also, I did the driving tour of OSU. Then we came home and watched "Brotherhood of the Wolf," another Netflix that has been sitting around. I'd have to say this is the only movie I've ever seen or heard of with a main character who is a taxidermist. I'm still not really sure why he has such great political connections in that occupation, but I'll get over it. Some good fight scenes and AMS pointed out that it was really awesome that the director chose to keep the ace up his sleeve, so to speak. Still not the best action movie I've seen. It kind of dragged in places. I will say that Monica Bellucci looked so much better (and dare I say classier) than in "Shoot 'Em Up."

Sunday - saw RMS off at 5am then went back to bed for a bit, did laundry, ironed (that has been piling up for months now so it feels good to have it done), did dishes, caught up on email, actually read more of the Sunday paper than just the comics, and did this. Now I just have to get ready for the final push to the end of the quarter.

Still to do before Christmas:
Grade 2 homeworks, 1 quiz, and 1 term paper (for 140 students each)
Write a grant
Write a paper
Update my dossier
Decorate the house
Bake cookies
Find a cat sitter
Host a Christmas party
Buy gifts
Buy wedding invitations
Post some house photos with all the decorations

I think that's it. Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

Brenna had her four year appointment on the 13th. She is 40 inches tall (56 percentile), and 35 pounds (50 percentile). Poor girl had to have 4 shots in the legs and the H1N1 flu mist up both nostrils. However, she now has all the shots she'll need to go to school in a year and a half, so that's good, at least. She was not happy with needing shots (I didn't prepare her for more than one, since I thought she'd just be getting the flu shot. Whoops!). Otherwise, she's healthy and bright (but I already knew that. :))

While at the doctor's office, she was telling me about how she saw a bug go past the window, and then she told me a story about how there are cloud spiders. They spin their webs on the moisture of the clouds, and float through the air waiting for bugs so they can eat. Then she wanted to know if we could make an art project showing that later. We haven't yet, but we still plan to, once we get some cotton balls for the clouds.

Today, she was playing a one-player version of musical chairs. She had her little plastic chair in the middle of the kitchen, and was walking around it and singing various songs (mostly Twinkle, Twinkle and a bunch of made-up-on-the-spot songs). Randomly, she'd stop, then race to sit in the chair. Apparently, her "goblin friends" were playing, too. But Brenna always won. :) This was good news for her, since apparently, the prize for winning all the rounds was a big gold coin with chocolate inside to eat.

We visited Chris's grandmother and his dad on Thanksgiving this year. It was really nice.
We drove up in the morning, and spent the day. The kids and I went down to look at the lake, and we went for a walk down the street. The weather was perfect--there was a slight chill to the air, but just enough to make it feel a bit brisk. We didn't even have to dig out the coats we brought.
Grandmere is doing pretty well, all things considered. She's able to walk from one room to another if she needs to, though she mostly sits either on her porch overlooking the lake or in her living room. I think she enjoyed watching Jonas toddle about and Brenna's happy chatter about the lake (though she was a bit shy around Grandmere. I asked her toward the end if she'd like to give Grandmere a hug, and she said "I don't think so. She might break and I might make her more sicker." Understandable--Grandmere is rather frail, and probably it's a bit scary for a four year old.)

The food was tasty. We had cheese balls and shrimp and crackers for snack food. For dinner, there was green bean casserole, turkey, roast beef, cranberry relish (though we forgot this until after dinner. Whoops!), roasted sweet potatoes and apples, and oyster dressing. For dessert, there was mincemeat pie and pumpkin pie. Brenna and I made pumpkin scones with homemade caramel glaze for our contribution (I love the internet--I got the recipe from the blog of a friend of a friend). They were super tasty.

We left at about seven in the evening, and got the kids to bed as soon as we reached home. It was nice to spend time with family and specifically think about all the blessings we enjoy.

The week before, we'd gone to Chris's dad's retirement party in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Thanks, FIL's company, for footing the bill!) It was Jonas's first plane ride. He LOVED it. He wandered around the airport gate area, grinning at people until it was time to fly. Our flight was pretty empty, so there wasn't anyone in front of us, and only one lady right behind us (Chris and Brenna were across the aisle, in a similar situation). Jonas alternated between pointing excitedly at the air flow vent and giggling and flirting with the lady behind us. Brenna was so excited about take off and going through the clouds. Then she kept herself occupied with a movie on our portable DVD player. Jonas wandered across our two seats and was super pleasant the whole flight. And then fell asleep five minutes before we landed.

We got our car seats (the only things we checked), and got the rental car. Then we headed the hour or so away to our hotel. We hung out there until it was time to meet everyone for dinner and surprise Chris's dad. I don't know how surprised he was, but I do know he was happy to see us. Plus, even though the dinner started at our kids' bedtime, they were both angels the entire time (thank you, children!).

Brenna had fun playing with Grandpa, and having her very own big hotel bed. The next day, we spent time with Chris's dad until it was time to head home. This time, Jonas fell asleep about 10 minutes before we boarded the plane and only really woke up as we stood up to head in and get our luggage. Brenna was just happy to be flying and entertained herself by looking out the window and watching her movie again.

When we got to the airport, Jonas made all the people around us (and us) laugh, because every time a piece of luggage would come down the carousel and hit the edge, he'd just laugh and laugh. Such a beautiful sound.

In more recent news, we just switched wards due to a boundary shift. Now we go to a building in the opposite direction (though it's really not much farther, timewise, so that's good). Bad news: church doesn't start until 1. Good news: it should change in January.

Of course, since we've switched wards, I was released from my calling as nursery leader.
Right before our first Sunday (last week), I was called and asked to come in early. I ended up being the first person from our old ward called into a new calling in our new ward. I am now...nursery leader. :D And the second person to get a new calling was one of the other nursery leaders, and she's still with me in nursery.

Sounds like there are several fewer kids in this nursery(about 10 or so), but all but two or three will be moving up to Sunbeams in January. Should be interesting! Haven't been up to the Nursery room yet, so I have no idea what snacks they have, or how their toys are set up. There's been a temporary Nursery leader for the last couple of months, I guess. We'll see how things go tomorrow!