Pulp Design Tools & Resources, Part Two: Fonts

This is the second in a series of posts (three or more) aimed at introducing gamers to some of the resources out there they might not be aware of for making their own graphics & such. It’s based on our current areas of interest, the 1920s & 30s interwar pulp period, but should be of interest to anyone wanting to add some graphic design details to their gaming!

Part One was a general introduction to Inkscape.
Part Three is on online sources of pulp/interwar design & other images.

A Quick Intro to Some Pulp Design Basics

van isl golf poster
A 1930s Canadian Pacific poster for the Empress Hotel. Via Boston Public Library's Flickr account (CC BY-NC).

Have a look at the image to the right; it’s a good basic distillation of the design principles shared by many of the 20s/30s graphics we’re trying to replicate for our own uses. There were, of course, a number of different styles and variants in use in the period, this one just happens to be a favourite of mine and also easy to replicate in Inkscape!

There’s no gradients, just areas of solid colour. Shading is done with smaller areas of another solid colour — see the area along the golfer’s inner thigh or around his arms — or not done at all. Notice that the grass and sea are simply solid colours; the sea and sky are even exactly the same shade of blue, with the horizon sketched in with a thin tan divider. No outlines or sketch lines, either, just areas of colour.
Continue reading Pulp Design Tools & Resources, Part Two: Fonts

Pulp Design Tools & Resources, Part One: Inkscape

Everytime Corey or I post player aids, faux-vintage ads, building signs, faux magazine covers or similar to forums or elsewhere, there’s always people curious about the tools, fonts and resources we use.

This is the first in a series of posts (probably at least three) aimed at introducing gamers to some of the resources out there they might not be aware of for making their own graphics & such.

Part Two on fonts, typography & design has been published now.

Inkscape

The main tool is Inkscape, an amazing Open Source vector-graphics editor. It’s free to download, available for Windows, Linux, or Mac, and quite possibly the coolest program ever.
Continue reading Pulp Design Tools & Resources, Part One: Inkscape

15mm Science Fiction Sources

15mm science fiction (Stargrunt II, specifically) was one of my starting places in miniature wargaming; I don’t do much these days but I still have all my figures and I still keep an eye on the field. These are great days for 15mm SF gaming, with a bunch of new companies involved with rapidly expanding ranges, as well as new stuff from established companies like Ground Zero Games.

I used to maintain a long page of companies involved in 15mm SF – many people still link to it, so you might have followed a link expecting to find it, but I’m no longer as heavily involved in that scale & genre as I once was, so I’m going to refer you to Dropship Horizon instead. Dropship is an excellent blog devoted almost exclusively to 15mm science fiction gaming, and even better, on one of their right-hand sidebars they have a long list of 15mm Sci Fi Manufacturers!

Dropship also has news and reviews of the latest and shiniest stuff from those manufacturers, some neat projects of his own, and a good group of commentators to boot. Go check it out!

GottaCon Gone

AoF Title
The Amulet of Fire poster
I only made it to Saturday’s sessions at GottaCon – busy Friday night and working Sunday – but it was good. Had a decent RPG session Saturday morning (I’m not much of a convention RPGer, but it was OK) and Saturday afternoon was my big one, the first outing of the “Amulet of Fire” scenario!

I got five players, four of whom were among my regular 45A crowd and one friend who’d never made it to our previous pulp games. We got set up, factions picked and off and running on the 1st Act, “The Missionary Position”.

Random highlights – the two Russian factions (White & Red Air Pirate) immediately started a brawl that lasted the whole Act and resulted in some sword wounds, lots of wasted lead, and one Red shot in the head. The British and the White Russians stitched up some sort of truce, based mostly on a mutual distaste for Bolshies.
Continue reading GottaCon Gone

Convention Checklist

Under 24hrs to go until my Gottacon game… checklist time.

Figures, Scenery & Stuff
Glue drying on the bases of the last figure needed. Dullcote tonight if I get to it, otherwise they’ll do for one game.
No scenery needed to be built, save a couple of small pieces. My brother has those under control, he assures me.
Vehicles… we have more than enough.
Black felt game cloth just to put under the scenery tiles… forgot that, will have to run without it. Not a big deal, it just would have looked neater with it.
Scenario & player handout material… all neccesary stuff finished, proofread and printed. I even have an 11×17 full colour version of the Amulet of Fire cover to put on one corner of the table!

Con Survival Kit
Bottle of water, large. Check.
Bottles of Coke (2)(Caffeine IS life). Check.
Chocolate bars (simple carbs = fast energy). Check.
Cold pizza (complex carbs are good, too). Check.
Comfy shoes. Check.

Still To-Do Tonight
Rearrange figure cases so all the figs I need for the scenario are in one case, instead of spread over five.
Rearrange scenery slightly so everything is in one banker’s box, not two.
Pick up car, deliver large scenery stuff to convention site, to stash under organizer’s table instead of wrestling with everything tomorrow morning.
Decent night’s sleep.

To-Do, Tomorrow
Find something worth playing in the morning.
2PM PST, inflict pulp mayhem upon the world!

A Classic Lost World Image

Via x-ray delta one on Flickr, this image (no source is given) is a classic “Lost World” illustration!

... garden tour gone bad!

I want a 28mm miniature of the guy on the left in the front, with bandaged head and machete! (I have lots of mighty hunter types with guns, but a shortage of assisstants, helpers, native guides and flunkies to fill out the rest of the safari party…)

Click through to Flickr for larger verisons. Lots of other neat pulpish and 20s/30s images on x-ray delta one’s photostream, too. Well worth checking out! Posted under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.