Over the last few months I had time to look at Learning Stuff Lane as a Brand, I always had this nagging thought that I could smash through the comic and at the end not find an audience. So lately time has been devoted into building one. Audience growth is always slow going at the start and due to the pandemic there hasn't been a way to head to conventions and the like, but once I have a backlog of content online I'm sure folks will find their way to the lane. COMIC UPDATE -

Lots of news and updates!!! COMIC UPDATE - SCENE PREP: Almost time to start the art for Issue #1, with the characters and locations is great shape I spent time preparing default scene workspaces. These are Photoshop files dedicated to specific locations, with posable characters at the ready... When roughing out the panel composition these workspaces will make the process alot more efficient. An example of a workspace for locations within the 'Emergency Station' are below... -

Lockdowns are still ongoing in Australia, likely for a while longer. I took some time this month to relocate. While there aren't any big things to add to this blog I've made alot of progress in removing speedbumps that will slow the production process of all the future comic issues. COMIC UPDATE - ADMIN: Coming closer to the Production Stage has raised a bunch of busywork that needs doing to make sure everything is ready for later in the year. This incudes brand art, updating

With the corona situation in Australia the next month is going to be a mixed bag. On the up side there'll be alot more time to get things done. COMIC UPDATE - FINAL DRAFT: This month the first issue production script will be locked in. Stay tuned for updates as things kick off on the storyboarding side of things. MR CHUCKLES ADVENTURES - OVER 30 EPISODES READY FOR REVIEW: This has been a great exercise in organically building out a concept to meet it's natural potential. With

Almost halfway through the year, there's alot more to do but alot less than there was 6 months ago. COMIC UPDATE - STORY STUFF: More time needed on scripts, nothing's gone wrong, I just want to keep things low pressure - while still on track. - DESIGN: The work on the 'Mr Chuckles Books' (further below) has done what I hoped it would - test my design process for final art and helped me gauge expectation on my - pages per day. Beyond that I took time to work on a few design em

It's already May? The last month flew by, with events in Australia making a comeback and a few other life changes there've been alot of distractions. But that's no excuse, so here's the latest... COMIC UPDATE - STORY TIME: I find that a little bit of time between drafts helps give some perspective and distance from the work. With fresh eyes the wonky bits become more obvious and the tough fixes become less of a challenge. With the year already getting away on us this month wi

It's been a 'prep month' of sorts. I'm keen to get the comics out but something in the back of my mind keeps telling me that locking off and releasing the first issue will be one of those 'work until we get it right' kind of situation. That said, there's definitely no plan to procrastinate. So the idea I'm running with is to create some repeatable, simple to execute, content that's more substantial than the current design and art posts. This lead to the books I vaguely posted

Combat is a centerpiece of the game's 'cards and combat' foundation. As mentioned in an earlier post, Cards & Combat is a casual adventure sandbox game, and in order to make the gameplay accessible to a wide player base the combat needs to be simplified, but, in order to retain seasoned players combat also needs some degree of tactical agency. While I could go into the basics of dice rolling and perk modifiers, let's skip over it and look at: MY APPROACH TO ENCHANCING SIMPLIF

Along with Combat, Cards are the centerpiece of the gameplay. In the case of this game we researched decks from adventure games (eg. Zombies!!!), from deck builder games (eg. Pokemon) and even decks from family games (eg. Monopoly). These gave a wide variety of perspectives on game modification, enhancement and complication while keeping many of the Cards & Combat cards tied to familiar tropes. In the end I settled on a Core Game Deck that governs actions when navigating the

As always thanks for following along. We're now on track to passing 1000 page likes on Facebook, an encouraging milestone for sure. I really appreciate the gathering interest. COMIC UPDATE - Coming 2021 (-2022): I've had time to look at timelines and I want to avoid creating uncertainty in the delivery date. I'm confident that the 6 issue series will be ready by year's end, but being new to digital self-publishing there are factors to consider. For example, just finishing the

While aiming to keep the gameplay experience light, it felt a little too simple to have every Playable Character be assigned the same attributes (e.g. moves per turn, combat strength). Each Character in the comic has a personality and it needed to be reflected in the gameplay. And every time the game is played it felt important that players had a variety in the buffs, de-buffs and surprise features that could change their play experience when they select from the 100+ availab

With a name like 'Cards & Combat' it's pretty clear what you're in for when playing the game. The Card and Combat elements of play are the foundation on which everything is built, we'll explore these in future posts, but for now let's have a look at what I hope will elevate the project beyond being a typical adventurous brawler. There are 8 game modes in development. On launch and during open beta testing there'll only be 3 modes available (two simple modes, one standard mode

The next few posts cover portions of the game concept and how they're intended to play out. First up, let's address a few 'surprise outcomes in play' built into this 'sandbox arena'. A SANDBOX BOARD GAME??? The term sandbox typically refers to an open world in a video game that allows free roaming and a degree of creative problem solving to achieve any goals. For Cards & Combat the board is designed in a way to allow freedom of movement with limited bottlenecks in movement t

It all starts with a 'big idea'. How's this game different? What's the genre?... I'll get to that at the bottom of the post, but to start with... ...when 'anything you can imagine is possible' it's easy to go off the rails and lose focus, so every project needs some sense of self-imposed guiding limitations to provide boundaries on a project's scope while adding clarity and focus to the development process. The guiding limitations I started with are... MY RULES FOR BOARD GAME

A huge thanks to everyone who's found their way to the lane over the last couple of months. What was an ad-hoc project update will now be curated as an ongoing blog. These updates will be short summaries of progress in the ongoing development of this little indie project. Recent updates include: COMIC UPDATE 4 of the 6 issues are now drafted and in a second stage of revision. The remaining 2 issues are close to first draft. It won't be long till I start boarding and creating

I've always had a drive to make a game, any game - who knows why. Early 2020 corona had kicked in, my 2D Tyranobuilder game turned out to be a bust, I'd played with GameGuru to create a 3D Machinima for the web series, I had a heap of design assets for the upcoming comic series and time up my sleeve. When introduced to Tabletop Simulator... everything sort of clicked. In a couple of weeks while procrastinating on the comic I built a prototype board game... since then the proj