|
Archive for Scott Everts
-
Scott Everts
United States
Foothill Ranch
California
MITCHELL!!!
Push the button, Frank!
-
Here's we are again and several months have passed since my last blog update. I really am amazed by those people that can keep a blog updated on a regular basis. I guess I enjoy doing graphic design so much more then writing so I put it off. Plus, the big blogs like the last one took me many hours to write so another good reason to put it off!
This blog entry will just update on what I've been working on the past few months. And a new surprise graphic design project I'm doing for a friend's game. I also wanted to write about my feelings on Ogre and the new edition. Going to stray from my normal graphic design only blog on that subject.
Read more »
Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:30 am
-
Scott Everts
United States
Foothill Ranch
California
MITCHELL!!!
Push the button, Frank!
-
One of the things I like to do for a short project is make player aids & add-ons (pimping) to my favorite games. Sometimes I go a bit overboard and make a ton of player aids. If you ever checked the file section of Mecanisburgo you'll see I've done a huge amount of stuff for that game. And I've only played it twice!! But I get attached to some games even if I can't ever get them back to the table. It's fun to make these things and there's always the chance another fan will download them and help make their first play smoother and more entertaining!
A problem that plagues my game group is we are constantly overwhelmed with new titles to try. So we don't often get a game back to the table. It might be months or years between plays. That's why player aids are so important. Sure, if you play something over and over you don't really need them. But that first play or long delay between plays means relearning it all again. So a good player aid can really speed things up. It amazes me why so many game companies don't offer good aids. It's rather annoying to constantly have to flip through a manual every 5 minutes. Something as simple as a card with the turn sequence and icon definitions would at least help alittle!
With my player aids I try to match the graphic design of the source game as close as possible. This can be time consuming but looks nicer when used with the game. Tracking down the original fonts helps. And I sometimes scan in parts of the components to make it easier to size/color match. Unfortunately every printer prints colors a bit differently so getting a perfect match is near impossible. So I get as close as I can.
I also try to make them easy to read with as large of font as possible. Nothing worse then having to squint to make it out. The whole point is helping the players play the game in the first place!
One concession of mine is I generally recommend they be printed on a laser printer. Especially the ones with lots of black. That's easy and cheap to do now with Stables, Office Max, Fedex Office, etc. You can even get them laminated. I realize many of mine just don't print well on inkjets but when I try to match the original graphic design I can't always choose colors. I do realize that my earlier aids tended to be light text on dark which doesn't always print or read well. I've attempted on my later ones to keep dark text on light. Even on laser printers, I've had trouble so I'm more aware of this issue.
Here's some of my favorite designs-
Read more »
-
Scott Everts
United States
Foothill Ranch
California
MITCHELL!!!
Push the button, Frank!
-
I was going to be more active on my blog but it really amazes me how long it takes to make these. My Dune and Chitin: I blogs took hours & hours to put together. I was thinking maybe it's a better idea to make smaller, more frequent blogs instead of doing mega-size blogs with long dry spells.
This one will be a short one but hopefully still interesting!
So far I've not had the opportunity to work on a big boardgame title. I've done lots of small stuff and free stuff. I suppose I could be more proactive contacting companies and "shaking the bushes" so to speak. But having a full time job, I worry about making a commitment on a big title that will be hard to keep on schedule. My day job can be slow and it can be super busy. When I was working on the Dune project I was really busy but didn't have to worry about any deadlines for that!
Several years ago Chris Taylor, Tom Decker, and I decided to try getting a game published. We had about a dozen ideas and started playtest on the most promising ones. At the time I wasn't working so had lots of free time. So while one of the promising ideas was being worked on, I started graphic design. Now, this is not a good idea. You should have a very solid game before you go nuts on the art. The reason is the game will change and change drastically. As we playtested the design we kept making huge revisions that affected the card layout. I'd work on the layout, then stats would come and go which screwed up all the careful spacing. While we fine tuned the game I'd have to rework big sections. As you can imagine, this got frustrating. Though having so much free time meant I could keep working on it over and over. By the end I had made more than 50 versions of the card layout!
But eventually we decided to shelve the project. There were many reasons. The first one was the most obvious, we all were concerned about investing thousands printing a game. We've all heard horror stories of designers self funding a game and having a storage unit filled with unsold copies. The other problem was finding illustrators to do the card art. The game had a minimum of 40 illustrations necessary to make the game. That was the least we wanted to do, and would of preferred even more. During early design we had a friend do two sample illustrations for free which helped give us a visual style. But finishing the rest at the quality level he set would of cost us tens of thousands of dollars!
Even more of a problem was playtesting wasn't going well. None of us had done this before and we found the game overly complex and slow to play. We wanted a fantasy combat game using cards and dice but it needed to be fast in keeping with the theme of a dice based combat game of team gladiatorial combat.
Eventually we decided to shelve the project and hoped to revisit it in the future with fresh eyes. So far it remains in the drawer and maybe it will come out again in a revised format. Since then my two designer friends have published multiple titles with Victory Point Games and Tom has a game (Circus Train) on the P500 at GMT Games. We have learned a lot since that original project. Future titles I've learned to wait until playtest before putting too much work into art. I will come up with a style and then start making final designs once the game is near final. I think at the beginning it can be very exciting but once you revise that over months and months it can sap all your enthusiasm. I also find that you start to make bad choices and not want to make large changes even though you probably should. It's easy to get used to a design you've been hammering on for awhile and not "bit the bullet" and make that big change necessary to make it all work.
This was the final version of the card art before we shelved the project. I think it would of been beautiful if we could keep the illustration quality at this level. But the cost involved in doing that much art would of required a large number of sales to justify the cost. I do hope someday to use this design for a future game. I think it turned out pretty well and still holds up after all this time.
-
Scott Everts
United States
Foothill Ranch
California
MITCHELL!!!
Push the button, Frank!
-
Original 1st & 2nd Edition Covers
Background
Way back in the mists of time (around 1977) I discovered the Metagaming Microgames series. I first discovered them in a game magazine (probably Space Gamer) and mail ordered Ogre from an ad I saw in it. For the young in the audience, back in the day you had to use checks which you put in an envelope and then waited patiently 4-6 weeks for delivery. Ah, the good old days! Fortunately I got the second edition which featured a beautiful color cover by Clark Bradley (still my favorite cover). That game got me hooked and I bought every microgame they released.
Chitin: I was the second in the series and one of the most intriguing to me. I thought the whole concept of intelligent bugs fighting over the Fall harvest was a neat idea and making dead units food even more interesting.
Read more »
-
Scott Everts
United States
Foothill Ranch
California
MITCHELL!!!
Push the button, Frank!
-
I’ve worked in the video game industry for close to 20 years and though it can be fun, it’s also very hard work. I worked on the original Fallout & Fallout 2, both great games and tough to complete. Especially Fallout 2 which we had to finish in only a year. I figured after Bethesda bought the development rights to the Fallout series years ago I’d never work on a Fallout game again. Then my company signed a contract to do Fallout: New Vegas! There’s several people I work with that worked on the originals so we already had a good head start on making the new game. But it was a tight schedule so we really had to work hard to complete it by the release date. Meant some long hours, especially for our programming team that really burned the candle on both ends.
I love working on boardgames as a hobby and I’ve made a lot of free player aids & sometimes do graphic designs for friend’s games. My favorite published game so far is Forlorn: Hope which was really fun to do. I hope someday we can do a fancy 2nd edition with nice bits (potential publishers take note!) But most of the stuff I do is for free download just for fun.
Back on August 29, 2009 I played my first game of Dune (thanks BGG for tracking my game plays!) I was really impressed with the game! Though no one in my game group owned it. A friend of a friend came by and brought his copy. He trashed us since he was an expert. I wanted to try it again with a group of newbie’s like me but because of the eBay value of the original game we didn’t feel comfortable asking to borrow it. So I debating about making my own copy. There were quite a few versions available on BGG. None of them were perfect but I figured I could cobble something together from several different versions. Then work was getting a bit busy with Fallout NV so shelved the project. Fast forward about 3 months...
I really enjoyed working on Fallout NV but was very busy and I needed some project of my own to wind down each night. The one great thing about having your own personal projects is no deadlines and no one but you decides the direction. So I went through my various on-hold projects and remembered my interest in building my own Dune game. I had already compiled some folders of various images and designs others had made. Wasn’t sure how fancy I wanted to get so decided the first thing to do was the map.
Read more »
|
|
|
