{2d Art}
Faces
from the past staring out into the present! Gaze in wonder as
decaying photographs from a time long past are retored to their former
glory, all as if by magic!
{Photo Cleanup}
Recently, I've been working on a
project to digitize old family photos and movies for the purpose of
more secure storage. While film negatives definitely decay,
digital files don't. However, this project also requires a fair
amount of "digital remastering," as many of the older materials have
decayed considerably. These are a few of the most recent examples
of images that I have scanned in and then restored to create a digital
archive copy. In all cases, click the image here to view the full
size copy.
 Image scanned from 1945
original print. Note both the
discoloration, as well as the nicks, scratches, and other visual
"bugs." (Click for a full sized image.)
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 And the same image, after
cleanup. The image is back to being
true black and white, and the majority of the visual problems have been
repaired. Odds are, this picture hasn't looked this good since
the late 1940s. (Click for a full sized image.)
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 Pure scan of a slide taken in
the mid 1960s. Note the washed out
color (due, in part, to the fact the flatbed scanners are not slide
projectors) as well as the dirt and hairs throughout the sky.
(Click for a full sized image.)
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 The changes are subtle, but
significant. Rebalancing the colors
has infinitely improved the character of the Grand Canyon in the
background, and removing the most onerous pieces of dirt has improved
the look of the sky immeasurably. (Click for a full sized image.)
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 A slightly more extreme
example. This is a scan of a print from
1912. Notice the fairly significant damage. In addition to
the
huge hole in the middle of the picture, there is quite a lot of dirt
and discoloration - a mute legacy of the adventures this print has
been through in the last 92 years. (Click for a full sized
image.)
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 While the computer can't work
miracles, the modified image is
immeasurably improved. While the picture data of the boy's ear is
lost to posterity, the hole itself is more or less healed, along with
several other graphical blemishes. The dirt, while still present
in several locations, has been significantly reduced. (Click for
a full sized image.)
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From the
worlds of the past we turn to the worlds of the mind, as our digital
canvas exposes us to lands never before seen, and yet instantly
recognizable!
{Creative
Design}
As mentioned on the {Programming
Samples} page, I've been known to run a Dungeons & Dragons game
from time to time. The table top version's both primary strength
and weakness is the fact that the game world is just described by
speech. While this allows an unlimited "special effetcs budget,"
it can be difficult to get your players to really grasp what your
talking about. So, I like to generate some visual aids.
These are from the most recent game I ran.
The intention here was to echo
the original style of the covers of TSR's early 1980s published
adventures. Thay always did a bang up job of setting the mood for
the story, and I wanted to do the same thing. A little time in
Photoshop and Illustrator later, and blam. We have a cover.
 A map of the town of Conwy, in
north Wales. Scanned from a tourism brochure. (Click for a
full sized image.)
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 After some tweaking, Conwy has
become the fictional town of Rhygorsaf. Note that the train
tracks, walking tour route, and bridges have all been removed,
and the river resculpted, along with a few other tweaks. As a
historical point, the modifications were based on Conwy's actual layout
in the mid 1400s. (Click for a full sized image.)
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{Character Sheets}
{N&S Character Sheet}
One of the most important things in a
table top RPG is the character sheet. This is the page that
holds all of the information about the player's character - their
physical attributes, their skills, their posessions, even down to
things like eye or hair color. Sadly, Palladium Games (Publisher
of such fine products as RIFTS and Ninjas & Superspies) is infamous
for having possibly the worst character sheets in the industry.
Here is the home brew Ninjas & Superspies sheets I created some
time ago out of sheer desperation.
{Conan / d20 System Character Sheet}
{Front Page - Conan Specific}
{Back Page - d20 generic}
On the other hand, sometimes offical Character Sheets aren't all bad - they just could be a lot better. I whipped these up for a Conan RPG game we played. The Coman game is built on 3rd Edition D&D's d20 system, so the back page works for any d20 game. A "generic" front page is forthcoming.
The goal here was nothing short of creating the "ultimate" Character Sheet. As part of this, the intention was to encapsulate as much information as possible on the sheet itself, so that the players would need to reference the book as little as possible. With this in mind, I included a full level progression chart for all of the character classes, as well as working hard to make sure that every neccisary piece of data had a slot on the sheet, and explained, as much as possible, how to compute said data. The invlolved a lot of layout design work, so that similar data was always located close together - ans if possible, using the layout itself to demonstrate the mathematical relationships.
The final goal was to minimize page turns as much as possible. The final design placed all of the combat statistics on the front page, and everything else on the back - so that the front could be turned up while Adventuring, and the back while the party was back in town.
The goal here was nothing short of creating the "ultimate" Character Sheet. As part of this, the intention was to encapsulate as much information as possible on the sheet itself, so that the players would need to reference the book as little as possible. With this in mind, I included a full level progression chart for all of the character classes, as well as working hard to make sure that every neccisary piece of data had a slot on the sheet, and explained, as much as possible, how to compute said data. The invlolved a lot of layout design work, so that similar data was always located close together - ans if possible, using the layout itself to demonstrate the mathematical relationships.
The final goal was to minimize page turns as much as possible. The final design placed all of the combat statistics on the front page, and everything else on the back - so that the front could be turned up while Adventuring, and the back while the party was back in town.
{BACK}
{colophon}