CotS at Rezzed + Making the Mage Amigurumi!
about 8 years ago – Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 05:18:48 PM

We're over 70% funded in 2 days! Thank you!

Chris and I (Keaton!) have been showing City of the Shroud at EGX Rezzed in London since Thursday, and it's been a total blast! People are playing the demo and really enjoying it - we haven't even been able to sit down, and the only things keeping us going are cookies and coffee!

We're spreading the word about the Kickstarter to everyone who will listen, and more than a few folks have decided to back the campaign, right then and there (Hi! Welcome to the team!). 

Everyone has been really supportive and encouraging as we enter the third day of the campaign, and we're still utterly stunned with the support you've shown us. Thank you, again and again.

We'd love to hear from you, so please leave us a comment on the Kickstarter page!

And please help us spread the word - tell your friends about the Kickstarter and help spread the City of the Shroud love <3 (That also means you might be able to recruit more supporters to your faction of choice!)

I also wanted to take a moment to highlight the amazing amigurumi (knit doll) done by our good friend The Yarn Mouse, who is also one of the fine folks behind Mighty Tactical Shooter. She wrote a fantastic breakdown of how she designed and built the Mage, and I wanted to make sure to share it with you!

We sold out of the figures in less than 2 days, and the care and craftsmanship that go into creating them is stupendous!

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As some of you know, in my other life I am an artist for an Indie game development company run by my partner. We have many friends in the same line of business, and one, a good friend called Keaton, is about to run a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to finish his Indie company Abyssal Arts' game - City of the Shroud.

He approached me to ask if I would be interested in making an amigurumi of one of the game's characters to give as a reward on one of the higher pledge tiers ($250). As I love the game, and admire it's strong, distinctive look, I was sure I could come up with something! My only real concern was with how many I would potentially need to make - these more elaborate designs take around a day each to make once I have the pattern completed - so we agreed that only the first 5 lucky backers at the $250 pledge tier would get one.

Keaton wasn't quite sure how he wanted the ami to look, or which character to make. After some discussion we chose the Mage as he was actually the most complex and if I could make him I could make any of them! The flowing robes attracted me to making the character, as amigurumi dressed in felt clothing look so good!

I did some sketches of basic humanoid amigurumi shapes but after showing these and some samples to Keaton I could tell he was a bit lost on what to choose! We managed to rule out a couple of styles but I realised it was otherwise down to me. :)

I spent some time making some sketches from screenshots and playing the game but struggled to see enough detail to be confident in my designs. Keaton kindly sent me the 3D models from the game which I could view on my computer and see all the details I needed for designing the amigurumi itself.

I made some drawings from this model, picking out the most distinctive details and colours. When making an amigurumi like this it is impossible to capture every tiny detail, so I have to pick out which features are the most important and which capture the spirit of the model the best.

Once I did this I could design the amigurumi itself.

The robe and all other fabric bits such as on the arms and the backs of the legs are a dark blue and lined with a dark rose-red. I prefer to make ami clothes from felt rather than crocheted as they look much better, but for the mage I would have to omit the lining colour. A double thickness of felt would be too stiff and the dark blue of the felt prevented me colouring one side of it with ink. I chose a deep blue for the robe, a pale blue for his cowl, mask and trims and finally a mid brown for the leather straps and belts that cross his body.

The circular buckle type feature on his chest would be impossible to recreate exactly and would in any case look wrong if I had tried to make it from polymer clay - when the amigurumi is so small too much detail in some parts when the rest is simplified just looks strange (in my opinion). I opted for a large wide-edged antique-gold coloured eyelet carefully glued in place, with a gold-coloured plastic cabochon gem in the centre.

Once all this was decided, I could go ahead and make him. My first attempt at his legs came out far too small, but once I increased the size slightly they looked perfect. In contrast, my first attempt at his arms came out too large and looked silly, so I made them slightly smaller and then they looked perfect too.

I scribble down what I am doing as I crochet to record the pattern. This is how the pattern for the mage looked as I made him and before I recorded it properly!

Body of the amigurumi crocheted, I then had to make and fit his tiny felt clothes. These are the pattern pieces that I designed to make up his robe, cowl and mask.

All the pieces are sewn together with tiny stitches, but the trims and details are carefully glued in place with hot glue.

The buttons were made from dark silver craft brads, with the back removed and glued in place.

He has binding around his upper arms which I reproduced using some textured yarn, and lots of leather straps which I carefully fashioned out of brown felt, using a fine Sharpie pen to add the detail on the back.

I decided against putting a belt buckle on him, although the character has one. He already had the chest piece and a button on his cowl, so another eye-catching feature on his front would make him look too busy.

The Mage has 4 dreadlocks in a ponytail. I used a thick fluffy black yarn and stitched his hair from his hairline into the spot where the ponytail would be. Any bits of 'skin' that showed through were shaded using a black Sharpie permanent marker pen. I then made his ponytail separately and sewed it in place on the finished amigurumi.

His robe has a tattered edge so I used a deckle edged rotary cutting blade to achieve a similar effect.

I had a lot of difficulty making his mask look correct. It needed some definition, and I tried drawing it on with a Sharpie which kind of worked but not well enough - it looked odd with the rest of the amigurumi. I also tried a full second layer of felt with the eye 'dents' cut out, but again, it didn't look quite right.

I ended up making (very fiddly but worth it) cut out pieces to stick onto the mask surface to give the definition it needed.

I am really proud of how this amigurumi has come out, but I was, as always, very nervous about handing over the finished object just in case it wasn't what Keaton had imagined. However, as always, it was all OK and he loved it!

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Indeed, I did love it, and that Mage sits proudly on my desk where I work on City of the Shroud! Congratulations to the people who grabbed one, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Check out The Yarn Mouse's blog here!

Thank You for an Awesome Launch, and Unexpected Player Choices
about 8 years ago – Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 05:18:34 PM

First: THANK YOU!! Over 50% in just 24 hours!

What an amazing first day. We cannot thank you enough for your support. We are totally blown away - thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Let's keep it going! Please share the campaign with your friends, post about it online, and help spread the word! 

We'd love to hear from you - please leave us a comment on the Kickstarter page! We like to think we're pretty decent conversationalists! Tell us who your favorite leader is, what you would like to see in the game, or how you think the story will go. And how adorable is that Mage amigurumi?!

Again, thank you so much - we are overwhelmed with how amazing you are, and we can't wait to share this world with you!

Best,
Keaton & The Abyssal Arts Team

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And now, here's a message from Moira about her experiences during our story preview:

Unexpected Play Choices

At the start of this complete madness about letting other people guide our story, it all seemed very exciting. I could see just how it was all going to play out in my head—which factions people were going to choose, the choices they were going to make, the way they would be led or lied to (our faction leaders aren’t the most honest lot). I had everything planned. 

The process of bringing other people in on the world-building is deserving of its own post, and that one will indeed be coming in the next week or so, but what I was really blindsided by—what totally knocked me for a loop, in the best way—was the way the players responded to the story. 

Players, it turns out, are sensible. I set up a limited run of our world with three faction leaders: Navid, the Machiavellian head priest of Iskendrun; Zem, the cheerfully capricious leader of the underworld; and Azura, the Merchant Queen, a woman who might well have destroyed an entire city at one point. I was pretty sure at this point that Zem was going to win out. I mean, hell, the woman is fun. She’s fun as anything to write. She’s sweet, funny, charismatic—and with that edge of danger that brings everything else into focus. Zem is chaotic neutral personified. 

Players, however, as noted above, are sensible. Players don’t want to tie their fortunes to someone they know might commit cheerful violence at any moment. Players are quite willing to ally with someone they’re pretty sure is lying to them—Navid—if they’re pretty sure they know what the lies are. Players are willing to ally with someone they’re pretty sure is a mass murderer—Azura—if they think they’re going to be able to get away with not pissing her off. Players are sensible. Players are canny. 

As the world launched itself smoothly into motion, doing everything we’d said it would, it was a thing of utter beauty. I loved it. I loved watching the players begin to chip away at Navid’s absolute belief in Zem’s untrustworthiness. I loved watching one faction choose whole-heartedly to trust another, while the other faction chose whole-heartedly to run away at top speed. I hadn’t, as it turned out, been able to predict any of it. I felt a little bit like a mad scientist, watching my creation lurch off into the night to terrorize the villagers. 

Over four episodes, the story grew from something I created to something in which I was only a participant. As another game developer noted on Gamasutra, though a story may have a villain, in a videogame, the world is often the true villain. Upon hearing that, I cheerfully agreed. I hadn’t realized what it meant, however, until I watched the players respond to the changes I lobbed their way, and had to respond to the changes they lobbed my way. I had become the villain—and I can’t wait to do it again when the game launches.

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How cool is that (it was pretty cool for us!)? Drop us a line in the comments!

Got Questions? We Want To Answer Them! It's Time For Q&A!
about 8 years ago – Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 05:17:57 PM

Hi Everyone! Today, we want to do something a little different - we want to answer your questions about the game, indie development - anything! We’ll get the whole Abyssal Arts team to answer them. (Check out the team section on the main Kickstarter page to see who specializes in what!)

Send us any questions you have through messages, leave them in the comments, or whatever is easiest for you. Get them to us in the next 24 hours (or so), and we’ll post our replies the day after that!

We’ll also pick our favorite question and give that person a story demo key!

Here are some examples to get your mind rolling:

• What was the inspiration for the setting?
• How do you go about designing music for a game like this? What are your inspirations?
• What’s it like to transition from writing novels to writing games?

And so on! Let us know what you want to know!

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Congratulations to the winner of our story demo giveaway! Backer #142 is the lucky recipient!

Didn’t win this time? Don’t worry, we’ll be doing more giveaways as we go, so stay tuned for more chances to win!