Ongoing Baba Yaga-ing

I'll be posting Post Numbers 2 and 1 (in that order) later today and tomorrow. Weekend is family time ;)

The Most Wondrous Item: The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga (Part III)

      More famous than any other fairy-tale dwelling --save perhaps that lowly witch's gingerbread house-- the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga has a depth and a life of its own beyond its iconic owner/creator. One of my papercraft dreams has been to build it to run my adventurers up against, and now that dream is within reach! For the fantabulous Fat Dragon will be designing it for me (and others too), having listed it as the first stretch goal of his current Kickstarter project, the medieval village Ravenfell. And what do you know, not only did the project fund within a couple of hours yesterday, my chicken-legged wonder was reached by suppertime (and he launched at lunch)!
      Well, now Fat Dragon Tom is wondering what The Hut (Not Pizza, Not Jabba - better, tastier, more ancient, more powerful than both) should look like, having only worked out the tricky chicken leg geometry so far. So I will share a few ideas and illustrations over the next few posts... be sure to share yours in the comments here, and/or at the Kickstarter page, and/or the Fat Dragon forums.

Part I: Fairy-Tale & Folklore
Part II: Dungeons & Dragons
Part III: Pathfinder
Part IV: Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory

Part III: Pathfinder

The Most Wondrous Item: The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga (Part IV)

     More famous than any other fairy-tale dwelling --save perhaps that lowly witch's gingerbread house-- the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga has a depth and a life of its own beyond its iconic owner/creator. One of my papercraft dreams has been to build it to run my adventurers up against, and now that dream is within reach! For the fantabulous Fat Dragon will be designing it for me (and others too), having listed it as the first stretch goal of his current Kickstarter project, the medieval village Ravenfell. And what do you know, not only did the project fund within a couple of hours yesterday, my chicken-legged wonder was reached by suppertime (and he launched at lunch)!
     Well, now Fat Dragon Tom is wondering what The Hut (Not Pizza, Not Jabba - better, tastier, more ancient, more powerful than both) should look like, having only worked out the tricky chicken leg geometry so far. So I will share a few ideas and illustrations over the next few posts... be sure to share yours in the comments here, and/or at the Kickstarter page, and/or the Fat Dragon forums.

Part I: Fairy-Tale & Folklore
Part II: Dungeons & Dragons
Part III: Pathfinder
Part IV: Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory

Part IV: Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année!

Buon Natale e buon anno!

Feliz Natal e Feliz Ano Novo!

!Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo! 

I'd love to add greetings in Polish and Russian, but I don't trust my old translations, and I'm afraid to make a similar mistake to the lead priest at my father's church. Every Christmas service, he breaks out his guitar, sings José Felicianos "Feliz Navidad", and proceeds to wish everyone in the congregation a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous Anus. You really have to watch those accents and non-English letters, as I keep trying to tell him... ;D

Festive joy from my favourite webcomic, Brian Patterson's d20 monkey. May all your gaming be merry and bright, and may it be with the best of your family and friends. Have a Happy New Year, too!

P.S. Please send good wishes and/or prayer's Brian's way. He broke his knee getting his Christmas decorations down from his attic a month ago, has had to have surgery, and can't even sit at his desk to draw the comic for most of the next two months. And his gaming-related goodness includes an annual Christmas arc with one of his lead characters proving to be Santa's long-lost son... :(

Beginning gaming again (test entry)

Learning GIMP to create and modify gaming papercraft...

Extended corn rows for Corn-flagration of Dooooom!

As previously promised, One Monk's Corn Rows modded to 10" lengths, to save work when crafting the corn maze. Four printed copies are necessary for the cornmaze I've designed, at the largest size they will print off (either US Letter or A4). The cornmaze requires 78-79 linear inches, and if you can print each sheet at 10" long you'll just be able to do it. Actual photos of the build should follow tomorrow...

One-Monk-Halloween-Harvest-Props-Cornfield-modded-to-2-10%22-rows-by-WackyAnne.pdf

The illustration is (C) 2008 by Jim Hartman (One Monk), and modded with permission 2013 by Anne Thornton (WackyAnne AKA DungeonMama). For personal use only. Please visit onemonk.com and the Cardboard Warriors forum for more on the art and hobby of gaming papercraft.

Minis for Monday! (slightly late)

Hello Everyone!

I've learned a valuable, yet painful, lesson today. I had an older post open to update it with some links, my computer hung up (a memory leak somewhere, it seems), and the post was wiped. As it was my Dungeon for Dominion Day, a prize-winner, and my most detailed (and visited) post, I couldn't leave it at that. There was some hope, in that the initial image and opening paragraph still lingered in the editor when the browser was re-opened. It's taken me hours to restore the post, and add back in the valid links, etc. Fortunately the comments were still linked...

The reason I was fiddling with the old post in the first place was because I've recently been chatting with Mr. Billiam Babble, of Inked Adventures fame, and he suggested I share the minis I made from his knight-for-scale doodle in his Large Dungeon Entrance. These knights will be marching off to join the Cardboard Warriors as soon as this is posted.

I reworked the whole page earlier today, to put in a proper copyright notice; they were, until today, for my eyes only save for a glimpse in the photo below. Please note, the artwork is under copyright by Billiam Babble, but my understanding is that my adaptation may be shared with the notice intact. For free, that should go with out saying. However, I heartily encourage you to purchase some of Inked Adventures' most excellent dungeon tiles and terrain. Not only will it show your appreciation of his work, it affords you the very best way to make your knight feel at home. ;)

Brave Montresor against four Dead Demi-Human Knights (or Halfling Shadow Knights, if you prefer) in the Dungeons of the Demented Demi-Human! adventure for Dominion Day.

Inked_Adventures-WackyAnne_Double_Dozen_Dead_Demi-Human_Knights

These are not quite in the One Monk/Cardboard Warriors style for three reasons.

One: this is simply mirrored art rather than full-front and back (YOU try doodling a back to match!). Two: rather than fold on the base tab, you fold down from the top of the mini.
Three: no black border used as a cutting guide. You trim as near as you can, or leave rectangular

Why this way? Well, this was a very early experiment of mine, before I knew about GIMP or had access to my Photoshop. This is just about the simplest way to make a mini:

1) take a cropped screenshot of a suitable image

2) duplicate it

3) flip the duplicate upside down

4) flip the duplicate left-right (mirror-image)

5) open up a text-editor, drop in upright

6) copy across as many times as you want, hit enter

7) drop in upside-down/mirror-image

8) copy across the same number of times, lining it up

9) in between each set of feet, insert two lines of type with the artist/mini info

10) underline the right-side up text, to provide a cut or fold line

That's it, save for some minor tweaking of tab sizes, lining-up, and page formatting. All it took on my Mac were the screenshot function, Preview to flip the image, and TextEdit. The screenshot image loses some resolution from the original, but it's still acceptable.

In this case, to fit the page, the knights come out to about 23mm scale. Given that One Monk's scale is closer to 32 mm, and comparing with my small-sized Pathfinder minis, the resulting knights are just about perfect halfling size. Now, you could certainly enlarge these on printing, though you will have to change your top and bottom margins to compensate. It would be easier for those using A4 instead of US Letter.

Here you can see them roughly cut and folded. Next, you would glue the wrong sides together. You may glue the tabs together if paper-basing One Monk style or with a plastic slotted base. Or you could leave the tabs unglued to use the Reivaj or Kev's Lounge styles of paper-base. Inked Adventures' free bases work best with the latter styles. After the glue has set, you can trim around the figure, or leave as is.

Well, I hope you have some fun with these. To see what I used them for, check out my Dungeons of the Demented Demi-Human! adventure for Dominion Day.

The good news is, that I have perhaps inspired the Brilliant Mr. Babble to draw up some actual adventuresome paper minis!

- WackyAnne, AKA Dungeon Mama