Fundraising is SCREAMING along for the 60 Terrible Character Portraits For Creative Commons Release Kickstarter project. In less than a week we’ve raised $660 bucks – that’s 88% of our goal! I’m tremendously excited to see this project take shape, and Jeff Preston is chomping at the bit to get down to it.

One of our great backers has a project of his own going called to raise funds for a printing of an Aruneus main book. You should go check it out. It’s a neat project, and one I think some of you ZFB’s will enjoy.

Late last week, I got word through Twitter that artist Jeff Preston was looking for work. I didn’t have any work myself, but I did have an idea.

I recently ran into a situation where I really needed some stock head shots for a character generator I was developing. I got to thinking at the time that it would be great to have someone draw up some character portraits and release them using a Creative Commons license, so that others could use them for their own work.

I’m not exactly rolling in the dough, so patronizing a project like this myself is more or less out of the question. But, artist needing work + Kickstarter = a chance to see if this will work.

So, Jeff and I talked and worked out the particulars, and it’s with great pleasure that I can announce that we’ve put the experiment together and you can now back the project.

We’ve put together what we hope is a good breakdown of rewards for different sponsorship levels, but we’re hoping that this project is less about the direct rewards and more about helping to build up more Creative Commons material that can be used by other game developers.

Please help spread the word about this project. If it does well, I’m hoping to do more stuff like this in future.

ENnie voting has opened, and as previously mentioned, Shambles is up for Best Electronic Book. Please Go Vote even if you don’t vote for Shambles.

But please, vote for Shambles!

I spent far more time on Operation : TCB than anything else in the past few weeks. That meant not so many posts here.

But that’s not the only thing that’s been going on. So let’s make with an update.

On The Table:

1. RPBGN – Those pending applications? All done. Next part of Operation : TCB is to perform infrastructure upgrades, now that WordPress 3 has been released.
2. Codename: Simulated Jocular Anaconda – A nice pile of work got done on this, and it’s now on someone else’s table until we hear back.
3. Codename: Lunar Kitsch Missile – Writing distribution has yet to happen.
4. Machine Age Materials – My piece for the upcoming Machine Age Productions supplement has been pushed back, but I still need to get it done.
5. SteamCon Games – The games for SteamCon are taking shape.
6. Codename: Pandoran Apothecary Chest – Almost ready to mothball this one.

In The Closet

1. Codename: First Rural Delusions – Mothballed 6/11/10
2. Codename: Gremlin Persistent Malice – Mothballed 6/11/10
3. Shambles Source Material #1 – This is untouched from 3/10. I need to finish it, but more important things need to be worked on. Mothballed – 6/11/10
4. Mobile Audio Rig v2.0 details here- Mothballed 2/24/10
5. Unfinished – (NaNoWriMo 2009 Entry) – Mothballed – 01/28/09
6. Codename: Enormous Intersected Automaton – Mothballed 11/04/09
7. Codename: Big Audio Dynamite – Mothballed 11/04/09
8. Codename: Unwashed Repeat Pedestrian – Mothballed – 11/04/09
9. Codename: Cackle Smash Soup – Mothballed 10/28/09
10. Codename: Tactical Plastic Laser – Mothballed 10/28/09

In The Trophy Case

1. NEW – A Terrible Grant – In case you missed it, the grant was awarded.
2. Codename: Insignificant Diversionary Anaconda – My contributions to this project are complete. This project will be updated when it is formally announced.
3. Codename: One Hour Night – I was hired to put together a board game for some folks, set in their High Fantasy setting. You can see what the game board looked like. This was burned into a sheet of leather, and colored with black and white charcoal.
4. Apartment 27 – This is an album that I put up for sale. A collection of things I’ve put together over time. Buy it!
5. Maschine Zeit Material – I did some work for the upcoming game Maschine Zeit (mostly some fiction stuff to flesh out part of the setting). I knocked this out over the last week, and it’s in the can! I’ll share details when it’s made available.
6. A Single Moment Of Weakness – A piece of Flash Fiction I wrote for a little roundup. Read it here
7. Shambles – My RPG about life as a Zombie. First revision. (read about it here) – Completed on 2/17/10
8. Obnoxious Howler Monkey – An Arduino driven, VMUSIC2 bases soundboard designed for use as a mood-setter for tabletop games. (read about it here) First Revision. – Completed on 11/18/10
9. The Grognards Of Gygax – My entry into the “Best Quest” contest for Legends of Zork. It won Second Place – Completed on 11/11/10

Excuse Of The Week: Still not getting the things done I NEED to be getting done.

So last Friday I was doing some work in the back, not really online, putting my nose to the proverbial grindstone on a different phase of Operation : TCB.

Later that night I sit down and have a look at Twitter, and all these people are telling me “Congratulations!

I had no idea what they were talking about.

Then I found out THIS had happened:

No, Really!

Shambles got nominated for “Best Electronic Book!” No, really!

I’m thrilled to have been nominated. I don’t expect I’ll win, but I didn’t expect I’d be nominated either. You know that thing people say when they’re talking about Awards shows: “It’s an honor just to be nominated.” Most of the people who say that don’t mean it.

But I sure do.

ENnie voting will open on Friday. I sure hope you turn out and vote. I’m bummed that I can’t be at GenCon in person to attend the ceremony, but I’m looking for a stand-in.

To celebrate this glorious occasion, from now through the end of GenCon, Shambles is on sale for Five Bucks

Excited? Me?

Yes.