Dodging in Photoshop to fine tune comics

 Hi All,

Lots of things going on, not much hobby. What I did do though is start looking at techniques for restoring old photos and fine tuning exposure issues in Photoshop.

The video instructions that I found helpful were this one by Karl Taylor and this one by Phlearn.

I've had an issue for a long time in my comics where the figures tend to show too dark. I have known that I could do some things to fix it but hadn't really put in the effort to understand it until now.

You may remember this picture from my last comic. As you can see, the figures are pretty dark and muddy looking. They don't read well.

So let's open it back up in Photoshop and see if we can fix it.

 Here I've reopened the picture and inserted it into the comic template I made. This is the base layer Smart Object being edited. You can also see that I zoomed in on our subjects, the Isengard Uruk Hai.

With your layer selected, add a Curves adjustment layer.

Pull the Highlights up on the curve. You can see how everything is brighter now.

With the Curves Mask selected press Ctrl+I to invert the mask. Thus removing the Curves effect.

Take you paintbrush and paint White over the areas where you want the Curves effect. I did it a little sloppily here just to give you an idea. I used a soft brush with 50% flow. Building the effect up with a lower flow brush might be better. You can also change the opacity and blend mode of the adjustment layer to further tweak the effect.

Before.

After.

So you see, it just helps bring back detail that got lost and I think makes a big improvement. I'm not sure what took me so long to address this issue, oh well.

I hope you learned something useful.

Hobby your way.

Dungeon (2014) - New Year's Eve Game

 Hi All,

As usual I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I thought I was in a space between Cross Country and Track Seasons and could get my hobby together. Turns out I got myself elected to the Band Booster Board, say that five times fast, and am more or less designated photographer for the band moving forward.

I attended my first HS basketball game this week and it was pretty good. I forgot how fun it can be to watch a game played by athletes who know what they are doing. I've been watching too many years of really horrible elementary school lunch recess basketball.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you a few pictures of a game we played of the 2014 reboot of Dungeon put out by Wizards of the Coast. We had had the game for years, but apparently had never opened the box.

It is pretty much the same game with updated art and they flip flopped you wanting to roll high for everything instead of wanting to roll low for some things.

The art is nicely updated and some of the tokens have been streamlined. For instance you now have a token to show whether your magic sword is +1 or +2.

They also updated the classes to be more in line with current D&D. You now have Rogue, Cleric, Fighter and Wizard. No more Elf as a class. They have also provided male and female playing pieces for each class. I thought it was a nice touch.

My wife chose to play the Rogue. I took Cleric, and the kids both wanted to be a Wizard. In the new game mechanic you roll to determine how many spells you start out with and then you pick cards for the spells you want. There are enough for two Wizards, it turns out. There is also a mechanic for replenishing d6 spells if the Wizard goes back to start.

We actually read the rules for once and more or less followed the suggested levels to go to for each class. The two Wizards went the same direction because they both need the big money.

The Wizards got bogged down in the 6th level. There was a Red Dragon in that chamber leading to most of the rooms. That is my wife in the Great Hall having to respawn after being killed while I win the game after plundering half of the 2nd and 3rd levels while making a daring escape back to the Great Hall through the 4th level.

All in all the game still holds up. It's frustrating, but fun.

Hope you are getting in games with friends and family.

First Comic video slideshow

 Hi All,

I just uploaded my first video slideshow of a comic style battle report. I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm going to have to dig out a good mic for ADR because what I included in this one is pretty rough.

I had wanted to have Scourge of Iron by Cannibal Corpse be the sound track, but I didn't want the video taken down. After listening to it a million times with the royalty free music I used it has grown on me.

Enjoy.

I'm new to this, so still working things out.

New Year, new comic - MESBG: Battle Companies

 Hi All,

I finally put together a comic of the game I played against Michaelmarines at Fantastic Legion's house before the holidays. It was a redux of the scenario I played against Brendan's Mirkwood Elves all the way back at the beginning of 2021.

Grab yourself a beverage and enjoy.

I may try my hand at turning these pictures into a video slideshow. We shall see, I have a lot of other hobby stuff that is more pressing.

Hope you have a great kick off to your 2022 hobby. We have another MESBG game scheduled for next weekend. Good vs. Evil, everybody brings 250 points.

Later.

Dungeon - The rematch

 Hi All,

So I teased the game of Dungeon we played last post. I ended up winning that game as the Hero, but of course I didn't take pictures. My son wanted to redeem himself after spending 4 turns in the previous game rolling 5's and 6's trying to get through a secret door on the 4th level. If you don't know, Elves discover secret doors on a 1-4 in this game. Everyone else is a 1-2.

This is the original 1980 version of the game.

The long edges of the box seem to be somewhat inclusive.

Murder hobos running around the dungeon.

This was the treasure I won after being killed by an Ogre and having to go back to the start. A +2 sword is nice, but too little too late.

My son made it back to the start with his requisite treasure. My kids wanted to argue with me that the green guy on the board was a zombie and not a troll. I told them to read the damn monster manual. Noobs!

This is my son's winning treasure. About half of it is what my hero dropped on the floor fighting that ogre.

I demand a rematch. ;)

Happy gaming everyone.

Season's Greetings

 Hi All,

Once again not a whole lot to report. I'm just trying to navigate the holidays and not gain a hundred pounds. Things are pretty good and we're visiting family so that we don't lose anymore time with loved ones. We're masking, testing and have done everything we can think of to keep our elderly relatives safe.

You may disagree, but I'm faced with the fact that I may not have many more holidays with them.

Ok, enough bummer stuff. 

Happy Holidays to you all!

While I haven't gotten much actual hobby done I have been able to get in some games and make the new composite banner displayed above. I'm not really a graphic artist, so I'm sure it's full of glaring errors to the professional eye, but I'm reasonably happy with it.

I also made a version that I ran through the comicifier for a new banner for my comics.

I decided not to do it for the blog banner because I like the clean version too.

Along with eating too much and drinking Snoop Dogg wine, we've played a few games.

We've been playing lots of Mahjong.

And we played a few games of Bears vs. Babies,  but we don't quite have the hang of it yet.

We also played Dungeon yesterday, but I forgot to take pictures.

Hopefully I can get the Battle Companies game pictures processed and into a comic soon. I might try making a video slide show out of the comic once I get it done.

Give your loved ones a hug and game like there's no tomorrow.

Junta - Family game night

 Hi All,

I'm still plugging away at the Formigny figs, but we had an opportunity to have a family game night with my daughter home for Thanksgiving.

The ladies of the house chose Junta from the selections on offer. It is definitely a product of its time, 1985 and is in the genre of games that encourage you to lie, cheat and steal your way to victory.

The ultimate goal is simple, have the most money in your swiss bank account at the end of the game. I've only ever played this game with 4 players, but it can support up to 7 and there are rules for less than 4 but with a separate mechanism to accommodate not having enough players.

The roles available for the game are: President, draws the foreign aid and proposes the budget; Generals of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Brigades each have their own troops and barracks in the city; Air Force Commander, controls the paratroops and has access to three airstrikes; Admiral, commands the marines and can call in gunboat bombardments; and the Minister of the Interior, controls the police, has a free assassination attempt per turn and can seize the chamber of deputies to force through the budget,

8 bills are drawn from the foreign aid deck each turn. Only the President knows the denominations they drew. The president then proposes how much they will distribute to the players and the budget is voted on. If it passes you get the money, if it fails the President keeps everything. 

Players can start a coup if there is a coup excuse, like the Minister of the Interior seizing the chamber and ramming through the budget.

I believe the above picture is just after I had assassinated my daughter and taken all her money. In Junta you play a family, so you're never out of the game, you just lose cards and money in hand. My son (with the fancy beard control markers) has amassed a strange political between the Church and the Radicals. He has Christian Militia, Rioters and Student Protestors in the streets.

I'm not totally sure what all is going on here, but we had used up all the money. Bribes are placed face up on the bottom of the money stack. We called the game here.

Here is my winning account with about 43 million Pesos in it. I was lucky in my assassination attempts and caught both my daughter and son with piles of cash in their hands. Each turn you pick one of five locations for your faction leader to be. Assassins have to guess correctly where the player is in order to have a chance at success. The Secret Police always succeed, but they can only show up at the bank on alternate turns.

Anyway it was a little diversion over the holidays. A silly game that plays a little dated, but if you like backstabbing games it's got a lot of that.