This did not turn out quite the way I expected or wanted. I spent a lot of time coloring every part of the John R. Neill drawing -- I wanted it to look really lovely. But when it was all done, it looked Distinctly Unlovely. In fact, it looked like something the cat hocked up. The north and eastern quadrants weren't so bad, but the west and south were hideous, and nothing that I tried made it any better. Neill never intended this drawing to be colored -- and so he stuck a lot of characters in whose colors frankly clash. He also stuck a few generic characters in, and filled in the holes with loosely-imagined faces. The pointy-beaked gargoyle on the left was a particular pain in my ass. A better colorist than I am could have made it work, I'm sure.
I kept what I'd done in the middle, threw everything else out, and colored it Emerald for the city.
Tomorrow I hope to finish up the little four-page booklet to go with the deck. It may be that I need more than four pages. We'll see... once that's done, it's All Systems Go. I'll order up the proof deck, and you'll see photos of that here as soon as it arrives. Barring delay on The Game Crafter's part, the deck ought to be on sale quite early in February.
Thank you all for watching the evolution of the deck. It's about to become real.
-- Frede.
