Graphic Art: Lords of Magic

I made this as a custom mouse pad for my brother for Christmas. I'm super pleased with how it turned out! Lords of Magic is in my opinion a highly underrated game. Its worldbuilding, concept, and gameplay were and still are very fun. I'm glad that it was available for purchase on GOG.com. I've been having a lot of fun reminiscing as I play it.

Alfred Shortstaff and the Cavern of Time - Sample chapter

Well, after nearly a decade of work off and on, Alfred Shortstaff and the Cavern of Time is finally finished, edited, laid out, and published. A huge thanks to my co-author, Robert Strobel, and my awesome cover artist, Redge Ballard! You can buy a print version here or a Kindle version here! If you'd like a sample chapter of the story before buying, or just to see what our prose is like in the book, click the download link below. As always, I would love any feedback about the book, and if you share the link to the sample or to the Amazon purchase, I will be forever grateful! Robert and I aren't going to get much money from royalties, but just spreading the book for others to read is more of a reward than anything.

>>Click here to download the sample chapter! <<

Edit: I've decided to release the 2nd edition (with fixes to grammar errors and streamlined chapters) for free just for Pretzel Lectern followers!

>>Click here to download the entire book!<<

HeroForge Corridor Classes

I noticed that it's been years since I've said anything about Corridor. Honestly, though it's a fun game, ever since I played Betrayal at House on the Hill, I realized that the path to making a really cool, balanced board game is basically hopeless on my own. So I'll probably never draw the rest of the character classes on Photoshop, even though I only had three left to do.

Recently, I discovered a nifty site called HeroForge where you can design and have 3D printed your own custom miniatures for Dungeons & Dragons and whatnot. Though it would be cool to have my own miniatures for Corridor, each one costs $15 (low detail plastic) to $99 (heavy detailed brass), so I honestly don't know who benefits from the site. Luckily, though, they also just let you have an account and save your creations, so I played around with it a bit today and decided to make the Corridor classes. Most of them are as true as possible to the Photoshopped stickman drawings I did, and it was fun to use the available items, clothing, etc. I think the ones that turned out the best were the Rune Knight and the Battlemage.

Pumpkin Sculpture 2015

Here's my pumpkin for this year! It is a lot harder to sculpt than it looks. I even got legit ceramic tools this year, and it was still pretty hard to get the look I wanted. The pumpkin's moisture was a really big obstacle in the process. Oh, well. Still looks pretty neat. And the best part is, it won the "Scariest" award at my work pumpkin contest!

Argaenothruzil Map

My cousin and I are finally at the end of our long road of writing, editing, fixing, and compiling Alfred Shortstaff and the Cavern of Time, and it will soon be published and available for purchase online! For this project, I had to remake the map of Argaenothruzil I originally used in the forum. I decided to take a professional approach, complete with penciling, inking, and labeling on Photoshop. The only thing I regret not doing is putting a border around it; I also forgot that my book would not be a 9" x 11" dimension, for which I feel stupid... so I can only hope that the printed version will do the image justice and not warp it or cut any parts off.

Short Story: The Offering

My workplace had a scary short story contest, and this was my submission. This is probably the shortest piece I've ever finished—we were limited to 600 words. It was a challenge to let it fit, too; I had to try four or five times to cut out all the details I usually like to put in. I thought about making a longer version, but I doubt I'll ever get around to it.
Anyway, the obvious influence was Cloverfield, and Attack on Titan may have inspired me too... basically I tried to think of what scared me most in media (it's not much, I've realized), and I came up with large-scale, unpreventable destruction. I ended up winning an Honorable Mention for "Best Psychological Thrill"! Enjoy!

-----

The Offering

by Austin Ballard

Here I am at the moss-draped cave, on the edge of a cliff overlooking the bay. My journey is over, but I’m not relieved or scared. Just angry.

I just had to take that elevator the day of the Landing. The day the Monster came with its hordes of Parasites that harvested every man, woman, and child as food for their master.

Everyone but me, who was stuck in a stupid elevator the moment the Monster landed. There was a tremor, the lights went out, there was the scrabbling of insectoid legs and screaming, then silence.

Eventually, a power surge—the last that would ever happen—got me out of the elevator doors into the new world the Monster had created. It was a world of holes in windows and cars and bits of bloody cloth snagged on the glass, and smears of gore all leading toward the center of the city, where the Monster had landed.

Its Parasites had hunted well, and when every living thing in the city was devoured, it shuffled its massive, scaly bulk away through the rubble, its Parasites following it like a million ants.

From the roof of a Chinese restaurant, I watched it feast and shuffle away. I cried and raked my hair, waiting for the Parasites to fetch me as well, but they never did. They left me alone to watch the Monster crumple buildings and defecate out human bones in the carnage behind it.

It took me a day or so to realize that I would never wake up from this nightmare. I was alone. Carly, Mom, the kids—all gone.  I didn’t dare check if they had survived. No one else had, and I didn’t want to risk seeing their blood.

I kept waiting for someone to come—the Army maybe, or a helicopter from another city, but no one ever did. Maybe other Monsters ate everyone else in the world, but even if not, I am alone here. Dark supermarkets have sustained me for two weeks, but I’m done. I can’t stand it anymore.

I could never be the one to end my own life. So I followed the trail of clean white bones here, to the Monster’s cave, to let it finish the job it so inconsiderately botched. Maybe letting it eat me will send me to the same hell my family went to.

I keep expecting oblivion to come in a violent flash, but the cave is quiet… and the Monster’s gargantuan bulk is still.

The Monster… is dead.

Its Parasites sit idly circling on the cave walls, their brains empty now that their hive mind is silent. The Monster has gorged itself on humanity and now lies rotting in its cave, swollen with earthly disease.

I walk out to the edge of the cliff and watch the sun set over the rocky bay. I’m not tired anymore. I’m not going to sleep another night. That wretched Monster had to leave me alive, of all people. Anyone else would have made the best of it, but not me. I can’t.

I turn around to face the cave, and tell myself that it’s a roller coaster—that it’ll be over soon; that one last decision is keeping me from the rush of my life. Then, in a moment when no thoughts are in my head, I leap.

There is a rush. There is no scrabbling, however. All around me is air, and there is nothing to scrabble at, try as I might.

There is screaming, however. And I know, in a few short seconds, there will be silence.

Vid: Creepy Costume

My wife made this costume for my daughter out of a big paper bag, and it's truly horrifying! I don't know if it's the empty eye holes or the teeth, but it's probably both. Anyway, this was the logical outcome.

The Adventures of Abelhawk

Here's another gem I found in my Gmail archives—the first story I ever wrote, thinking I would one day finish it. It's an old story... I remember writing it by hand on the bus when I was in seventh grade. It's funny to see how much effort I put into the details of the story rather than on plot or character development. I think that's a common practice of amateur writers. The story itself is really not well researched or even interesting, but I do like a couple of the worldbuilding mechanics, like the stavesmen and the idea that the army is made up of "War Monks." This was written before Argaenothruzil, but story elements that later made it into the forum RPG are seen here, mostly Abelhawk (whoever he is in this story) and the country known as Ziccao (originally Ziccaho, a name inspired from the sound of cities in the Book of Mormon). I think I ended up turning this segment in as a freewriting assignment in my creative writing class.

I guess my biggest confusion about this piece of work is that it's called the Adventures of Abelhawk, but the focus doesn't seem to be on him as a character at all. Oh well.

"Thumbs': A Short Play

I am pleased to present "Thumbs," a play some fellow students and I made in our creative writing class in high school. I can't remember the assignment exactly—I'm guessing we were just supposed to come up with a story and present it in theater form. I remember coming up with the odd, funny, and somewhat weak-plotted storyline together. We may have even performed it in front of the class or at least read our lines, but I have no idea which character I would have played. Maybe Dawson?

Anyway, I actually thought I had lost this play, but found it in my Gmail sent folder from nearly ten years ago! Thank goodness for that. I may have other projects hidden in there as well. Well, without further ado, enjoy "Thumbs."

Three Wheels on my Wagon Bloopers

I briefly considered putting a reel like this at the end of the original video, but there were too many, and it wouldn't've been funny enough of an ending. So this worked out better!

Recipe #7: Surpresa

On my crusade to Brazil, I quickly noticed that I had to figure out good ideas for breakfast, since all Brazilians eat is bread and coffee (or if you don't drink coffee, cevada or chocolate milk), which is BORING and not filling. So I came up with this blend of hearty and delicious ingredients and called it "Surpresa" (Portuguese for "surprise"). I made it every morning during the phase when I invented it. That included dicing an entire potato before I began cooking. It was exhausting and took a while, but it was worth it. And since hash browns exist in the US, you can make it with half the effort!
Also, I remembered a few months later that my dad on his crusade to Canada had also invented a dish, called "Missionary Surprise," and it had most of the same ingredients, except ground beef was substituted for ham, his recipe used cheese on top, and he had it for dinner!

Vid: Three Wheels on My Wagon

This was a fun video to make with my family, and my green screening skills were really put to the test. It's really fun to have all the resources to make things like this. 

Hand-drawn Map of Shaarzahn

I realized that I never posted this on Pretzel Lectern, even though I made it over a year ago. Even though I don't think Shaarzahn is actually going to go anywhere at this point, I enjoy the idea of a Bronze-Age fantasy setting. This is probably the best map I've ever digitally made; I used Tolkien brushes for the terrain markings, and the font is Hylian from Zelda: Wind Waker. I really like how it turned out, and as I start on the map for Alfred's story, I think I'll use some of the tactics I employed while drawing this one.

Alfred Deleted Scene: The Crusade

My cousin and I have been working our tails off prepping Alfred Shortstaff and the Cavern of Time for publication after almost ten years of writing and editing and development hell. This was a scene that I wrote describing an event canonical to Argaenothruzil history, which was included in the original draft. However, we couldn't make it work with the way the story turned out, so we had to cut it. Still, I like the way the prose turned out, and it's been a while since I was able to explore the Argae universe since it died months ago. So, for your reading enjoyment, here is the cut prologue of Alfred Shortstaff.

The Wonder of Magic

I thought that this document had "gone down with the ship" when the Argaenothruzil site vanished, but I luckily saved a copy on my computer! Thank you, past self! It's a description of how magic works in Argaenothruzil, which was something that I wrote with a lot of thought put into it.

AustinCraft 8.1!

The past couple of weeks, my three brothers and I have gotten back into Minecraft a bit. We decided to make our own server to play on for the first time, and have been wondering why we never tried it before. It's been a blast to have a dynamic world to log on to whenever we want and see the changes that the other players have made.

Anyway, I realized as we played that some of the icons weren't to my liking... potatoes looked stupid, you could barely tell when one was baked or not, and there were these two stupid new rocks called "diorite" and "andesite." Who came up with that anyway? I also realized that the previous AustinCraft! hadn't lived up to its full potential as a resource pack rather than just a texture pack. So I got to work!

Vid: Desert Music Compilation

This was an unusual project, and a really fun one to make. Inspired by such YouTube videos as this Tavern Music Compilation, I really wanted to make an online music compilation of my favorite desert songs. Desert settings have always been my favorite genre of fantasy. Arbiter's Grounds on Twilight Princess and the Spirit Temple were my favorite dungeons on Zelda; whatever the desert quest on Runescape is was the funnest quest on the game, and Aladdin has always been one of my favorite Disney movies.

Anyway, rather than showing scenes from the games like the aforementioned tavern one does (no way I can do that much work, FRAPS is finnicky anyway, and some of the games I don't own anymore), I wanted something one-of-a-kind for my compilation. I commissioned my brother to make some artwork for it with some basic suggestions, and after he drew it, we decided that it would look even cooler if it was "golden"; that is, faux-animated like the golden cards on Hearthstone. He made the cape flap in the wind, and I did everything else. It was a ton of fun to tweak it and make it work, and I'm really pleased with the final product. The desert music along with the animations of the mirages and dusty wind make for just the mesmerizing experience that I had hoped to create. I feel like it really embodies the mystical, mysterious, dangerous feel that deserts have. Enjoy!

Austin's Thoughts #1

I went through my old status updates on Facebook and, not to brag, but I seem to be my wittiest when communicating in that form! Some of the statuses I found were borderline Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy. I'll be sharing them in droves here now and then, showcasing my favorites. Some of them might not make sense unless you know me or the time I was going through when I updated, but others will hopefully be universally enjoyed.

On Food:

• Dang, I'm hungry. You know that sucking sound toilets make the second all the water stops spinning and rushes down? I think that's what my stomach just did.
• I nearly fried my eyelid this morning... but the sausage omelet was totally worth it.
• If anything edible wants an upgrade, just add a flavor made of any combination of cheddar, jalapeño, bacon, and/or ranch.
• For lunch today I took two microwave burritos and wrapped them together in a tortilla. It was a Double Burrito Burrito.
• The only thing that would make me like Spitz® Sunflower Seeds more is if I had hamster cheek pouches.
• My dream has always been to go to a restaurant and get a drink, appetizer, entree, and dessert. (sigh) But I'm being ridiculous.
• Sometimes I like to read cookbooks just for fun.
• I am never Google image-searching "Steak dinner" on an empty stomach again.

Disney Droppings: Kuzco Does Something

Another Disney Droppings YTP short. For some reason this one had been popping into my head for weeks. I'm glad I had the footage to make it. I was in the process of making an Emperor's New Groove "The Reward" tribute, but it may be over my head. Still, glad I could at least make this in the meantime!

Vid: Turbo-tastic!

The helmet was a deal breaker when I saw it.

In Memorium Canum

Last month, my brother and I were able to work on a project together, which is always a pleasure. What's even better, it was a concrete, physical, tangible project that we made with our own hands. I had been craving manual labor for a worthwhile cause, and this one was the perfect chance.

Vid: A Country Drive

More fun with green screening, and this time starring my adorable daughter! This time my brother and I made some breakthroughs with lighting, which is truly a key factor in whether a green screened video looks any good.

Tristan's Diary

This started out as an idea I had for my first child, and then I completely forgot to do it. I didn't do it for my second child because of his birth defect that ended up taking his life, so I dug up the idea for our third child, Tristan, who was born a month ago. I thought it would be fun to see the world through a child's eyes—to think about how an outsider who comes to earth and learns about things like physics, bodily functions, communication, etc. would react. I was especially looking forward to writing about kid logic from a kid's point of view—for example, "I think I have made a breakthrough speaking with the giants who care for me. I realize that they seem to communicate using mouth noises. I attempted to communicate in this fashion today, but they did not seem to understand. Apparently, there are some rules involved with the types of mouth sounds made."

Unfortunately, as I soon found out, the very nature of this project makes it too hard to keep up. There are simply too many things a new baby experiences to write down. Besides simple things like light, sound, and dry air, there are things like sensations, pain, color, gravity, smell, and all kinds of other crazy things we take for granted every second of our existence.

Have Video Games reached their Peak?

There's a point where "flashier" is too flashy.

My brother recently got the new Super Smash Bros. game for Wii-U (I still can't believe that's its name... I was so hoping for something like Super Smash Bros. Onslaught or something), and I realized something interesting and odd the months and weeks before it came out, as well as the hour or two that I played it—I wasn't excited for it. It seemed to me that all the anticipation of Smash Bros. Brawl that I had experienced after high school had used up my excitement for Smash Bros. games entirely. It didn't matter if they had 15 new characters in this new game or 30, or even if they would keep adding new characters forever. It felt like the game was superfluous and that no amount of new features or improved graphics would ever improve on the perfection that was Brawl.

Vid: Monstrosity

Still not quite out of my project funk, but this alleviated the boredom somewhat. I got a green screen for my birthday and took it out for a test drive.

Discouragement

I've never actually used this blog as a journal before, besides a few select entries and updates. However, I feel like I need to get some feelings out about values that Pretzel Lectern represents, like my projects, emotions, and accomplishments, so I figure this is the best way. I also haven't updated nearly as often as I hoped. Which actually brings me to the reason I'm writing: I'm discouraged.

Salt Halt / Projectpalooza complete!

Well, the last month was spent avoiding salt as much as possible. I did have nachos once, and I did have some lightly salted peanuts, but besides that, I did my best! It wasn't quite as eventful as I thought it would be. I didn't feel that much different healthwise. But I did learn that you really don't need as much salt in your diet as you think.

Theater: Only the Dead Die Twice

I found this in an old folder from my Sophomore year in high school. In my speech class, we listened to part of an old radio horror show, and at a certain point pressed stop. The teacher told us to finish the story on our own and then perform it later that week (along with two made-up commercials). This is the result of our collaboration. I'm pretty sure I did most of the work writing it, and I played the part of Alec Craig when we performed it in class.

If you want to hear the setup for this story, I found this as the actual radio show this is based on. It's weird to hear this now after all those years. We listened to the show up to the 13:57 point, and then made up our own story from there:

The Tale of Nicrodh

Okay, this piece is very interesting in my opinion; when I was in 3rd Grade, I was obsessed with WarCraft II, and made a custom campaign (or rather, series of individual maps, since you couldn't exactly do a campaign back then) called The Hard Lands. This was essentially a fanfiction (I know, don't judge me) of the lore of WarCraft as I could understand it at age eight; mostly, though, I just looked at the different units available on the map editor and made up my own lore about each one.

The following is a story that takes place in the Hard Lands, but as far as I can tell, it's completely irrelevant to the campaign's storyline. Judging by the name "Aegryn," as well as the overall style of this story, it's clear I got the idea for this out of the Alliance backstory in the WarCraft II manual. It's got some really weird story elements in it that I can't even figure out now (see "abomination of the castle of Alterac," "33,000-year-old Greek urn," "jeweled skillet," and "four Dolaemons"), but I remember being very proud of it, I'm glad I discovered it. It's very interesting to see how my imagination worked back then. 

If all goes well, I'm going to try and remake the old Hard Lands campaign on WarCraft III this year.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy the irrelevant Tale of Nicrodh.

The Salt Halt + Project-palooza Challenges!

It's February, which means it's another project month for me! Last year's was the Beat the Sweet Challenge, which gave me the idea for this year's:

SALT HALT!

Vid: Remember the Bobcats

I made this several years ago, and just realized that I never posted it online. It's one of my favorite short films I made, and I'll bet that it only took about an hour and a half total to film and edit. I'm surprised at how funny it turned out, and am pretty impressed with how much faux drama and how many cheesy clichés I could fit in it. I've tried since to make similar short films, but none of them turned out as funny as this one.

Battle Card 2.0: Archangel

This one was pretty fun. I'm basically doing one of each army type, so I chose the Archangel as the one from the Good army. I liked angels a lot when I was a kid, and even had two separate Archangel cards in my deck, along with a pet phoenix. This one combines the abilities of the two. I think this card may have a bit too much yellow on it, but oh well.

Vid: The Trump Card

I haven't posted a less-than-ten-second video for a while. This was just my brother and me looking to see how it would look to flip a card in slow motion. Pretty cool that it ended up landing perfectly aligned in front of the camera.

Graphic Art: Dragonfather

I was searching for drawing inspiration the other day and my thoughts turned to one of my top 5 favorite computer games of all time, Heroes of Might and Magic III. I loved this game as a kid and still consider it one of the most poignant PC game masterpieces ever made (hence it being in my top 5), and a lot of it is the imaginative aspect of the game. The majority of the storylines are given through text-based events, and each creature in a battle represents an army, so a lot is left to the imagination when playing. I have often compared it to a very complicated board game.

Anyway, one thing that I thought of that is also left to the imagination is the heroes themselves. They are only represented by a stock horse sprite, and distinguished by a small portrait. They can equip artifacts and armor, but you never get to see them wearing them. I came up with the idea to take one of the complete armor sets, the Power of the Dragonfather, and see what it would look like as a complete set. The result turned out pretty neat, and was a good practice of figure drawing and lighting.

I very likely will use this as inspiration for more drawings. There are a lot of cool artifact sets on Heroes III, and some of them would be fun to replicate even without putting them on a person. This is also good news in light of my upcoming annual project month in February! More on that later. 

Relic Comic: Adventure of Abel

I'm not sure where I was going with this comic, but I do remember that I had an obsession with monks at the time. For some reason the profession seemed appealing—writing, transcribing, simplicity—so I put myself in a comic about one. Many times, monks in my stories would be the heroes of the stories they were in, as if they were protecting the village without the village even knowing about it. I'm probably digging way too deep into my adolescent mind though. I think I just liked monks because of their robes and Gregorian chants.

Sorry about the size on this browser. Click on the comic for a better zoom. And don't ask me what that monster is... a giant thumb with glow worms coming out of it I guess?

The Misty Snow Cave Cold

This Christmas / New Year vacation I made a snow cave with my brother. I love making snow caves so much, I should make it a tradition. It's so satisfying to hollow out the pile of packed snow, cart out snow boulders on mine-sleds, smooth the walls with hoes, and make niches for candles. It's a very satisfying project—basically real-life Terraria or Minecraft.

Relic Comic: Revenge of Abelhawk

This comic is full of meaning to me. Drawing has always been my way of escape. I doodled in class to help me stay focused; I drew in my free time; and was always excited to find a new form of drawing or coloring, be it colored pencils, Photoshop, or markers. This drawing shows another way I used drawing—to relieve stress:

As the comic states, this was based on actual circumstances. There was a guy in my physics class in 9th grade who used to bug me and make fun of me a lot, mainly because I was shy and wouldn't defend myself (and of course, everyone in class loved him for his jokes). All I could do was ignore him in real life, but I was able to retreat to my drawing desk and draw a fictionalized version of a stronger, bolder me handling the situation in an epic (and admittedly excessively violent) way. I was also on the yearbook staff at the time, which explains me taking a picture at the end and putting it in the yearbook. A little Easter egg is the heart symbols on the caption of the photo above the beaten-up kid—I think that picture was implied to be a picture of me making out with my crush at the time. Classic junior high mind.