Recipe: Gourmet Chicken Ramen

Everyone knows missionary crusaders eat a lot of Ramen noodles if they're available in the country they're serving in, and I was no exception. It's cheap, easy, and light on the stomach when you just want a quick, small before-bed meal. But I wanted my miojo (as the Brazilians call it) to also be delicious when I ate it. I made all kinds of variations, from Hot-Dog Ketchup Gumbo to Firemouth Beef. Like all meals I make over and over, eventually I perfected this meal to be so delicious that my wife actually craves it and requests me to make it. I've been really proud of this recipe, since it's so easy and delicious to make when everything else sounds like too much of a hassle.

New Avatar

I thought the old avatar was getting pretty outdated-looking, and when I made this surprisingly good caricature of myself, I figured it was time to update it using some more experienced techniques. Now I just need to update the cover photo for my YouTube account.

Vid: RPL

I posted this video a few years ago, but the quality was pretty bad. When making it, I mainly wanted to see if I could simulate a first-person RPG around my home town. It's not a great video, and this week I wanted to see if YouTube could stabilize it for me. The shaking was horrible. What I forgot to remember was that I had put a little crosshairs on the video just like games like Oblivion and Morrowind have to aid in picking things up. In the process of stabilizing the piece (surprisingly and impressively well), YouTube moved the crosshairs all over the place, making for a humorous video.

I was hoping my wife would be home when I arrived so I could simulate a roleplaying conversation, but she wasn't, so I just wandered around at the end. Who knows? one day I may make another attempt at this, complete with Premiere-provided UI and stuff.

Dream: The Duelist's Insanity

I've been fascinated with dreams lately. I have an extensive (125-page) dream journal, and reading through it is astounding... Most of the time I can't remember ever writing them, so it's like reading a bunch of bizarre, amazing short stories. This one was very intriguing.

Caption Comic

I was asked at work to draw a comic that our hired writers could come up with a caption for as a contest. I'm happy to work for a company that strives to give each employee their chance to share their talents. They even gave me two hours of paid time to work on it. It's not much, but it was fun to draw. I was really impressed by the winner's submission and am glad they won!

Epic Chess printable version download!

>>Click here to download the printable pack!<<

It's been a long time since I've worked on Epic chess, but like many projects, sometimes motivation just surfaces without warning. So here I am!

I am totally willing to go out on a limb and try to market Epic Chess. I think it's simple and fun enough that people would get a kick out of it. In order to get to the point of putting it on Kickstarter (not to mention actually commissioning illustration/illustrating them myself), I need the game to be playtested. A lot. I have a few versions of art I've been kicking around, the latest of which was pure Photoshop, but I think I'm going to end up doing a more customized, texture art version like my Battle Cards 2.0 I did a while ago.

Figurines and Board Games

Recently, I've become rather obsessed with the card game Munchkin. It's been fascinating to see things like fantasy races, classes, equipment, curses, and mounts have their rules tweaked to fit a specific set of rules. Anyone who knows me and my creative side knows that's what I live for. I've also been extremely fortunate to find an actual weekly group to play Munchkin with at work. Usually I never have that kind of luck (See Dungeons & Dragons), so I've been glad to have a consistent chance to practice the game and have fun.

Anyway, I've also been getting interested in figurine painting. I made a couple of figurines out of Sculpey as Corridor game pieces, and I made this guy, the Munchkin mascot as seen on the box, as a weekly trophy for whoever wins that week's game. Even though the stupid thing leaned when I was firing it in the oven, you can't really tell from the angle seen above. It was fun to practice painting on a small scale like this, too.

I also recently got an amazing board game, Talisman, which comes with 14 character figurines. They're solid gray in color, but they're paintable, and seeing as how I'm going to have that game for many years to play with my kids, I'm going to paint the figurines myself (It's also hard to tell them apart at a glance during the game when they're all the same color). This is a medium I've never really practiced before, so it's fun to get into it. I'll definitely post my progress when I get around to it.

I also hope to get into working on Epic Chess this year!