Archive | PermalinkRafe's 3 Month Birthday

Rafe (a.k.a. Adik) turned 3 months old! His first quarter of the year mark. He has been growing and growing (and maybe getting a little cheeky too!)

He enjoys tummy time and can keep his head upright, looking at things while his little legs kick and push. Perhaps not long before he's mobile?

* Mouse over the pictures for captions

Keywords: alya,birthday,rafiq

Archive | PermalinkI Should Be Looking Like This All The Time

I thought I'd whip up a new avatar for my DeviantArt profile.

ಠ_ಠ

Keywords: artwork

Archive | Permalink44 Months

It has been a busy and activity-filled month for our Yaya! And very quickly she turned 44 months old. She has definitely come a long way from the little baby that we brought home from the hospital. She can even successfully blow her own bubbles!

*Mouse over the pictures for additional captions.

Keywords: alya,birthday,rafiq,soccer

Archive | PermalinkBoom Goes The Octopus

And that is the story of how Hokusai Tarnungshaut, my Eclipse Phase neo-octopus character, got himself resleeved in a used worker pod morph.

At least he didn't go insane during the resleeving proces.

Keywords: artwork,eclipse_phase,funny,gokl,rpg

Archive | PermalinkEclipse Phase: Sheldon-class Drone

Here's a type of drone which we use in Eclipse Phase: the Sheldon-class drone, named after the chick Sheldon of Garfield and Friends. It's small, it's egg-sized and it has a puppetsock. It can get through enclosed spaces and scout secure rooms. However, it has problems opening doors thanks to its lack of any sort of manipulator waldos: It has no arms.

If you have an entire fleet of Sheldons, you could use them to carry a load like a crate or an unconscious sleeve back to safety.

It uses the Gnat robot stats from page 346 of the Eclipse Phase core rule book, "except we use legs and cyberbrain with puppetsock," says Ivan Tan the GM.

Keywords: artwork,eclipse_phase,gokl,rpg

Archive | PermalinkCall of Cthulhu: The First Game Ever

I've had the Call of Cthulhu RPG for a decade now. I've never run it... til now. It was a gift from Gary before Irfan was born. We used to joke that if I couldn't find anyone to run it for, I should someday run it for Irfan - who was then still unborn. And at the time I had yet to discover GOKL.

Almost ten years later, I have refereed Irfan in a Call of Cthulhu game, who rolled up his character yesterday: a young detective in San Francisco named D.J. Stark.

Here follows the actual play report:

Keywords: call_of_cthulhu,cthulhu_mythos,irfan,rpg,rpg_actual_play

Archive | PermalinkRIP Ralph McQuarrie

Once upon a time, Ralph McQuarrie illustrated a coffee table art book written by Kevin J. Anderson called The Illustrated Star Wars Universe. McQuarrie, if you didn't know, was one of the first conceptual artists for Star Wars. It was with his paintings that George Lucas was able to convince funders to invest in his movie. He passed away on Saturday.

He painted a chapter for Coruscant in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, which hitherto had not been seen before anywhere else in Star Wars literature (except for renamed early concept art in some books for a planet called Had Abbadon for the then-titled Revenge of the Jedi). The planet's name "Coruscant" had only been officially named by Timothy Zahn in his novel Heir To The Empire a couple of years earlier.

One of his artwork in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe was a night scene of "Monument Plaza", on top of the Mount Manarai where the only geological feature of Coruscant is exposed to the sky.

If you were paying attention 2 years ago, this entire painting was more or less converted and animated as a CGI environment in a Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode entitled "Duchess of Mandalore" where Obi-Wan met up with the fugutive Duchess Satine.

The original McQuarrie painting can be seen as a reference art at the bottom of this concept artwork, linked from the Star Wars official site.

More building set elevation and plans for the virtual environment here, part of which can be viewed in the following image

A lighting concept from an alternate view of the plaza can be seen here.

Ralph McQuarrie would have been in a postion to see this episode. And if he did, I wonder what he thought of it.

RIP Ralph McQuarrie, you gifted artist. You've been a real inspiration to me.

Originally posted on Google+.

Keywords: artwork,star_wars

Archive | PermalinkA Yaya and Adik Story - February 2012

When we were kids, Hisham and I went through a "Choose your own adventure" book phase. You know, where you read the story and at the end of a chapter, you decide what the character should do. For instance, cross the bridge, proceed to Chapter 5, or take the footpath along the river go to Chapter 7. Wiki says this about it. But I think of it as kind of a watered-down RPG. Perhaps it led to Hisham's enduring passion (and my old love) for it.

In any case, what does that have to do with Yaya and Adik, you ask? Simple. This entry contains nine photos of a single interaction between the two children. For my version, I have ordered Photos 1 through 9 chronologically. The captions tell my fictional version of the story. But If you were to reorder the pictures, what kind of story could you come up with for these photos?

Keywords: alya,rafiq,writing