This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
Set in Britain in 20 BC around the city of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester), it's written by Mat Humphrey - who has a number of really interesting and excellent games in the works, including the also announced Chickens 'n Aliens and Tomb of Akhenaten. I can't wait to see how this turns out and to share more with you. You can follow our progress on the Facebook page and Twitter. Here's the artwork for one of the Calleva cards, already completed.
My announcement of The Brambletye Box a couple of weeks ago was met with a lovely warm wave of enthusiasm, and that has really helped to get things going again with it. Obviously it does sometimes have to take a back seat to my commercial work, but already I've scripted the next scene and completed the thumbnails and A4 roughs for it, and I'm about to commence drawing, so hopefully you'll see those strips going up online very soon.
Remember you can support the comic further at my new Patreon page where I'm previewing sketches and other bits and bobs. A number have already signed up and I'm incredibly grateful for this, it's all kindling to keep things moving forward. Thank you!
This DLC contains some of my favourite art for CE2, particularly the new Peacock tribe and their village. Other features include a recruitable red panda, a range of new enemies, such as the Ushi Oni and Dangkang, the animal shelter of the Tanuki, and a host of new items, trophies and locations.
Check out the trailer here, and add it to your Steam wishlist here. The Shores of Taishi is released for PC on May 19th, and soon after for consoles.
The brief was for an isometric view of a mini-market with a number of new shopping methods integrated - self checkouts, recipe boxes, store collection, delivery options, and even a robot at a till (not sure we've got those quite yet!).
Individual elements had to be easy to extract to use as separate illustrations for the interior feature article, so everything had to be on its own layer. It wasn't too different from the way I'd been working on the recent computer games project, Curious Expedition 2.
The biggest difference was in the style I chose, with no outlines and a very clean 'vector art' look (though actually it's not vector art).
Thanks to the the Guild of Fine Food and art director Mark Windsor for the work - a challenging but very enjoyable brief!
Also available for all these platforms is the Highlands of Avalon DLC.
That's it!
I was first contacted by Johannes Kristmann, Curious Expedition's co-creator and art director (and artist for the game's first version), back in Feb 2018 and, after some try-out samples, I started my work on the game in January 2019.
It's been three years and almost 4000 hours of drawing, resulting in over 100 environments, more than 200 characters, creatures and skins (plus separate hands, hairstyles and facial expressions), more than 50 equipment sprites, about 300 item icons, 70'ish dice images, about 100 or so map elements, plus a few extras such as clouds, cursors and textures.
Not everything you see on the screen is my art - the team has included animators, a special effects artist, an interface designer, map creators, and that doesn't include the magicians behind the scenes with all the programming, writing and producing that has to be done. It's quite a mind boggling package.
It's been a real challenge at times, and I've learned so much from the experience. I'm proud of my involvement in such a terrific game, and my art has improved thanks to these past few years of consistent work.
I think I can honestly say I've enjoyed every aspect of the game, but my favourite pieces have also been some of the most complex. These include the club halls (especially creating and designing the Taishi 'floating library'), the city of Paris, the Broken Compass tavern, and the environments and characters that make up the various tribes.
I feel incredibly lucky, not only to have worked on a game that is thematically right up my street, not only to have had work in what's been a difficult few years, but also to work with a fantastic company and team of people - even if they were about 700 miles away, it always felt like I was coming into a friendly 'office' when I sat down at my desk in the morning.
A huge thank you to Johannes who has been an absolute pleasure to work with, I'll be forever grateful he decided to entrust me with his vision and ideas for the game. Thank you Riad, and thank you also to Laura, Mascha, Katarina, Philip, Isaac, Lorenzo, Shawn, Milan, Luzia, Petter and Sandrine - these are just a few of the team with whom I have worked, there are others too - truly inspiring work from all.
That's enough gushing for now (sincere as it is). As I write there are still two more DLCs to come out for the game, one in particular has some of my favourite work in, but I can't show that yet. I'll update when they're released, of course. In the meantime - you can buy the game here (Steam) or here (Switch), and it'll be out for XBox and PlayStation in the coming months.
And now, I guess, onto something new!
These include new recruitable characters (the Grail Knight, the Clydesdale horse, Kobolds and Pict islanders), four new enemies, six new locations, and seven new equipment items ... and more.
"Curious Expedition 2 is like a Jules Verne pulp adventure version of a pen & paper RPG, mixed with narrative roguelike elements, all wrapped up in a streamlined and accessible gameplay experience. Take on the role of an intrepid explorer, assemble your crew and head out into the unknown."
The DLC is available now on PC from Steam, and will be coming to the Switch edition early next year. Next year will also see release of the full game on Xbox and Playstation.
We bought a Switch last Christmas, mostly for the children to play Minecraft and Animal Crossing, but I did also happen to buy Zelda: Breath of the Wild for myself - which the children quickly got absorbed by as well.
So it's really exciting now to see and play Curious Expedition 2 on our nice big TV screen - it does look rather splendid - and especially as I've not been able to play-test the game for a while as I'm on a Mac at home.
It's available from the Nintendo eShop for just £16.99 - check out the trailer here.
As well as a number of improvements and software tweaks from the team, I've worked on a large number of new art assets, with art director Johannes Kristmann, that have now been imported into the storyline.
These include a new 'corrupted world' biome complete with a new tribe, the Pale Masks, and a selection of new characters and enemies, including the T-Rex, the Stygimoloch, a mountable jellyfish, the Zouave veteran, the monstrous, tentacled 'Duke', and a rather cute truffle-hog called Joobee.
The New Director update is free and there are further updates planned in the coming months. If you want to give Curious Expedition 2 a play, then it's currently on sale (for one more day) over at Steam.
This still isn't the 'final' version of the game as new content is still under construction, to be added into the game at various points in the upcoming months - so it's just going to get better and better.
Here's the new January 2021 trailer for the game ...
This the longest I've ever worked on a single commercial project (not including The Rainbow Orchid), so far clocking up over 3000 hours of drawing time - and there's more to go.
You can get yourself a copy of the game over on Steam, and learn more at the Maschinen-Mensch website.
The game is currently in Early Access, but you can download a demo from the CE Steam page, read more about the award win here, and see the current trailer here. I can also highly recommend PalicoPadge's playthrough series on YouTube.
