Art VS Artist

Being and artist is weird. I like how weird being an artist is, but social media makes it weird in an extremely uncool way. There is a trend on social media, maybe you’ve seen it, called Art vs Artist. It’s an end of year wrap-up where you show yourself and some of the projects that performed well on the internet. It’s a nice reminder that everything we do is content for parasitic ad streams to create profit for dystopian mega corporations. Instead of showing you social media posts that performed well, I am sharing the 8 biggest projects I achieved this year.

I arranged the images in random order. I’ll write a paragraph for each to honor the effort that went into Metal King Studio this year.

Website Overhaul

This year I spent over a month working on updating my website. It was a pretty intense season. I even cancelled attending a convention in San Francisco to get the work done. The website is my main hub for everything and anything Relicblade. I do social media, but the website is really the most important spot. Keeping up with running a business and being creative is a ton of work, and I hadn’t really overhauled my website since 2017 or so.

This year I got around to making some updates. It was an absurd amount of work, and it’s a job that’s never done. But we can be proud of what was made.

Basilisk Army for SLUDGE!

It’s a lot of work to keep up with solo producing one game, and a making second game is madness. Sludge is an awesome game that simply can’t get all the love it deserves. This fall I took a couple of weeks to focus on making more SLUDGE minis. I am really happy with the result. The new kits are exclusively 3d printable downloads. Folks with 3d printers are only a tiny subset of my customer base, so it was arguably a complete waste of energy. But I am an ARTIST and I get to do what I want.

I am always super stressed about making my art accessible, so who knows how I will move forward with a sludge range in the future. 3d printers are better and cheaper than ever, so maybe a digital range isn’t hopeless. We will see. The new minis are excellent.

One amazing thing about 3d printable kits is that someone on the other side of the world can print and paint a new release faster than the time it would take to ship to them! Just look at Mike’s Basilisk Shock Trooper. Beautiful.

You’ve GOT to follow @mike_mutiny on instagram if you use instagram. If you don’t use instagram, just visit the website every once in a while to check on his work. :P

Paper Miniatures!

There are PAPER MINIATURES for Relicblade and Sludge. It was a comical amount of work, but I made paper miniatures available for my games. They are actually very cool and fun to play with these. They obviously have the benefit of making the game more accessible. I am actually quite proud of these. I even ordered some physical prints of the demo set to have at cons. It will be a fun paper-craft project for folks who are interested in trying the game.

Work-In-Progress Relicblade Kickstarter

Kickstarter projects are a huge undertaking and I like to have as much done beforehand as possible. For various reasons, this kickstarter project is still a work in progress. But we can all look forward to some neat new characters early next year!

I really enjoyed designing these characters and I can’t wait for you all to get your hands on them. Making stuff is hard, but you guys are worth it.

Animations!

Some days are for doing and some days are for learning. I spent a bunch of time this year trying to learn some animation skills. The end result wasn’t exactly as significant as I had hoped, but we did end up with some fun animated gifs for our Instagram stories and a few simple gifs for the website overhaul. It was pretty fun.

Shipping… and shipping… and…

Is shipping it an artistic achievement? No and yes. I ship orders every day. It takes up a lot of my time and it feels a little anti-climactic. The truth of the matter is that shipping my art to people is the last step on an extremely involved ART MAKING journey.

My art obviously starts with an idea. Ideas are cheap because the effort it takes to turn an idea into a finished project is immense. Shipping an order can feel like I am taking time away from art-making, but the followthrough to actually deliver a finished artwork is integral to art-making. This could be a whole essay on its own, but I wanted to celebrate the countless hours I put into this last step. and honor the fact that it’s vital to getting my art into your hands.

*How great is this? Relicblade is nothing until it’s in your hands.*

Cursebreaker: Game Development

I wrote Cursebreaker in a manic burst of creative energy in November 2022. But throughout 2023 I playtested the heck out of it. Cursebreaker is a new game that will be part of the coming Kickstarter. Cursebreaker is a bit weird and a huge undertaking and who knows if people really want to try a new game. Either way, I made it and I am an artist!

Making something completely new is certainly part of the romance of being an artist. But knowing all the steps from idea to product can really put a damper on making stuff. Thankfully, Cursebreaker sprang out of my head fully formed. All the stuff that comes next to make a game real has taken a lot longer.

2023 Seeker’s Handbook

This year I had to update and order a fresh print run of the core Relucblade rulebook. It was a lot more work than I expected. I couldn’t just click re-order. I had to work my way through the whole document again and make a bunch of technical fixes. I also added an appendix that includes a few things that were developed since the last printing.

Print runs are a huge expense and the running out of the core rulebook is not an option. It was a major project that happed without much fanfare. The end result is that Relicblade has probably survived another year.

Congratulations, Sean.

Good job working. It would have been fun to celebrate a major new release for Relicblade. But instead we have a website that sort of functions, a rulebook that is in print, and packages arriving on doorsteps.

Next year I will get to deliver shiny new toys. But today I get to celebrate the reality of working hard and a pretty wide spectrum of projects.

I hope we can all look back on 2023 with both pride and empathy.

Your friend,

Sean

Let’s Celebrate 2023!!