Upgrading Descent 2E - Step 1 Complete

One thing I've enjoyed doing in my personal time, is upgrading my board games; to make them more my own. I have done this by getting cool dice to replace the generic ones, getting crafting boxes to store the components, etc.

Recently I was on  The Esoteric Order of Gamers website and saw patterns for board game box inserts made with black foam core. They have a great look, keep your games organized and can be quite customizable.

So the plans I decided to start with were for Descent Second Edition Base Game. I wanted to be able to put everything from the expansions I have(the Base game, Labyrinth of Ruin, The Trollfens, and a few of the Lieutenant packs), but also have room for for Lair of the Wyrm (which is hard to find), the upcoming Shadow of Nerekhall, as well as the Hero and Monster Collections.

I took the plans they already had as a basic outline, but started adapting and changing them to fit my needs.

Pictured: Monsters in the Descent 2nd Ed. Base Box, heroes and cards in Labyrinth Box and the removable game play insert.

I made it so everything currently fits in the Base game, the Labyrinth of Ruin and the Trollfens boxes. The plans for the monster box originally had them separated out into smaller segments for each monster type, I decided that I would prefer to have more space for more monsters in a less organized fashion.  Once they're painted and finished (as you can see they are primed) I think they will be distinct enough in appearance that finding monsters during game set up won't be an issue.

Pictured: Monsters in Descent 2nd Ed. Base Game Box with custom insert

I wanted to make a removable tray that contained the health and fatigue tokens as well as any other regularly used cards, to be put on the table during game play. The tray pictured below is what I created for those needs. I designed the template so that it would hold everything I currently have and room for expansions.

Pictured: My custom Removable Game Play Tray

I created the tray above to fit on top of the insert below. This box contains the Hero and Overlord Cards, dice, and figures for the Heroes and Lieutenants. Currently there is plenty of room to grow as far as cards are concerned, but I am a bit apprehensive about space for minis. When the next big box expansion is released, though, that problem will be remedied.

Pictured: bottom half of  the Labyrinth of Ruin insert.

All the map tiles currently fit in the Trollfens box, although I plan on creating a solution for that eventually as well.

Pictured: All of the boxes put together in their entirety

So there you have it. The game looks great, everything fits comfortably with room for expansions, and the organization makes for effective game play and minimized clean up.

Pictured: All Descent 2nd Ed. boxes stacked

I hope you enjoyed seeing the progress I have made and the box inserts I created. The next step for my Descent game will be painting the miniatures (see some of my painted minis here) and then it'll be done for the time being.

I am also deciding which game I'll be creating an insert for next. Currently I am deciding between Arkham Horror and Zombicide. Both games have multiple peices and could use better storage solutions with expansions included. Beyond those two I have an entire list of games I want to modify as time goes on, if there is one you'd like to see modified please let me know and I will make that a priority.

Thanks for reading and check back later to see how my different projects are progressing. I also have a tumblr where I'll be posting pictures and updates so you can like me there as well: http://benwermers.tumblr.com/.

My First Quilt - Part 2

I know I haven't updated in a couple months, but it has been a busy couple months. We moved into our new place and that took up a lot more time then originally expected putting things away and going through everything. I've also had a few other projects, including designing a CD cover among others.

I just wanted to post up the second side of the quilt I started in the last post. I hope to get back to it soon and finish it up, it's really close to being complete and I'm getting excited about how it will come out looking.

I think it's looking really good and I will hopefully be able to update more often but I will definitely try to keep everyone updated on how things are going. Let me know what you think of it so far. Have a great day!

My First Quilt - Part 1

I've had an idea for a quilt for a long time and a few weeks ago I decided to finally just do it. So I created the pattern for the quilt and started figuring out measurements and then waited a week or two for a good sale at JoAnns came around (happens pretty frequently). When a good sale did come around, I went in and picked out the colors that I needed and then began the process.

I decided to do the quilt in flannel, which is one of my favorite fabrics to work with. So I washed it all and then ironed it out so I could start cutting it.

Then I started measuring it and cut it all into strips.

Next was taking all those strips and cutting them further into the squares that I would be working with to create the designs. It took a while, but I eventually had all my squares cut out.

Then I got out the sewing machine and started putting together my blocks. I decided the easiest way to do it would be to first put it into 3x3 blocks and then sew those together to create rows and then sew the rows together. Here's a couple of the first shots. Me and my wife are doing this one together and we've been getting pretty good at it, she will get the squares out and pass them to me and I will start to sew them together and while I'm doing that she takes what I have sewn already and irons it and pins it together with the next piece and sets it inline to be sewn together. It's worked pretty well.

Last Saturday we spent most of the day sewing and we finished the first side. Here is a picture of that.

 If you're not sure what this is yet, its Mario, in the Raccoon (or Tanooki) suit from Super Mario 3. The backside will be put together like this side and will feature the statue that Mario can turn into with this suit. It should be pretty awesome looking.

Soon we will begin on the second side and then all we have to do is finish up the borders and and then sew it all together. So far it has been a lot of fun and I might even try to do a few more quilts or even see if there is a want for quilts to be commissioned or something like that. We will have to see.

I'd love to hear what you all think of our progress so far. Have a fantastic day and I'll catch everyone next time.

January Update

I was hoping to get this out sooner but it kept getting pushed back. Oh well. Since I posted last (which was the end of December) I have graduated college and I'm not out again looking for a job. Super fun stuff...

I have a few things I'm going to post up quick so this shouldn't be a too long of post. First off, I finally competed the Scott Pilgrim cross stitch I started last year and got it in the frame. I shared the pattern a few posts back if you're interested in doing it.

 Next up is that I finished the painting I did for my wife for her birthday last summer. I did a few minor details and put it in a frame for her. I think it did quite a bit to make it look nicer.

The last thing I did was mainly for myself. This Christmas, Wizards of the Coast (Creators of Magic the Gathering) put out a Christmas gift box and they are really nice for storing cards so I got a few of them to put my cards in and I decided to make each one different from the others so I put this design on the top of one of them. It is a design that comes from a card in the latest set (Return to Ravnica) called Tablet of the Guilds. I mainly free handed it with pencil with the help of rulers and such and then did it in black paint markers and after it was dry put a clear spray coat over top so that it doesn't scratch off easily. It turned out really nice and I have a few more boxes to put designs on top of now.

Here is the top of the box in closer detail. If you don't know much about Ravnica, where the latest sets of magic cards are set, is a plane that is covered by a gigantic city where 10 different guilds have control over different parts of it. Each guild is a two color combination out of the 5 colors in magic (each pair representing a different guild). So each bubble below is the guilds symbol. It was my favorite set when it was first visited back in 2005, and it has been a blast revisiting it this last block so far. 

Beyond that I haven't done a whole lot art wise. I'm planning on starting to sketch more again, like I did earlier and trying to challenge myself to sketch everyday and work on my artwork more. I also plan on trying to update this more often, and I think it will be easier to get myself to update if I've got artwork to post. Anyway, we'll see how that all goes. Have a fantastic day and catch everyone next time.

~Ben

NaNoWriMo Follow-up

Ok, this is going to be a quick one. NaNoWriMo went great. It was a lot of fun and I found out that I actually enjoyed writing this month. I didn't make it all the way to 50k by the end of november. With school and the holidays I got slowed down a little bit, and didn't manage my time outside of those the greatest. If I had done a little more writing I would have been great.

I managed to make it to 46,889 out of 50,000. I spent most of Thursday and Friday last week feverishly writing on my story to try to make it. I managed to do some amazing strides, which included about 9k on Thursday and a whooping 17k on Friday.  By the time it got to 10:30PM or so, I'd been writing all day long and my hands were hurting and my brain just couldn't come up with anything so I threw in the towel.

I don't feel bad about it, I learned that I liked to write and I think I will continue to do so afterwards. A lot of the South Dakota NaNo group is going to continue to write and support each other in is, so I might end up doing that, not entirely sure yet.

I'm going to work on editing the first chapter up and get it to a point that I like it and I might post it up here for anyone who wants to read it. If anything, I know where I think I want my story to go and what is going to happen, and I'm excited about that.

Ultimately, I may end up using my novel as the basis for a comic series/graphic novel. That's been a goal of mine for a long time. I've wanted to write and draw a graphic novel or a comic since high school, just never thought anyone would want to see anything I could do or read anything I could write.

I'm starting to get over my fear of being rejected finally, so I'm going to work on it and put something out. All I got was good feedback from those who read part of my novel for the month. Anyway, my "short" post is getting longer so I'll end it there. I unfortunately don't have any art to post with this one as most things I'm working on right now are presents and I don't want them to accidentally be seen by the recipient of the gift.

Good Night everyone and have a fantastic holiday season!

NaNoWriMo Progress

Hello Everyone! So if you read my last post, I told everyone that I was going to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Over the month of November, you are tasked with writing a 50k word novel. If it seems daunting, it definitely did to me too. Here we are, 18th of November, and I'm about 15k words in. I'm far behind the curve but I'm not worried. On days where I can focus for a little while to write, I've managed to get a few thousand words out in a couple hours and with the holiday weekend coming I'm planning on being able to throw some time at it. Anyone else participating in NaNoWriMo?

So far, I'm liking my story. It is a fantasy adventure in a setting I've been writing and designing for years, so I was happy to finally find something to use it for. Maybe I'll throw up the first chapter or so on here if anyone is interested.

As far as artwork, I haven't done a whole lot recently. Most of my time has been devoted to school, NaNoWriMo, and general chores and such. I did manage to get a little piece done for me and my wife's 2 year anniversary of our first date. She likes angels and pandas and she has a tattoo of a panda angel (or what we've dubbed the pangel), so I decided to do a drawing of a pangel for you and put it in a frame. Here is how it came out.

I like how it turned out. It came out how I was wanting it and I was surprised that from start to finish only took me about an hour, hour and a half or so.  I'm still trying to update more often and I think it will be easier once I am done with school. Anyway, hope everyone else is doing great.

Long Time No Post

So, it has been a while since I posted. I haven't posted in about seven months and it has been a crazy seven months. Right around in march where my last post was I had a couple family emergency trips pop up that needed to be taken care of.

Then right around that time, the hard drive that I had been storing the drawing for my challenge on crashed and I lost practically all of them except for the ones I've uploaded here, kind of a bummer but I'll make sure to go back and post the ones I was able to recover off the hard drive. I plan on re-tackling that challenge soon and finishing it.

The summer was crazy with projects I did. I created a couple websites, one being for my dad who is a musician and just got out on his own. I helped him create a website for himself and he recently put out a new CD. I'm pretty proud of him for getting his own CD out there and giving it a shot. If you want to take a look, check out www.davewermers.com or on YouTube and if you like the music, we have CDs people can buy. [Sorry, shameless plug for my dad. :)]. Also, I did the artwork/design for the CD that is on the cover and inside.

Besides that I had a couple other projects, a couple videos I helped with a couple other websites I worked on designing. I did some personal design work, but not a whole lot there I can share quite yet. Then in September, school started up again, stealing even more of my time.

As far as completed work, I did a painting for my wife (fiance at the time) for her birthday in August. She loves beauty and the beast, so I did this painting for her from the stained glass in the beginning of the Disney version.

Finally, throughout the whole time, I've been helping in planning and creating practically everything for my wedding, which was October 6th. We made almost all of the decorations and the food ourselves for the wedding and it turned out amazing. We had it outside in the fall, with the leaves changing color and a fountain in the background, it was beautiful.

Anyway, one last thing. Next month is National Novel Writing Month. Basically, starting November 1st, you are challenged to write a 50,000 word novel. Comes out to about an average of 1667 words a day. That is about 2 and 3/4 pages a day. Seems like a ton, but I think it will be doable. I plan on doing this and will try to post my progress on this as I go. I may end up posting it, I may not. I want to, but part of me doesn't think it will be good enough to post, we shall see if I get over that.

Anyway... Thanks for reading, I know it was a lot more words then artwork, but for how long I was gone, just wanted to throw out an update. Thanks again and have a fantastic day!
 ~Ben