Summercamp 2023 Reading Challenge Age of Defiance

I didn't do one of these last year but then again last year I kind of flew by the seat of my pants. This year I tried to be more prepared starting off with the homework doing alot of sketching and as prompt waves came out writing list of possible choices. Ultimately time was my biggest enemy as my plans to do complete full-color artwork for each entry hit a snag due to time constraints, namely work and management playing musical chairs with my off days behind my back. Though I see others encountered similar hurdles this year. Hopefully situations will be better this time around next year for friends and fellow writers!
Some of the artwork I DID do I ended up rushing. Pieces that use the 'cel-shaded look' I make in Inkscape and depending on the complexity can take anywhere from a few hours to several days. Quick concepty drawings I can knock out in BlackInk thanks to its myriad effects brushes. I had alot of fun with Realistic Paint Studio for some pieces but had to put that on the back burner because of work/time. I had a 100-page mini sketchpad I used to doodle out thumbnails while watching release streams. I'm down to 4 pages, the bulk of which came from just summercamp. It's a good thing I stockpile sketchbooks like a crazy person.
As prepared as I tried to be, some of the prompts threw me for a loop. For example power I had in my mind mystical or physical power like weapons used to enforce power etc, but here the theme leaned more towards conventional power, economic, political etc. I had to change my plans on the fly. Another example is the amount of species juggling I had to do. For example I had to swap my original planned extinct species to communication species then use a previously obscure species for extinct. I played quite a bit of musical chairs with prompts! I wanted to do a black hole for iconic landmark only to find out black holes are covered under GEOGRAPHY not LANDMARKS, so had to drop that all together. I guess that saved me from making a black hole in Blender...
I figure this year I might as well pay it forward to some of the writers who gave me some love last year.

Category 1: Silver #7-Famous Historical Character

I love Lia's layout so jealous I have enough trouble playing CSS Whack-a-Mole with just columns. Maybe when I have time I'll tinker with customizing background for AoD. I am a AI Luddite but I do acknowledge what comes easy or natural for me might not for others. Shoot back in the day when I used to do decorated cookies in the bakery people would marvel at my simple quick designs and struggle with stick figures but for me it was an art form.

This one looks nice as well Tillerz made use of as much space as possible weaving in settings and maps. I'm not sure if there's a specific code or setting to get your article to fill the page so to speak my world is on 'default" so its kind of skooshed up. Another worm in the can I don't want crawling about just right now.

I am blown away. Speechless. My goodness I want whatever job you got my time got ransacked so much but this clearly is a scale of dedication and knowledge beyond anything I can imagine. The way the character just POPS out and catches you. It reminds me of God from OPM this kind of featureless fleshy gigantic omnipotent mysterious being. Every inch of space is put to use with details and supplementary lore. It's exquisite!

Category 2: Gold #7-Species Considered Extinct

Well dang I tried to spread out and use different authors but its like real life hit everyone like that door-to-door Grim Reaper meme I'm struggling trying to find articles of the same category because not everyone made it to 32 at least that I know of. Another lovely consise one, makes me think of a old school assignment about species conservation such as destruction of habitat, competition with other species, reduction in population etc.

Why is this so awesome? This is just too awesome. Tight packed, creative use of speculative imagery and supplementary lore, its like the Nazca plateau except with giant frickin skeletons and without the lost 18-wheeler or crazy slacktivists. I'm trying to share the love but Storm just knocked it out of the park.

I couldn't tell at first if this was exotic cuisine, cool ritual, or extinct species until I moused over the prompt and read deeper. Alot of details in a light-weight format. Also 42/42! I salute you!

Category 3: Diamond #6-Manipulative Character

Who can go wrong with vamps? The format seems loose but casual kind of reminds me of a video game manual when they had info IN THE MANUAL and not a bajillion anciliary novels you never knew about rather than in the ACTUAL GAME. And hey he's got a family!

I went with a decamillenial cosmic superbeing for manipulative character but mysterious evil aristocrat works perfectly as well. Not so much a character analysis as a Extra! Extra Read all about it! from the kid at the street corner. I notice more people tend to aim for very compact tight layouts with as few details as possible, but even my shortest was 700 words or so I'm just hardwired to go big must be a Texan thing...

Wonderful way to switch things up! Not every manipulative character has to be super strong or influential, they can just be a CHARACTER! Getting some fun obscure quest-giving NPC vibes from here. I'm reminded of DIII's Covetous Shen. I miss that guy...

Ok I can only hope I spread the love around sufficiently enough. One good turn deserves another!
So what can I do for next year? No idea because there's no telling what prompts there'll be. Characters are my biggest bugaboo I can count on one hand how many I've done for my world so far and I was able to do some fun ones for some of my major characters at least but probably 2/3 of AoD is characters, and the STAGGERING amount of species categories I might actually run out of species at some point. There's just some things that haven't been fleshed out yet or aren't meant to be fleshed out. I should be alot more aggressive with artwork but the problem I ran into is a ton of artwork I DID have available did not match the categories I wound up with. I'd love to do more in 3d like Blender and 3dCoat.
I would like to make my own custom format for AoD while I do qualify for presets none of them quite fit what I envision. I have some old assets I never got to use from old school assignments maybe I can give them new life but figuring that out is a project that will have to go on the back burner I still have to pick up importing my old chapters but I also want to have specialized artwork for everything, so there'll be alot of drawing to do! Here's to another Summer!