Zombie Nirvana Games

Show Notes:

• You can see an example of some bad Dissolving in action in this video; it’s something that shows up a lot in (bad) PowerPoint presentations, of which I’ve had to watch far too many.
• I hope I didn’t come off as too much of a smarty-pants in the introduction. A lot of folks get pretty close to understanding Dissolve mode, it seems, but they end up getting some piece of it just a bit wrong. (Google up “Photoshop dissolve” and you’ll see what I mean.) As I’ve pointed out in the past, I always think it’s better to understand exactly how and why Photoshop does things. Next time, since I don’t have to go through the whole explanation, I’ll have time to show two or three cool things you can do with Dissolve!
• Any of the Purchase links here will take you to a page where you can pick up 10 Towns & Villages, but I hope that if you’re interested in it you’ll head over to YourGamesNow first! Not just because I make more money if you buy it there (which I do), but because it’s a great site to support. YGN is a RPG co-op, owned and operated by the folks who publish there. You might have heard horror stories about other sites giving publishers a raw deal; that doesn’t happen at YourGamesNow, and I’m proud to be a member (albeit a small one). Even if you don’t want to buy 10 Towns & Villages, I hope you’ll check out YourGamesNow the next time you’re looking for a gaming PDF!

Now that 10 Towns & Villages is out, I’ve started working on 10 Cities. Here’s a quick screenshot of the work in progress!

I’ve just put out my first map collection, 10 Towns & Villages! These are fully customizable, 150 dpi JPG images, with both color versions as well as black and white versions optimized for grayscale printing. The collection comes with a set of compass roses you can add with the image editing software of your choice.

You can check out a preview here, or head on over to any of the Purchase sites – preferably YourGamesNow.com! – to pick up a copy.

FCAP #17: Show Notes

• Sorry it’s been so long since I put up a new episode, folks. It’s been crazy at Casa del Zombie.
• The map pack I’m working on is a collection of 10 generic town and village maps. The maps are all completely unlabeled – no compass rose even! – and are presented as high-res JPG’s. You’ll be able to print them out, edit, and label them however you want to suit your campaign.
• If you’re shopping around for an older, less expensive version of Photoshop, version 7 is the oldest I’d recommend. It’s a real watershed in the development of the program; 7.0 introduced the new brush engine, which – as you can see from this episode – is almost worth the price of admission all on it’s own.
• Even if you have a Wacom tablet, this is still a useful technique to learn. Drawing all those ridge lines over and over again, I would’ve ended up with some serious carpal tunnel syndrome doing it the old fashioned way!
• This is totally unrelated to Photoshop, but I have to mention it anyway as it’s zombie-related. The trailer for George Romero’s new movie Diary of the Dead is up at YouTube, and it will have all the true zombie fans drooling.