Joystiq was the last gaming news site I still maintained a bookmark for. I don’t have much to say about it except that I hope the folks there land on their feet.

A while back I was involved in the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter. It was a real honor to be asked to participate. I was asked to contribute a piece for the calendar. Well the calendar is shipping out to folks now, in fact I actually signed one at PAX South. I figured since it’s out in the wild now I can probably share my contribution.

There are a million games that have you matching gems to fight monsters in an RPG sort of context. Every once in a while one of these games rises above the rest and hooks me. Hero Emblems is an example of a game that takes the formula and just knocks it out of the park. A big part of its draw for me is probably the presentation. Everything from UI, to music, to art is just killer. It’s such a beautiful/fun little game I have a hard time putting it down. If you’re a fan of matching things in order to fight other things you gotta pick this one up. The best part is that it’s not freemium so there’s no bullshit micro payments. It’s just a game you can play, how novel!

My renewed focus on drawing has meant some changes in my evening routine. It used to be that once the kids were in bed I played games. I still do that a couple nights a week but most of the time once they are sleeping I’m drawing. My home setup has gotten a bit more robust to accommodate all the extra work. I still use the Surface Pro 3 for drawing while traveling or if I want to chill on the couch and knock out a strip. More often though I’m using the Surface to drive a Cintiq. I’m continually impressed by this little machine’s power. I’m working on some massive 600DPI posters with tons of layers and the Surface doesn’t skip a beat.

I’ll leave you with some stuff I’ve been working on recently. I’ll have another big sketch dump on Monday.

-Gabe out