It’s the birthday of the Alegis Downport blog today, I’ve been here for 15 years! I’m not going to post much, I’ve got a streaming cold and today is also significant in that my mom-in-law’s house sale finally completed yesterday. It’s been a hard, 15 months and aside from the closure of the services contracts, it’s ‘mission complete’.
Time for a holiday and some time to get back into reviewing and writing again.
In my scenario for the Swyvers RPG, ‘The Relic’ I mention how to print The booklet according to your page size preference. I’ve included UK / EU A5 size and US Half Letter formats, with colour and monochrome covers. You can purchase a copy over at Drivethru RPG for the meagre sum of $3.49 via this link: The Relic by Luna Greyt Publishing
If you’re not sure how to print the booklet, read on…
The first is to separate the cover from the rest of the booklet. In your PDF print settings (I’m using FoxIT PDF Reader, but Adobe or other readers will look roughly the same) you’ll need to use ‘Booklet Printing’ and set the print range as ‘2-29’.
This will print the booklet double-sided on A4 paper, with the ‘fold’ down the centre so it can be folded into an A5 booklet. The US Half Letter version follows the same principle.
Once you’ve got your booklet, you’ll need to print your cover. I use thinnish coloured card (check what your printer supports); go back to the print menu and in the pages field change the print range to just ‘1’.
This will print the cover on page 1 on the right half of the page, so we can now add this to the booklet.
To staple the booklet, I use a long-arm stapler with an adjustable guide to suit different page sizes. Bung a couple of staples in…
…and fold the booklet down the middle, which gives you the final product…
…in my example, I should have checked the adjustment on my stapler before applying the staples, which has resulted in the placement being slightly off centre when I folded the booklet in half. You get the idea though.
In the meantime, I’d like to thank the first person who has bought a copy of The Relic – I hope you enjoy it!
I was saddened to hear that one of my early science-fiction art inspirations Bob Layzell, passed away on the 29th of January. Bob was a prolific artist whose career spanned many decades and many visions of the future.
I first came across Bob’s work in the Terran Trade Authority Handbooks (TTA) by Stewart Cowley around 1978 when my parents bought me a hardback copy of the first book in the series ‘Spacecraft 2000-2100AD‘ (which I still have). Bob’s work could be easily picked out by the way that he signed his initials, combining the ‘B’ and the ‘L’ into a single digit.
In my view, Bob’s style of art always presented a grittier, grimier view of far off worlds. Spacecraft or vehicles always looked ‘less advanced’ or less shiny than some artists, especially when compared to more modern computer generated images. This isn’t a criticism; this made Bob’s work stand out and presented his own unique view of the journey to the stars. I hope Bob’s family don’t mind me reproducing a few of his images here so you can see his style (and you may even recognise a few from book covers).
Downthetubes.net has a more detailed article over on their blog (which also links to my other TTA / art website Digital Waterfalls which features covers of all the TTA and related books):
I would like to pass on my condolences to his family and friends and thank Bob for his inspiration, which has remained with me my whole life.
Alegis Downport 