October 1st, 2008 - Road Trip!

Wow! Lots have happened since the last post. We have completed the Fallcon Ashcan for this weekend. The ashcan is two 8.5 x 11 sheets folded into a booklet so we have a total of eight pages in glorious color. If you are in going to the show please stop by the Imaginary Tales table for a copy and we can chat about the what's in store for the characters depicted inside. After the con I'll refit the ashcan and put it on the downloads page. No time for such foolishness now.

I have updated the website for Fallcon as well. I guess you could say that today is our official launch. We've been in 'pardon the dust' mode for awhile now but I think it is really coming together.

Also, don't forget to hit our Google Ads whenever you get a chance. Just a few clicks from everyone and It'll help defer some of the prining costs of the book.

Kurt, Kevin and I will be heading out at noon on Friday for the big debut weekend. Wish us luck!

September 21th, 2008 - Enter the Tiberacy and meet Tiberiuses from all over the multiverse!

(Clears throat)  Or please enjoy some new colored art of Tiberius Crane on the Art page.  If you feel like it, let me know what you think.

September 18th, 2008 - Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

Kurt has nailed the artwork for Ande.  A nice mix of dark punk/goth beauty and sluttiness.  Trust me, you'll all find a place in your heart for this messed up piece of work.  If not, well, she doesn't give a crap about you anyway.

We've updated our schedule to allow more time for model sheets before pages are drawn.  This means that the Ashcan will focus more on model sheets and pin-ups...oh and lots of words from yours truly.

September 15th, 2008 - Ashcan for non-smokers!

Work on the Fallcon ashcan has begun.  The hope is that we'll have a few pages from issue #1 as well as model sheets of a few of the main character along with artwork.

September 11th, 2008 - She's just too damn pretty!

On this ominous day, Kurt and I went over model sheets for Tiberius and Ande.  Tiberius is looking pretty solid other than a holster change.  Ande is still missing something.  As neither of us are particularly goth, we are having a bit harder time getting her design right.  I think she needs to have very asymetric clothing and look pretty worn out.  Kurt seems to continually find some deep hidden internal beauty and she looks happy and clean through all that bad hair, makeup and torn clothing. Never fear, though, we'll get it.

July 27th, 2008 - An A for effort!

I completed the first draft and handed it in to Kurt for editing.  He had to rob Office Depot for red ink for his correcting pen, but in the end we have a much tighter script.  I do intend to look at the script again before Kurt starts on the actual artwork to make sure it is still solid once I let it sit a bit.


july 1st, 2008 - First Post! First Post! or The Shocking Origin Revealed!

Hi!  This is Pete Ruttman and I will handling the Production Blog.  I get these duties because Kurt needs to keep his pencil down ot the bristol board.  That makes me the official mouth piece of Blessed Machine.  That is until he doesn't like what I say.  

Anyway, on to the meat of this post.

Blessed Machine's origin dates back to September of 2005.  Kurt had recently joined my Champions game and was in need of a new character.  Champions is a paper and pencil role-playing game similar to Dungeon's & Dragons, but placed in a modern setting along with magic and superbeings.  Kurt's original character, Maxwell Price, was killed in a horrible shuttle accident in the near future.  He brought the idea of Tiberius Crane to me and me began honing the character into a suitable replacement for his deceased one.

This Tiberius Crane was more cyborg than man, but acted pretty human.  He came on a mission to kill a demon that inhabited one of the other player's characters.  With time, he grew to find a home with the group of heroes in the game.  While his mission was sometimes at odds with the others he always found a way to make it work.  Tiberius continues to this day and is nearing the completion of his mission.  Time will tell, what he'll do after he completes that goal.

Game Tiberius (As we call him to not confuse him with the comic Tiberius) is linked via satellite to The Vatican.  To duplicate that ability in the game we have set up Google Chat between the laptop I use in the game and a Blackberry.  This allows me to send  messages between The Vatican and Tiberius without allowing the other players to know any of these secrets.

Game Tiberius has a photon arm cannon that he uses when he knows his target is powerful but tends to fall back to his crossbow with various tipped bolts.  His anti-demon iron killing bolts have come in handy on many occasions.

During this time, I asked Kurt to do artwork for a Champions villains book I wanted to produce and sell.  I began doing the write-ups of several characters and Kurt did line art for each.  We completed about five characters and got hung up on art style at that point and the project died.

Fast forward to the end of 2007.  Kurt was wrapping up Brandon's Little Problem and asked me if he was interested in doing a comic book where both Kurt and I collaborated on the plot.  I was very open to this since role-playing tends to be very collaborative already.  Discussions began on the project as we tried to find a useable idea we both liked.  The first idea ripped characters from my Champions game that were villainous analogs to the player's characters in the game.  They were new characters with a lot of variety in personality and powers.  We figured we would strip away their background and rebuild them.  The story grew into a sci-fi/fantasy project with opposing guilds with political plot lines, assassinations and betrayal.  At one point, we were pretty excited with the prospects of this idea, but reality set in as the story was getting so complex that it would take at least twelve issues to tell.  Due to the uncertainly of indy publishing and just the number of years this would take to produce seemed too much.  Sadly, we scrapped this one.

Next, I simply suggested, "How about Tiberius Crane?".  It was a character Kurt and I both had stakes in and it was a single character instead of an ensemble cast like the first idea.  We spent many Thursday nights discussing characters and plot lines and it seemed like the way to go.  I wrote a few pages of script and once that met approval, began writing a series bible.  Kurt began doing some sketching along with his final work on Brandon's Little Problem.

Once a draft of the bible was completed, work began on the plots.  I am known for my complex and multi-year plot lines in my Champions game and this problem reared its head here just like it did in the previous guild idea.  There was just so much that needed to be accomplished in the series because Tiberius was to start as one type of character and morph into another.  The story wouldn't have the impact the creators wanted if Tiberius didn't change as he learned more about how the world works and what his place in it should truly be.  We were planning a four issue run and there was no way to get that plot point across in such a short space.  In reality, we felt that this idea had bloomed into another twelve issue series.

With reluctance, I suggested another idea I had been stewing on since his high school days.  This one was a mundane modern world without magic.  The main character, Alex, has a startling revelation about her family when she learns she is a descendant of a powerful sorcerer that banished all magic from the world to defeat a horde of evil dragons from ruling the planet.  Now the dragons have returned from their hiding place on the dark side of the moon and intend to finally rule Earth this time.  Alex begins a quest to find a way to combat these evil monsters without her family's magic and nothing but the skills of a legal assistant.

Kurt loved the idea and especially liked the fact that it had a solid beginning, middle and end.  We figured it could be told in ninety-six pages or so.  It seemed perfect.  The problem was I wasn't ready to let go of Tiberius.  Giving one last effort to save the Tiberius story, I offered to write a treatment of the plot lines we had discussed and see how many issues it would really be.

I returned the following week with a treatment breaking down nearly all the plot that was discussed into six issues.  Kurt was happy with the treatment and moving from four to six issues wasn't a problem.

Blessed Machine got the green light!

Continue to check this page for more updates on the Production of Blessed Machine!