A system-agnostic setting guide to Scotland’s Pictish peoples, for players, historians and enthusiasts of all ages!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Draft Book Preview & Brian's at CYMERA!
10 months ago
– Fri, Jun 06, 2025 at 02:14:35 PM
Hey everyone (everypict? nah, too late to start that gimmick...)
I'll be at CYMERA this weekend, which is a local literature festival here in Edinburgh. The forecast is predicting cool winds and showers, so there's no better time to drop in and talk about books!
I'll be bringing along some of my games (including the latest edition of Scurry!), as well as an earlier draft print out of Carved in Stone from a few weeks ago for people to flip through and sign up for the newsletter.
Can't make it in person? Want to see the coolest latest artwork? Click below to flip through a 132 page export of the core book, with all the up-to-date drafts I have on hand!
The text inside is 98.075% final. A couple tweaks here and there to go, and a couple sections are new and need reviewing and editing.
It's strange to think that in a few short weeks this will pull together into a full, real book. Strange, but true!
I'll update again soon, --Brian
Behind the Scenes 13: Art Direction
11 months ago
– Tue, May 13, 2025 at 05:21:57 AM
Hey everyone,
I'm back with some exciting peaks at the initial pieces of artwork coming in for Carved in Stone!
So far I'm working with 18 different artists to bring different parts of the book to life. It's been a very involved process for Heather and myself; it took us all of February, March and the start of April to prepare what they'd need to work on the book. This included assembling around 1,000 reference images of Pictish artefacts, modern recreations, relevant examples, Scottish landscapes, wildlife sources, and more. This is also included extensive briefings - in total, we've written about 15,000 words for a style guide (filled with examples, diagrams and annotated photos), and an additional 40,000 words of briefing instructions.
A screenshot of the Artists Reference Index (ARI), which contains all of the sources we've assembled for our artists.
The entire sheet is organised and sortable alphabetically, or by about 100 different qualifiers for whether something is present in the source, such as by Material or whether "Shirts/Tunics" show up, etc. Each artist is also tagged to specific relevant images for their briefs. Looking back at this, it's probably going to be an essential resource that we'll continue to update if we take on future Pictish projects.
Our art production process is broken into three stages:
Compositions. Rough sketches and loose concepts. This is where we iron out historical inaccuracies, and highlight the need for more sources to work from.
Drafts. Formed scenes, mostly final lineart, flat colours, basic rendering. This is where the artists are hitting their stride.
Finals. Finished images! Aside from minor tweaks, everything is ready to go straight into the book.
We've just finished reviewing Compositions from all of our artists. Below are a few samples of the roughly ~200 pieces of artwork we've had to review and give feedback on over the last two weeks:
The artwork we've received so far shows parts of Pictish academia that have yet to be illustrated at this scale, in this style, or in this context. It's not an understatement to say that this book will probably contain the largest collection of Pictish interpretations ever published, to date. Hopefully it won't be long before another even bigger book takes that title from Carved in Stone.
Shipping Addresses
As a reminder, no addresses or backer details have been collected so far, so there's no need to update any info if you've moved house.
We're getting closer to this book going to print. There's a lot going on in the world right now that makes pricing and publishing super uncertain. I'll be sending out backer address forms when I know what's going on with the book, and I'll share more news the moment I'm certain of what's going on.
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That's all for this update! I was hoping to have an updated layout of the book with final text laid in, but there's still some tweaks needed to bring everything together. We're also finalising the Glossary, which has about 200-300 definitions in it. Chunky stuff! - Brian
Mini Progress Update: Editing and Art Direction
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 09:14:03 AM
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Last chance to submit feedback!
over 1 year ago
– Sun, Jan 05, 2025 at 02:16:10 AM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Text Preview and Peer Review 2
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Nov 13, 2024 at 03:18:35 AM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
