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Since the earliest version
of BrikWars was posted as a simple ascii-graphics text file to the
rec.toys.lego newsgroup at the end of 1995, the rulebook
has made huge strides forward in polish and presentation over the
years with each successive edition. The tenth-anniversary edition,
BrikWars
2005, is the most art-intensive volume to date.
(Some of BrikWars' major
pieces have already been profiled here on their own pages - see
the BrikWars index page for an overview.)
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| "Esprit
de Core" - digital,
2005 |
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| "Pilot
Error" - digital, 2006 |
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The BrikWars ethos puts
a premium on (among other atrocities) horrifyingly forced puns.
When the Core Rules needed a preface illustration, the result was
"Esprit de Core" - a shot of a looting archaeologist
cracking his way into the mystical Core, while the Spirit of the
Rules appears behind him to lodge a complaint about his methods.
No one's mailed in yet
to tell me it's supposed to be spelled 'Corps,' but it's only a
matter of time. I still get e-mail once or twice a year about the
spelling of the word 'brick.'
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Despite
the endless hours I put into the full-color paintings, everyone's
favorite illustrations, seemingly without exception, are the
little black-and-white doodles I jot in for the less central
sections. Go figure.
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After
doing hundreds of trading cards for other companies, it seemed
like a shame that I hadn't given BrikWars any at all. So the
2005 book got new stat cards as part of the support material.
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Photoshop
work accounts for a lot of the filler material, either retouched
scans of older paintings, or digital photos processed and
heavily modified.
Yes,
I do wish I had a shop where I could forge my own BrikWars-themed
d10s out of solid gold, but for the purposes of rulebook illustration,
a paintover in Photoshop does the trick just as well. My hope
is that nobody realizes just how many of of BrikWars' "photos"
are really just Photoshop hacks.
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