NaGa DeMon: Week 3 Recap

It's been a week of two halves. To begin with, I spent the first half of the week just cooling my heels waiting for the artwork to arrive back from the printers. I paid for the rest of the print run on Monday and was warned that I wouldn't get anything back until this week probably as they were very busy, so I was just sat there thinking that that had screwed my attempt to get the print run made in November as part of NaGa DeMon.

Come Thursday I was itching to get started on something, so during my evening babysitting for some friends' kids I started working on the graphic design for the Print on Demand version. It involves resizing the cards from the 55 x 80 mm that fit nicely onto a sheet of A3 card to 2.5 x 3.5 inches (which is apparently US Poker size). Then, once that is done I've got to create a new file that lays all the cards and their backs out in a new order. It's a bunch of work. Fortunately, I got loads done on Thursday evening, all the cards were resized and I got halfway through the new card ordering too!

Then Friday the art arrived earlier that I was expecting - awesome!

I've spent the weekend evenings rattling through. Friday I cut out 21 box labels (I meant to do 19, enough to make the twenty original copies including the prototype that I did last week, but it turns out counting to 19 is not my strong suit). Saturday I stuck all the box labels on, finishing all those boxes.

Sunday I started making the games proper. My thinking was that i would get pretty close to finishing the print run - I've only four evenings to make the games proper: yesterday, tonight, Thursday and Friday as I'm away on Tuesday and back late Wednesday, then my parents arrive on Saturday. My guess (based on making earlier prototypes) was about 35-40 mins per copy, so about 13 hours, I get two or at most three hours an evening, so I might get pretty close.

Last night I spent 3:15 on it and made four games. Fifty minutes each. The slippery laminate and the un-trimmed sheets slowed me down a chunk as I had to take more care to avoid mistakes. So, again, it's looking impossible, hopefully I can get maybe 15/20 finished before mum and dad arrive.

I will however take my laptop to Manchester with me, and spend an hour or so on Wednesday morning working on the Print on Demand version.

Total time spent so far: 16.75 hours

Progress:

• 30 boxes constructed
• 30 inserts made
• 22 boxes finished
• 5 games finished
• 0 games delivered/posted