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Category Archives: art
2018 MIT Mystery Hunt
In 2017, my MIT Mystery Hunt team, Death and Mayhem, found the Coin first. I wasn’t actually at MIT at the time. I was helping out as best I could from the great state of Iowa.
The horrible fate of each winning team is that they have to design the following year’s Hunt. For me this was a dream come true: I admired the Mystery Hunt from afar for years, and it was really exciting just to be on a competing team when I joined D&M in 2015. Over the course of 2017 I got to help make the MIT Mystery Hunt which feels like a fictional sentence even now.
Then MLK Day Weekend of 2018 appeared, and I went to Boston to help with Hunt operations in whatever way I could. That was the plan, anyway.
I must have caught something on the plane ride, which probably interacted with the incredible stress of the epic undertaking I had involved myself in, and I fell ill. I was out of commission for like 70% of the weekend. WHOOPS
So let’s get back to 2017: I got to contribute a whole bunch of different things to this Mystery Hunt, and I’m very proud of them, and now, four months later for some reason, I’m devoting a blog post to bragging about them.
Halloween Zeen 2017
BEWARE: The new Halloween Zeen is out!
A lot of really cool people contributed a lot of really cool stuff to this year’s Zeen. Plus there is a board game that I didn’t do a very good job of designing. BUT THE OTHER STUFF IS RAD. CHECK IT OUT.
Curse of Strahd Roll20 Tokens
This post is not interesting. Do not read this. Continue reading
What have you been up to, Ryan?
Plenty!
- Currently I am most excited about my new text adventure, an interactive documentary called WINTER STORM DRACO. You will remember Winter Storm Draco, the 2012 blizzard, of course. If you don’t, you will learn an awful lot when you play this text adventure.
- Less recently I released another game called THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR WOOBY, about felt dinosaurs. The felt dinosaurs in the game are randomly generated, and I had a lot of fun drawing the various dinosaurs that players found. Plus it got written up by Emily Short!
- My felt dinosaur game was preceded by the construction of some flesh-and-blood felt dinosaurs, for a window display at Plaid Peacock, which see photos of here and here.
- Clash of the Type-Ins released several new episodes.
- Clash of the Type-Ins had a Kickstarter to cover hosting fees and it was wildly successful!!! WHY DID I NOT POST ABOUT IT HERE. COME ON.
- I started and never finished working on a weird time signature version of Scarborough Fair.
- I played a LOT of Super Mario Maker. Here’s the code for one of my levels: A98D-0000-0025-56BE
If you are eager to know what I’m up to at any given moment then your best shot is to follow me on Twitter. Thank you for your interest!
“Our Powerful Mayor”
My Wii Fit Trainer amiibo mod
Addendum, 3 September 2015: I did this project with a Wii Fit Trainer from the first amiibo run. I am led to understand that the reprints are better-constructed, and in particular the foot and the cast are glued much more securely to the stand. People who have executed this mod with the reprints have had to “club it straight off and mighty glue it,” albeit with gorgeous results. It’s still very much possible to execute this mod with your newer WFT amiibo, but you probably won’t have as easy a time as I did.
This is what the Wii Fit Trainer amiibo was supposed to look like.
Sharks for Nets for Sharks
NOTE: Shark Week 2014 is over; long live Shark Week. See you next year!
For Shark Week 2014, I want to paint sharks to benefit Nothing But Nets. I’ve got a fundraising page here.
The Field Guide to Nachos
I painted this young lady for Mr. Derek Sotak of nachonomics.com and the Kickstarter for his Field Guide to Nachos. That Kickstarter is over. I know, right? I should have said something about it earlier. But pretty soon, I’m sure, you’ll be able to buy that book at that website, and read all about why nachos exist—and which nachos pose the greatest threats to your health and sanity.
Cockatrice.
Instead of adding it to the increasingly difficult to navigate Plush Toys page, I’ll just let you know right here about this felt cockatrice I made. It’s built on the same “skeleton” as that California Condor, but it’s quite a bit smaller, and it has a pointed tail. Hopefully I’ll get some better photos together in the near future.
Yeah these pictures are not doing it justice at all.