terrible art project of the day

[kaberett]

So. Admin: the LRP. I tripped and fell and now I'm kinda sorta corunning lost property.

Our Least Favourite Things To Store are weaponry, because weaponry is generally (i) large, and (ii) not given to stacking well. On the upside, it being large (and expensive) means that mostly it doesn't get lost!

... and then. then. there are the people who acquire weaponry the entire point of which is to fling it away from one's person with gay abandon, preferably in the woods, where it will get lost in the undergrowth.

Throwing daggers are kind of okay? Throwing daggers are small and I am absolutely getting to recognise the usual suspects. Oh, so-and-so was out on a skirmish this afternoon, were they.

But then. there are the arrows.

LRP-safe arrows have a large foam head, in order that they donk only gently against their targets. Commonly one makes some kind of identifying mark on the head, on the basis that lost arrows get deposited into containment bins like great bouquets with their heads upwards. This is not without its risks, though, in that one of the ways arrows commonly break is to have their foam head delaminate, so many people also make marks of some kind on the fletching or the shaft.

My favourite people are the ones who just write their damn PID in multiple places on their arrows, so that regardless of which combination of parts we are handed we are able to send up the Oi, Come Get Your Shit signal.

However. Many people who arch. Do so in multiple systems. And, not actually unreasonably (I concede grudgingly), are reluctant to mark their property with a unique identifier that means them for Admin purposes but might very well mean someone completely different in other systems.

So they draw A Sigil. (Or, in one case we are all very fond of, they carve a beautiful detailed potato stamp.)

This in turn means that it would be, as one of my bosses pointed out about a year ago, Extremely Helpful to have a catalogue of which sigils match to which unique identifiers, again for the purposes of Giving People Back Their Shit.

Attempt the first relied on grainy photos of sigils on textured foam against a busy background printed in black and white.

A few weeks ago I realised that it might actually be better to, uh, record the symbol for use in catalogue, and spent some time thoughtlessly reverting to my default of "trace shit in inkscape, optionally with a stylus on A's tablet", which stalled on "but I don't have digital copies of all the photos".

Today it finally dawned on me that! in fact! almost all of these symbols (potato-stamp maple leaves and foxes aside) are deliberately designed to be amenable to churning out at speed using a permanent marker onto foam, and that even my rudimentary art skills were! in fact! probably! just about up to.......... copying them onto my phone screen using my finger. without needing to trace onto a separate layer at all.

SO THAT IS WHAT I HAVE SPENT MY AFTERNOON DOING, followed by spending my evening compiling the images into a DOCUMENT, and now? a catalogue? exists??? so I just have to gently badger the boss whose idea this was in the first place for any other photos she might have lost down the back of the sofa, and then we can PRINT IT OUT and HAVE A REFERENCE when we are IN A FIELD next week.

And, hey. I made some questionable art. I am pretty proud of myself.

Comments

[kaberett]

FOR BONUS POINTS: going through the proto-catalogue while NOT IN A FIELD meant I had the brainspace to go "... wait. wait I bet -- I bet I can work out who these ones without PIDs on belong to--" and that's how I wound up sending a bunch of people unsolicited late-night e-mails being all "hi!!! I have your arrows!!! PLEASE TAKE THEM AWAY :D" from my official Admin: the LRP e-mail address

but i'm still more professional than bossman so we're all good

[azurelunatic]

Hooray!

[ursula]

Congratulations upon becoming a herald and recording the badges of your company :)

[cesy]

Excellent!

[vass]

Today it finally dawned on me that! in fact! almost all of these symbols (potato-stamp maple leaves and foxes aside) are deliberately designed to be amenable to churning out at speed using a permanent marker onto foam, and that even my rudimentary art skills were! in fact! probably! just about up to.......... copying them onto my phone screen using my finger. without needing to trace onto a separate layer at all.

That is delightful.

[ludy]

That sounds both fun and useful (and the detailed potato print version is sooo intriguing. Potatoes being non-uniform I assume there are different “editions” of the same charming design)

[silveradept]

Congratulations on making your life and others' lives easier through the application of brains and art skills.

[sfred]

This amused me :-)