Chris Huth has produced excellent art and layout for Pelgrane Press including Ashen Stars, Night’s Black Agents and 13th Age. Last week his apartment suffered extensive damage from a fire. (You can read more news reports here and here.) Luckily, no one was hurt, but he and his partner have lost their home and most of their possessions. His computer and software – the tools of his trade – and all backup drives have been destroyed with very little chance of recovery. Chris is sleeping in friends’ houses while he searches for somewhere to live.
The Chris Huth Fire Sale
The sale is over, you can donate direct here:
How might this affect you?
Well, all the layout for 13th Age and templates for future Pelgrane projects are lost. Chris has to start over from scratch with all of these. It will certainly go quicker the second time, but will delay these projects none the less. More details on specific products follow.
13th Age
We have the PDFs for most of the layout – in fact, it’s likely Chris would have finished the whole thing this week if it weren’t for the fire. I’ve uploaded the chapters Chris completed to the download page for pre-orderers – nearly all of them.
However, PDFs are not InDesign files, and the best and most efficient way to reproduce the layout is to start from scratch. Reverse engineering PDFs is not a useful option. So as of right now, I think that 13th Age will be delayed for a month. I am very sorry about this – it’s already taken a lot longer than we expected. I suspect it will be out towards the end of June.
Esoterrorist 2.0 and Gaean Reach
Chris had created layout templates for both of these projects, which will now have to be recreated. This isn’t such a big job, but it’s still a lot of work. I suspect both of these will also be set back by a month. I still hope to have them out by GenCon.
Other projects are unlikely to be affected.
About Chris
Chris Huth originally came to my attention in 2010 when Robin Laws pointed out that a guy in his game group is a talented artist. After a bit of prodding, Chris came up with sample art for Ashen Stars which meshed very well with the art that Jerome created for the setting, and he improved in leaps and bounds. He then produced all the art and did the layout for the GUMSHOE/Pathfinder mash-up Lorefinder. Most recently he did much of the art and all the layout for Night’s Black Agents. When the layout for 13th Age turned out to be a much bigger challenge than we expected, Chris stepped in to create a layout in InDesign which based on the concept produced by Lee Moyer in PhotoShop. Samples of Chris’s work follow.
Nights Black Agents Layout Preview