Three days left in the office. Errr, two… things for breakfast. One thing on my mind: sketchbook*.

• Toast and coffee to start the day. Mmmmm.
• Decide to nail the sketchbook as best I can today, so start things rolling when Chris and Spaff are in, by getting each of them on to tasks to help finish it up.
• Not long after, Chris gets an email which throws a fairly large spanner in the works with the Bristol Comic Expo, and one particular planned… thing. (I can’t reveal because it’s a good surprise.) Still, I move to fix it.
• Email four of the CrewNC Sidekicks about their Forum titles, which we forgot to do by accident. Sorry folks!
• Some general chit-chat about April Fool’s, which we’re all agreed can run the gamut from very clever and funny, to extremely lame and not funny at all. I blame the lawyers. But basically, you can’t do an April Fool’s on April 1st and expect anyone to actually be fooled… so now it’s just a sort of ‘April Joke’. Which is often not funny.
• Having said that, we all agree the Guild Wars stick figures are really cool.

• Manage to see an early layout of the sketchbook, and it suddenly pops into focus as a real thing… and it looks great. Really great. Woooo!!
• Fire off the cover image to Andrew Wildman. We trade emails back and forth suggesting a few changes, which get passed back to our designer, Mat.
• Get a few additional follow-on questions for the interview I was doing last night, some of which I can’t answer. Mostly because they’d incriminate certain people’s secret identities…!
• 11am, and I go into a monthly product review meeting. We go over the status of a whole bunch of different things, but almost all are unannounced… so mum’s the word on that.
• Come out to find that Chris has been compiling final figures for the MiniCon, in terms of stock, charity money raised, and so on. We’re both a bit bowled over (still) by how much cash we raised at the auction. Players ROCK!
• Early lunch; a sandwich from home, jammed into my face in-between emails. Don’t feel sorry for me… it’s a good sandwich.
• The sketchbook needs an intro that reads better than ‘Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…’ so I set about writing one.
• Before I actually write said intro, I write in the notes for this post that I do it, hence projecting myself into a future where I have done it… and thereby motivating me to write. I work in odd ways sometimes.
• Get a really nice metaphor (well I think it is) for the intro, grapple with it, get it into a pincer hold – and then the bugger slips out. Go for something more traditional instead.
• Get 229 revised words in, before going out to get a snack, and keep Chris company. We talk about merchandise on the way, things we’ve seen, what we’d like to see, what’s awesome, etc.
• Get back and see everyone (Well, Chris and Spaff) is gaming during lunch. I wanna game! But no time. Back to the intro, which I finish just a little over my self-imposed 250 word limit. Send it over.
• Next up; a page of copy describing EveryChild’s work and also something on ‘what we do with Draw the World Together’. Again, I write that down here before I do it there.
• Install Scrivener (writing app) and Celtx (SCREEN writing app) on the iMac, obviously as some sort of delaying tactic. Sadly I have no reason, immediately, to use either… but it feels good to have ‘em there.
• I say goodbye to the original artwork from Andie Tong’s pin-up, as we’re sending it to its new rightful owner – the auction winner. Bye bye, beautiful thing…
• Force myself to finish the page of copy about the charity. Doesn’t take too long, seems pretty good to my eye.
• Get revised cover images for sketchbook from Mat, zap ‘em back to Andrew… we’re close, I can tell.
• Final piece of copy… the double-page biographies spread for the artists. Crack on with it only to find we have half-a-dozen missing bios and pictures. Damn. Will have to fix that tomorrow…
• And off to the cinema to see a preview screening of Son of Rambow. It’s fun, quirky and sweet – just what you want in any movie. Recommended!

* As mentioned to a few people around and about, we’ve created a Draw the World Together sketchbook featuring City of Heroes/City of Villains characters. It’ll debut at Bristol Comic Expo, and will be yours in exchange for a reasonable charity donation. Limited run of 500, people – get yours early!