State of Topaz: January 18th, 2009

It's been a month (sorry!) and even my activity has been fairly low because of brutal amount of time I've been spending making sets for a production. Of course, that doesn't quite forgive the even lower activity than normal from pretty much everyone (OddCrow came back!)... but what can I do but ask people to try to find some motivation to work on stuff again?

So, TrainerX has requested that I post on behalf of Orange Islands in the Invisionfree Battle of the Boards. The next opponent they have is a tough one, and got 26 votes compared to the 16 OI got last time. So remember that every vote counts, and without everyone voting, Orange Islands will probably lose.

The link to the voting instructions is here: http://if.invisionfree.com/topic/5036566/1/ You'll have to register and send a PM to Ballot Box.

You may have also noticed the new World of Topaz forum, which is a Smash Bros Dojo-esque forum where me and neon will be posting small articles expanding on the World of Topaz. Currently, I'm also revealing new lines (17 pokes) that have been introduced to Caldera/Kirant to bring the count up to 200, as we needed more to populate our vast region. So go check it out!

Icons are back at a halt, with it being 2 weeks since PapaLulu last visited, and a while since Chronicler last posted... If anyone is willing to take up the mantle of icons, I'd be grateful.

I forgot entirely about maps, so sorry about that too... I'll try to get working on them next week, when my schedule frees up a lot. If someone would like to try their hand at indoor mapping, remember that the ones we still need are:

Neo Bay: 5 Houses

Softwind City: 1 Gym (Ignore the towers, those won't be open for the demo)

Cranewing City: 1 Bank (? I have no idea what this is for) 3 Houses 1 Glassworks Factory 1 Gym

And probably a new layout for PokeCenters and PokeMarts (or you can vote yes on BlackTempleGaurdian's PokeCenter)

Overworlds have had a promise by MewLoverEX to be worked on. We'll see how it goes with those.

Backsprites have received some progress! We now nice Harskrow and http://pokemontopaz.net/forums/showthread.php?t=887back sprites, and there has been revamps to the fire starter's backsprites. They are still WIPs, but I'm glad they're rolling, especially as it means that Novoni has her laptop back and can work on stuff again!

Finally, I've sent requests to various concept artists to make their art officially Topaz Concept Art! Only oykawoo has responded so far, with an affirmative, so expect his Firrel and Cirroft to be up on the site very soon: http://fc98.deviantart.com/fs41/f/20...c0882d7236.png http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...rt/Cirroft.png

You can also check out his deviantart over here: http://oykawoo.deviantart.com/

So, places you can help out at this point in time: Corsola Revamp Tropius Revamp Items Discussion Dex Entries Fodder Random NPC Lines (!) Interior Maps Osiro and Christina

Thank you.