Space Stamps!

[ffutures]

When I launched FF X my gimmick was "dragon coins," laminated cardboard coin pictures which I hid around a convention site, and gave a copy of the FF X distribution disk to anyone who found all the designs.

This time round I ought to be launched by Dragonmeet (yes, I know that's later than I thought - hopefully it'll be at least a couple of weeks earlier), but that's a shorter one day event and not a good place to play that sort of game.

So I was wondering what to do for a launch thing, when I had to make a label for something. And I thought to myself: "Hey, this is a nice label. I could do something with that..." From there it was about a 20-second jump to "Space Stamps!" and about five minutes to make a prototype.

Basically, they'll be 24mm wide shiny clear adhesive plastic strips - currently I can only do blue on clear (or white on clear which is pretty useless for this sort of thing), but they look so nice I might spend a few quid for another couple of rolls of tape - red for Mars, of course, and possibly green for Earth. The obvious limitation is that it's an all or nothing monochrome print process, so colours and grey scales are dithered. Also not very high resolution.

Here's the design as seen on screen - this is magnified slightly:



And here's what they actually look like - they are about 24mm (1") x 75mm (3")



They look white here because they still have the backing tape, of course.

I'm not sure how I'll be doing things this time, maybe a very simple questionnaire, you get a stamp for each right answer:

e.g. Whose Science Fiction is Forgotten Futures XI based on
1 - Robert L. Fanthorpe
2 - Robert A. Heinlein
3 - Stanley G. Weinbaum

I'll probably do four or five designs, in two or three colours if the tape hasn't got too ridiculously expensive.

Good idea?

Later looks like the tape has got too expensive, e.g. £12 a cartridge. If anyone sees this tape on sale really cheap anywhere - Brother TZ tapes for a P-Touch 2420PC printer - please let me know.

Comments

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Sounds like one to me.

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

The prototype looks great! Can't wait to see what the others look like. Too bad I'm over here in the colonies, I'd definitely make a trip to Dragonmeet to snag some of these.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'll probably put the images on line in some form, maybe a "Stamp collector's guide" at the back of the game, like the coin guide I had at the end of FF X. They're quite low resolution, I think that the height of the labels is under 150 dots, but I can't find an online source that says precisely what it is.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Do you need to use this tape, given the price is so ridiculously expensive?

Why not use blank adhesive decals (that you can use in a printer) to print out your great art-work 'stamps' instead?

::B::

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Because my printer is not workig very well, and I like the glossy look of the tape.