Studs Up

It’s been a crazy couple weeks between launching a football clothing line, the World Cup kicking into some seriously high gear and finally, really, I promise, starting work on the first Studs Up book. As a result my blog writing has been a bit irregular but should be back on track now, for whatever my thoughts and brain dumps are worth to you. Also, Antenna Mag interviewed me and did a great write up about Studs Up and Studs Up Football Club, check it out here.

But I got the craziest and best email I ever received in my life from new SU reader Tiffany, who’s got the “new to football” smell and seems to be enjoying every minute of it. More importantly, she’s a crazy talented artist (check out her Deviant Art profile) and took the time to draw her rendition of one of Studs Up main characters: Brown-Haired Guy. She tried to be all self-deprecating about its quality, but I think it’s amazing. The shading especially gives it a his face a really nice level of depth, Tiffany’s also been nice enough to mail me the original which I plan to frame and pop on my desk.

Judging from the number of emails I get about it, a lot of you have noticed that I haven’t actually publicly stated the names for either brown-haired guy or baldy. I don’t know why that is, but now seems like a good time as ever.

Brown haired guy is Brevan. Why Brevan? Well, as a lifelong RPG gamer there’s always been that inevitable moment when you have to name your hero and since I was about 15, so about ten years now, I’ve gone with Brevan. It abbreviates nicely to “Brev” and I’ve grown quite fond of it over all this time. Brevan has slain dragons, sniped terrorists from rooftops, stopped a Sith Jedi masterplan and endless other adventures across hundreds of video game lives, and now I’ve got the chance to dictate his story rather than guide him through someone else’s.

I’ll tell you Baldy’s name someday soon too, if one of you wants to take a stab at a portrait of him too, well, I won’t say no .