Blog entries tagged Magazine

Replacing 'Be a General'

Jasper Oorthuys — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:21:12 +0100

Murray Dahm’s series in Ancient Warfare is running out of interesting didactic literature to discuss. There’s only so much that survives!There’s only so much that survives! So, we'll need to replace that feature with a new one starting with issue IV.1. For a while now he and I have been brainstorming about other possible options with the help of regulars Duncan B. Campbell and Jona Lendering. The current idea revolves around a feature that would be called ‘the debate&r...

Themes of 2010

Jasper Oorthuys — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:00:00 +0100

I have to say that, so far, the themes that the readership of this blog and I came up with, seem to have congealed into interesting issues. Sure, some themes cause me to go bald with worry about appropriate photography, but I seem to be genetically pre-disposed to be sparse-haired anyway.

So, I'd like to start the discussion about themes for next year. I'll lay out some ground rules, you can post your suggestions in the comments from which I'll select three or four for each issue, on w...

Varian Disaster - Erratum

Jasper Oorthuys — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Every time I open the first box with a new issue, take out a copy and browse it, I get a knot in my stomach. Will I see something that should've been different? I almost always find something, so far remarkably few and minor. However, in our firs Special, I forgot to replace a 'For positioning only'-type map with the artwork made by Andrew Brozyna. Oddly (luckily?) the temporary one doesn't look that bad or out of place, but I'd like to apologize to Andy and Duncan, the author, for this gaffe...

Books for review

Jasper Oorthuys — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0100

The recent request for reviewers in our newsletter and the News section of Ancient Warfare III.1 seems to have been very well received. That's to say, I've got a lot more interested wanna-be reviewers than books to divide.

For all those prospective reviewers, here's the plan. In addition to the old style reviews in the magazine (between 300 and 500 words), I'd like to have a long one version of each book of between 800 and 1000 words for the website, although longer is certainly...

Picking the artwork

Jasper Oorthuys — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:00:00 +0100

The results from the 'Artwork as prints' poll are pretty clear. Now I'd like to zoom in a little more. I've selected three images for 'soldiers' and three for 'battle scenes'.
Time to select your favorites.

Soldiers
Johnny Shumate's Flavian era Batavian auxiliary from Ancient Warfare I.1.

Graham Sumner's Caesarian centurio...

II-4 is here!

Jasper Oorthuys — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:00:00 +0100

It's a bad idea to move house and have a magazine deadline on the exact same day. Too many things in one head, it just doesn't work very well. Luckily, in the case of II-4, it seems to have worked out in the end. Thanks to our writers, illustrators, designers and of course the printer who put it all together.

Dutch subscribers should already have their copy and it's making its way around the rest of the world now. As of this issue, we're using magazine size labels which should finally...

Artwork as prints?

Jasper Oorthuys — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 23:00:00 +0100

I promise I have excuses for the lack of blog postings, I do! I'd rather get on with it though. Moving house has given me a comfortable train commute which increases the likelihood of me reading books every day and allows me to muse on new ideas.

One of those is not really new. I've had readers ask me at times whether there were any plans to print the artwork that has appeared in the magazine as individual quality prints. Well, it took a while to look into it, but we're willing to try...

'The Find' - short version

Jasper Oorthuys — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Sometimes when you're laying out the contents of a magazine, it appears you have an extra page. The usual quick 'n dirty solution is to insert one of your own or a charity ad. Or perhaps there is a good photo that can be enlarged to fill a page. The latter especially is not a bad solution, but I´m thinking of something new.

I am thinking of starting a new series of short - 1 page - articles as 'filler' material, a sort of short versions of 'the Find'. My idea would be to present inter...

Using more reenactors?

Jasper Oorthuys — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:00:00 +0100

As you may or may not know, getting good quality illustrations for our articles is a constant concern for me. Simply put, I can illustrate Roman imperial stuff forever and a day, but when it comes to Roman Republican soldiers, Alexander's troops or, dear me, those wonderfully interesting Successor armies, it's another story.

One possibility would be to use more reenactors to illustrate the magazine. Provided they wear kit that qualifies as an accurate reproduction, this could give the...

Themes of 2009

Jasper Oorthuys — Mon, 26 May 2008 23:00:00 +0100

For a while now I've been thinking about the themes for 2009. Some seem obvious. There's doubtless going to be a plethora of books and articles about the Teutoburg forest, but I'm confident that our angles and take will be deeper and more original than what's usually served up.

The Clades Variana will have to be a theme then and I have pretty much made up my mind that the first issue of the new year will be on Mercenaries, which should provide discussion materials from the earliest ti...

Second podcast - version 2

Jasper Oorthuys — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Last night we recorded the second iteration of the second Podcast show. As I related earlier , Skype and Joe's ISP conspired against us. There was actually also the matter of sound quality on Paul's side as well. Put together, that made us decide to try again.

Last night - for me anyway - things seemed pretty much perfect. Angus, the History Network podcast wizard, had supplied Paul with a new headset. Joe had browbeat his ISP into not disconnecting his broadband connection at ...

II-2 has arrived!

Jasper Oorthuys — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

The deadline's over, the printer has done his job (pretty well again, I think) and we can have a little let-up in stress again. In Dutch we have an expression that says that something was a 'difficult labor' (as in giving birth - maybe someone can enlighten me whether this exists in English too). It rather was.

There was no problem with the authors, nor with the artists - well, Igor was a little

Articles and abstracts

Jasper Oorthuys — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Many authors ask me what I'd like them to write about. Personally, I think that's making it a little too easy on yourself. It's clever, because it'll be hard to refuse an article if I've asked for it first, but maybe not the kind of clever I'm looking for. So here is a list of some of the things I look at when I get an abstract, translated into a series of do's and don'ts. What it comes down to, in short, is: be original and give me something that...

Podcast pilot

Jasper Oorthuys — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Two weeks ago on an early Sunday morning I had a Skype conference call with Murray Dahm in Australia and Stephen English and Nick Barley in the UK. Angus Wallace of the History Network recorded it all.

Angus edited the resulting banter down to about twenty minutes of hopefully interesting discussion. I have to say it was great fun to do the online conference, although I hate to hear my own voice back in the recording. I recall it was late the night befor, maybe that's got something...

1-2008 is here!

Jasper Oorthuys — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

When I went to get the mail from our PO box today, it contained a package with the first few copies of Ancient Warfare 1-2008! Hurrah and trepidation

The trepidation is from the fear of finding that you've overlooked something, of course. Let's face it, I can do a lot of things quite well, but I'm no 'com...

Binder design

Jasper Oorthuys — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:00:00 +0100

Since the binders are still in production I can't show you the real thing yet. What I can show is what it'll look like. It's a wraparound of course, so the Roman shield wall will be on the back, the Germanic warrior with his scale armour will be on the spine and his troops on the front. Hope you'll like it. I do!

The artwork is of course by Igor Dzis who widened the painting that was originally printed in Ancient Warfare issue 3 (October/November 2007).