Reading Arabat by Clive Barker. I think it’s his latest book. It’s a pretty thing, filled with colorful illustrations, oil paintings that Barker has done for the book. The art is fun. It’s of the character design variety – lots of single paintings of single characters who are strange and weird and interesting but who are just … there. A painting of John Mischief; a painting of Candy Quackenbush; not a painting of John Mischief as he meets Candy Quackenbush. Barker the writer often shows up Barker the illustrator. Scenes that he describes in detail with words look a bit perfunctory when rendered in paint. (The isle of Yabba Dim Day comes to mind.) Just as often though he brings to life a creature in art that he barely glanced at in prose. (The ladder legged creature who appears a few pages later.)
The Ground Floor
Sentient 39 or How To Rule The World.
Beta Version.
A. Get a website.
No problem.
I signed up for Keenspace, a free web hosting service specializing in comics. It’s a volunteer run, most DIY set-up. The servers crash every few weeks. There are hundreds of strips hosted on Keenspace. I haven’t looked at more than a fraction of them. I’ve found a few gems, a few “interesting” ones and a lot of … other stuff. I’m not going to criticize any of the other stuff. Have I been posting regularly for a couple of years? Have I posted anything besides a couple of “coming soon” pages? Nope. When the time comes I’ll link to the sites that impress me.
Browsing Keenspace sites requires a time commitment even over DSL and seems unrelated to the complexity of any of the sites I visited – Keenspace sites just load slowly. But free is good right now. Free is important. So Keenspace it is.
B. Forget about the website for a year.
Brilliant! All the illustration work I’ve done over the last year has allowed me to get familiar with my graphics programs, get a feel for what sort of rendering techniques I prefer and get back into the habit of constantly drawing. I think I’ve done more art in the last year than any time since doing Misspent Youths in 1991.
C. Determine content of website or “What’s your comic about Dave?”.
Originally Sentient 39 was going run as an illustration site. Once a week I was going to post an illustration of character, some event, some creature, something from the Sentient 39 “universe”. Some of the pieces I did ended up being used for the 2003 Labor of Love calendar. Other pieces can be found at my Epilogue.net gallery. And while I’d still enjoy doing random illustrations I feel like drawing comics. But what sort of comics?
Massive epic adventure featuring multiple characters, interweaving subplots and action told in a decompressed style that will play out over hundreds of pages?
Bad idea. Unfortunately, many of my favorite ideas are multi-character epics. But I’d prefer not to stick anyone with reading an epic at a page a week. I also know that my style is still evolving. It will always do that but it’s going to be changing the most in the early stages. In drawing an epic I’d like it if the style of page 201 were consistent with page two. Better to start small.
Daily humor strip?
Bad idea number two. I’m not funny. Not gag a day funny. I can draw better blind-folded, left-handed and drunk than Scott Adam’s can on his best day but I’ll never write anything as funny as Dilbert. And maybe not even as funny as the Family Circus.
Single character continuing series?
A better idea. I played around with a few protagonists – some new, some old friends and none of them seemed ready for this stage.
Unrelated short stories?
Also a good idea. I do have a few short stories that it would be fun to do. But I’d like the site to have a theme, a setting and characters that I can play with over the long term.
A series of short stories featuring re-occurring characters?
The best idea so far.
I thought of using the Mandate of Heaven RPG setting and telling stories featuring some of the characters from my illustrations for that project. Derek might get a kick out the idea. Trouble is – Mandate of Heaven hasn’t seen print yet. We’re still working on the premiere book. I’d rather get that finished before I start thinking of spin offs.
Maybe a Delta Green series? As long as I’m playing small and applying the proper “this work is not intended as challenge to such and such copyrights and trademarks” to the work I doubt that there would be any objections from either Chaosium or the Delta Green Partnership. But you don’t rule the world if you’re working with someone else’s copyrighted concepts. That’s why I decided not to pursue an Epic series with Marvel. In the unlikely event that they accepted one of my miniseries ideas, Marvel would still own everything I did. While Lovecraft’s work is basically public domain, the Delta Green setting isn’t. Perhaps something could be worked out in the future but for now, I think it’s best to stick with something that I don’t have to run by anyone else for rights and approval.
This does remind me of a series concept I’d pitched to Icebox.com in’00. Icebox was looking for ideas for short episode flash animation series that they could test out on their website. They were gambling on developing concepts that could be resold as television series similar to the manner that The Simpsons had been developed (originally short animations on the Tracy Ullman Show that proved popular enough that Fox was willing to try out half hour versions). Nizzibet, the Kipster and I had all sent ideas their way and Icebox passed on every one of them.
I pitched two series – Sargasso (inspired by a William Hope Hodgson novel) and The Cauldron. Sargasso is too much the multi-character epic for my current purposes. The Cauldron, however, fits just fine. It was designed as a series of self contained episodes featuring continuing characters.
The version of The Cauldron that I’ll be running on Keenspace has evolved since ’00. It’s still a mystery/detective series and features the same characters but the background has evolved. After there have been a few stories published I might go into the differences between what was conceived and what has resulted but I’d rather wait on any further discussion of that.
D. Determine the format of the comic –
How do I present the story? As a comic strip? As a comic book page? In infinite canvas?
Ultimately I’d like to see The Cauldron in print. As cool as webcomics are, they’re still ephemeral things. They require some sort of computer to read them. I’m a book geek and I’d like my work to end up in some sort of dead tree edition. So it makes sense to design the storytelling; the art, with the goal of eventually collecting it in print. That eliminates the infinite canvas idea. (We won’t go into what a chunk of dullness loading an infinite canvas comic through Keenspace would be.)
Comic strip or comic book page? The narrow horizontal format of the comic strip doesn’t work for this series. And while I’m okay with other webcomics using a comic book page layout I’d rather not do it myself. Using the comic book proportions on a webpage generally means that the whole page can’t be looked at or read on screen all at once. The most that can usually be seen is 2/3 of a page. A half comic page layout would give me greater room for action and allow the reader to feel like they’re seeing the whole page. I’ve also worked out cropping and stretching ideas that will mean that the ultimate layout of the print edition has more variety than 2 half pages combined to make a full page. I’ll be designing for a full page and then reformatting for half pages on the web.
E. Write the comic
F. Draw the comic
Oh that.
Bye now!
Seasons Change
Autumn is bringing back the rain. I’ve missed it.
I moved up here for the weather. For the variety of weather. We’ve been having entirely too much sun. Since I spend my work days in an office without windows and much of my mornings and evenings puttering in a basement I haven’t gotten to see the sun enough to appreciate it. The inefficient airconditioning at work also means that the sun’s heat becomes thicker and heavier in the building than outside. Rain plays percussion on the skylights over my desk; announcing its pressence with more energy than what seems to come from the sun.
Paliki is spending more time indoors. She’s not so fond of the rain.
Skook can be found snoozing the day away in his regular spot in the basement.
I’ll probably be switching back to hot coffee soon. For the last few months I been drinking it over ice or cool from the turned off pot.
What?
Mmm?
Uh.
Nah.
36 … 37 … 38 …
And so it begins …
Like anything actually begins.
I’ve loaded the first page to Sentient 39 at Keenspace.com. It’s really only a hastily scrawled notice that there will be something at that address by January 1st, 2004. Creating it meant learning just a little bit more HTML and a little bit more GoLive.
I plan to keep Sentient 39 pretty uncluttered. I don’t really care for busy site designs. I also hoping that by keeping the noise to a minimum the site will load more quickly. Keenspace sites tend to load slowly even over the DSL at work.
I’ll let you know when I add anything significant to the site. As much as I’d like to dive in I have promised art to other people and need to get quite a bit done before I significantly shift over into comic mode. Darn it.
Put a Stake in it.
Finished Dracula. I doubt there’s anything I can say about the novel that hasn’t been said in far more detail by more articulate people than me. For me, it’s a case of knowing too much about the experience beforehand. There were very few surprises and those were of the “this is taking much longer than I expected” variety.
I wonder what it would have been like to read the novel without all my pop culture knowledge of Dracula and vampires? I can’t think of a novel or film that gives its vampire the abilities that Stoker gives Dracula. Usually the vampire has less powers (can’t turn into bat or mist) and greater weaknesses (sunlight kills). Dracula fails in his quest (which seems to be conquering England) because … well … Van Helsing says it’s because he has a “child brain”. Basically, he doesn’t understand England and the modern world and so fails to take the proper steps for conquest.
Oh well. As I understand it, Stoker’s other supernatural novels are quite awful. I’m tempted to read them just for the fun of it. At least there would be some surprises in them. I’ve seen the Ken Russell film of Lair of the White Worm and understand that Jewel of the Seven Stars has something to do Egypt and mummies but other than that I’ve no foreknowledge of the stories.
While Trying to Bore a Child, I Accomplish Something
Sunday night LoL was having its weekly meeting (it’s normally on Thursday but both Nizzibet and TwoM had scheduling issues) and I was puttering in the basement. Little M got tired of playing by herself and asked if she could come hang out with me. Hoping to bore her into going back upstairs I set to work tidying up the desk at my art station. The thing is covered with old bills that need filing, letters that need organizing, notes for this and that and god knows what else.
Silly me. Most kids would rather hang out with someone who is listening to them (even if that person is doing something “adult” and incomprehensible) than hang out by themselves. So I ended up actually getting some of the desk organized. And I found my passwords to Sentient 39, my Keenspace site. I set the site up a year ago and, for various reasons, never posted anything to it.
I’ve checked. The site seems to be active. Keenspace isn’t as user friendly as Epilogue. In order use it I’m going to have to learn some more html and find an ftp program. At the moment I’m not sure what I’d put up there. The original concepts I had when I signed up last year are still active in my imagination but they’re more complex than I want to tackle right now. Wild Nights in Oz wouldn’t look very good there. Finnegan’s Brink is a nice limited project that would fit there nicely but it’s still bigger than I’m ready to tackle a the moment. I’m sure something will come up. And it’s not like I’ve nothing else to do in the meantime.
Ahoy There!
I’ve been pirated. My Mi-Go illustration from the Delta Green site has been posted to a couple of other sites without my permission. I’m a little flattered.
I found the first one at a Russian Lovecraft site. Since they have included my credit on the piece I really didn’t mind. They’d also made the effort to put together a lot of renditions of Lovecraftian beasties so the site was fun to browse even though I don’t speak Russian. I sent them an email thanking them for posting my name along with the art.
I found the second one last week at Mestrene.net which seems to be a German (Austrian? Swiss?) gaming site. They didn’t credit the piece. I haven’t decided whether to contact them or not. Fundamentally I think it’s funny but there’s this nagging voice in the back of my head that says I need to address these sorts of things.
Fangs Up Front
I found a copy of Dracula. I think I can guess one of the reasons why the novel has endured. It gets right into the action. There’s none of the “investigation” of The Phantom, none of the easing into the mystery of Jekyll and Hyde, none of the pages of story relating to a minor character who gets told the whole story that we’re actually interested in of Frankenstein. Dracula opens with Jonathan Harker in Transylvania on his way to Castle Dracula. And pretty quickly after that, bad things start to happen. To hell with all the talk of sexual undercurrents, foreign menace and old world legends haunting the modern world – Dracula is quickly revealed to be a blood sucking menace who commands legions of Gypsies and wolves. If I didn’t already know what was going to happen I might be creeped out myself.
It is a bit funny though … Dracula has no servants so he secretly takes care of Harker the way servants normally would. Scream as Dracula sets the table! Flinch as the Master of the Undead adds just a hint of rosemary to the soup! Cover your eyes as the Prince of Darkness makes the bed! Flee in terror as the Unliving Fiend washes the dishes! Sort of embarrassing.
And Now … The Phantom!
Finished The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston LeRoux. That takes care of three of the four major literary horror characters. The Phantom is probably at the bottom of the list in public awareness. Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde would come before him. (And perhaps the Invisible Man would come after him. I tend to forget about the Invisible Man because it’s his invisibility that people remember not his character.) And of course, the public would know Erik as the mad, scarred composer of the films rather than the world traveling freakish genius of the novel. The Lon Chaney version seems most accurate. I’ll have to watch the movie sometime.
The novel is a weird, schizophrenic thing. It lurches between comedy and terror. Erik, the Phantom, is both sad and sympathetic, angry and murderous. It’s left up to reader whether he is responsible for any of the deaths in the novel. He probably is (if only because he built the death traps) but he may not have actively killed anyone while in Paris. The hero, Raoul, and heroine, Christine, are … eh … not terribly engaging. They’re melodramatic young lovers. I didn’t have much patience for that sort of character even when I was young and melodramatic. It’s Erik and the Persian who are most interesting. And the opera house itself. After reading the book I want to visit the place and run around the back corridors and seek out the hidden places.
After the Phantom, all the great horror characters were born in the movies. The Wolfman, the Mummy are both cinematic creations. Werewolves and Egyptian sorcerors appeared in novels prior to the films but, so far as I know, the films were original stories, not based on previous works. There have been great monsters in prose since but it’s film that dominates the public imagination. C’est la vie.
