I just finished a new piece for Wizards of the Coast — hopefully it’ll go up soon! Today I’m catching up on some other projects and hopefully practicing my Arabic.
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
I just finished a new piece for Wizards of the Coast — hopefully it’ll go up soon! Today I’m catching up on some other projects and hopefully practicing my Arabic.
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
One of my favorite B&W illustrators, Jason Eckhardt, is working on a new project that I’m really excited about: Some Notes on a Nonentity, a biographical graphic novel about H.P. Lovecraft, cowritten with Lovecraft expert Sam Gafford. I’ve seen some art from this upcoming book, and I’m really excited about it: I can’t think of anyone better qualified to write & draw an illustrated biography of HPL, and I can’t wait to see the whole thing. Check it out!
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
I recently read the “Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Science Fiction” (folks in the UK will know it as the Aurum Film Encyclopedia of Science Fiction) and was re-struck by how incredible that whole series of books is. (Well, I mean the horror and science fiction books… I’ve never been passionate enough about gangsters or Westerns to read the others in the series.) It’s a shame they never did the complete planned series of all genres, and even sadder that Phil Hardy, the series editor, died earlier this year. I wonder if, were the series remade in 2014 (in some hypothetical internet-free world where there is more of a demand for encyclopedia books, that is), fantasy films would justify a separate category from science fiction, or is the line between the two too blurry?
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
Today I went to Kinokuniya and bought a ton of manga (mostly for review purposes… that means something, right? -_- ). Sadly, Gamescape on Divisadero was sold out of the 5th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. But soon… soon…
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
HP Podcraft, the great HP Lovecraft/weird fiction podcast, is covering Lord Dunsany for the next month’s worth of episodes! I totally can’t wait. I love Dunsany’s work, although like many people who discovered him through Lovecraft, I’ve focused on his early exotic-dream-fantasies and haven’t read too many of his later, more openly comedic stories. I also haven’t read many of his novels, only “The King of Elfland’s Daughter,” which I found touching, and “The Charwoman’s Shadow,” which didn’t leave much of an impression. Someday I need to read “The Chronicles of Rodrigo” and “The Blessing of Pan” at the very least… and perhaps even the original version of “Dean Spanley”?
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
It’s probably my age, but I never understood the massive power– and more to the point, cultural prestige– of “Tech” and the “tech world” until recently. My parents’ generation (the grandparents’ generation for some Millennials and post-2000s) generally never understood video games and like Roger Ebert (RIP) dismissed them as ‘art’; but I, as a ’70s kid, was obsessed with video games and eagerly awaited every new arcade game and every new Sears catalog that might list new Atari 2600 or Colecovision or Vic-20 products (I didn’t get a Commodore 64 till later -_-). However, although I fantasized about designing video games, and did lots of little notes and sketches for imaginary games as well as programming some text adventures in BASIC, I always held comics and films and books in even higher esteem (or at least equal esteem) and I always identified as “a writer” or “an artist” and never as “a programmer” (as engineers/game designers were called back then).
Today, OTOH, Tech obviously dominates EVERYTHING. The super-massiveness of the many things under the umbrella of Tech — perhaps not least of all Gaming — is the common language of the world. Is this all a long, maudlin way of saying that I wish I’d been a computer game designer? Definitely not, since I could still learn programming if I really wanted to! ;) But I think that perhaps, for people not very much younger than me, programming and video game design seems much more accessible and graspable, whereas for me the ultimate outcome, however delightful, was always lost behind a sort of misty barrier of machine-language magic.
But maybe the same thing could be said about a lot of things I enjoy but don’t personally know how to make, like music… or cooking, which was equally mystical for me ’till I started experimenting with it less than 10 years ago. I enjoy doing what I do but I’m curious about other people’s ways of expressing themselves artistically in different media. Hmm, or maybe I need to actually talk to more game programmers…
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
I’m working on a pin-up for a comic book anthology called Death Saves, stories of late lamented Dungeons & Dragons/RPG characters. My own contribution will only be a page, but please check out the website, some of the other artists are excellent!
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
It’s a shame that the Babylonian gods aren’t as well known in pop culture as the Greek, Norse and Egyptian ones. I suppose it’s mostly just availability of knowledge: the Babylonian pantheon died out prior to the other ones, less statues and writings were preserved in the Tigris-Euphrates muds than in Nilotic sands, and the West has had even less contact with Mesopotamia than with, say, Egypt. But MAN, I love those Mesopotamian pantheons. My first player character in Dungeons & Dragons, way back in elementary school, was a worshipper of Ishtar. -_-
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
I’ve watched two episodes of the new “Marco Polo” series so far, but fell asleep in the middle of both of them. I’ll probably write a real review if I can manage to stay awake.
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
The last few weeks have had some wonderful rainstorms. I’m glad for it, because California has been in the middle of a huge drought, and any rain is precious. (Even though it’s caused the usual mudslides and erosion, partly because the ground was so dry it wasn’t soaking properly.) Unfortunately, the window of our bedroom has some kind of leak, and water is pooling on the carpet beneath it, after apparently seeping through the wall.
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!