Posts Tagged jason thompson

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Celephais, Page 4

by on May 20, 2011 at 5:28 pm
Chapter:

Two days late, this is the next page of Celephais! I put up an earlier version on Wednesday night but I had to do some more work so I just re-uploaded the whole thing. (Ken, sorry I lost your comment when I deleted the older version of the page.)

And now, on a non-Lovecraftian note: I’m having two launch parties for volume 2 of my book, King of RPGs!

THURSDAY, MAY 26
Green Lake Games, Seattle, WA
6:30-10:00 PM
The launch begins at Green Lake Games at 7509 Aurora Avenue North, Seattle, on Thursday, May 26. Join me from 6:30 to 10 PM for light food, drinks, a chance to buy a signed copy of the new book and to ask me when the Dream-Quest graphic novel is coming out! Plus open gaming at Seattle’s greatest game store… and at 8 PM, we’ll be running a game of MAID: THE RPG, the first ever professionally translated Japanese tabletop roleplaying game!
RSVP on Facebook (Seattle)

SATURDAY, JUNE 4
Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco, CA
5:30-7:30 PM
The San Francisco launch is at the Cartoon Art Museum at 655 Mission Street, San Francisco, from 5:30 to 7:30 PM on Saturday, June 4. Meet me and Victor Hao, the artist of King of RPGs, for beverages, light food and a talk about the process of making your own professionally published manga. Plus, Ewen Cluney, the actual translator of MAID: THE RPG, will be running a game at the event! Maid uniforms not required!
RSVP on Facebook (San Francisco)

If you’re in San Francisco or Seattle, please stop by! It’d be awesome to meet everyone, whether you like my Lovecraft stuff, my more manga-ish work, or both.

NEXT UPDATE: June 1

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Celephais, Page 5

by on June 13, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Chapter:

And once again, I’m back! Here’s the new page of Celephais, which was delayed while I was in San Francisco for the King of RPGs 2 launch party. (Did I mention that King of RPGs 2 has a Call of Cthulhu scene?) While drawing this page, I was mostly listening to various pop love songs and to the soundtrack of “Tiny Wings”, an iPhone game I like. I’ve also been looking around for the soundtrack to the old “Little Nemo in Slumberland” video game for the NES, which has a certain whimsical dreaminess to it as well, but I haven’t been able to find it (of course, the game itself was just a Super Mario Bros. 3 clone, and the movie was a mess, but the original comic is wonderful, so anyway…) That said, I don’t want anyone to question my qualifications to also draw scenes of soul-shattering terror.

I’m afraid the next Celephais page won’t be up till June 22. I’m working on another art project and I need to concentrate on that for the rest of the week. But hopefully the following page will be just a week later, on June 29. Can it happen? It can happen! Please wait for it, and thanks for reading!

NEXT UPDATE: June 22

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Celephais, Page 7

by on July 22, 2011 at 6:32 am
Chapter:

I’m back! This was a fun page to work on after the overload of the city on page 6. Actually, while drawing this page, I realized that the problem with page 6 — and to a lesser extent, this page — is that it’s actually too detailed beyond the point of visibility. I have the urge to show so much stuff happening, to pan the camera out so far, that it risks turning the page into “an inky black hole”, to quote Berke Breathed. I vow to learn a lesson from this going forward.

This page, like the previous one, actually needs a bit of work and toning… but I’m pretty happy with it. The ship was originally based partially on a Venetian galley, but it quickly turned into a purely fantastical ship, partially because I couldn’t imagine drawing this scene without drawing billowing sails, and galleys are the least sail-equipped ships there are. Why galleys, Lovecraft? Why not galleons? I know you loved the Roman period, but come on! So I ended up drawing a sort of bizarre galeass or galliot, flying towards Serannian perched on its cumulonimbus.

UPDATE 8/17: I’m working now on the new page (pages 8-9), but I won’t be able to upload it until Thursday. Sorry everyone! On the other hand, it’s turned into a double page, so that’s why it’s taking so long! Please check back late Thursday night or Friday morning!

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Celephais, Page 10

by on August 25, 2011 at 11:35 am
Chapter:

Only two pages of Celephais left to go! If you’re in Portland, Oregon on Labor Day, come see me at Kumoricon (technically it’s in Vancouver, Washington across the river). I’ll be doing several panels on manga and roleplaying games, and exhibiting in the dealers’ room. Before then, there’ll be another update next Friday, and some information about the graphic novel release of Celephais and other stories!

NEXT UPDATE: Friday, September 2!

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Celephais, Pages 12-13

by on September 6, 2011 at 10:38 am
Chapter:

This isn’t the original version of page 12 of Celephais; originally the story was two pages shorter, but I went back and added this new two-page spread when I was revising the book for the graphic novel publication. The older version is probably floating around there somewhere on the wayback machine of the internet if you really want to find it, but I think this one turned out much better. As Kuranes returns to the city, time seems to stand still…

Due to the weirdness of ComicPress, I couldn’t put up a “two-page spread” and thus the art is scrunched, but you can see the larger version of the page here.

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Map of the Lands of Dream (B&W Version)

by on October 11, 2011 at 5:43 pm


One of the things I’ve been working on for the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath graphic novel is a map of the Dreamlands, as described in Dream-Quest and other Lovecraft stories. The results which will appear in the book are here, or here if you want a closer to full-size version.

Just to reassure everybody, this map *isn’t* the same as the poster map which will be included for “Journeyman Dreamer” and up level backers — that map will be a 24″x36″ color map which will more or less look like a color version of this but will also include some other stuff off the edges of the map, including some locations I couldn’t squeeze into this version. But for this book version I tried to include all the important stuff from “The Doom That Came to Sarnath”, “The Quest of Iranon”, “Dream-Quest”, “The Other Gods”, “The Cats of Ulthar,” “Celephais” and some of his shorter stories and poetry. I’ve also included some areas described by other authors who inspired or were inspired by Lovecraft — the incredible Lord Dunsany and the great Gary Myers — or in some cases, authors I had to include just because.

The most famous map of the Dreamlands is probably the one included in Chaosium’s “Dreamlands” supplement for Call of Cthulhu, of which the most recent version was drawn by Andy Hopp, but I didn’t look at that one so as to try not to copy it. If this map still has similarities to that one, hopefully it’s from following the same text, although I’ll never be able to forget all my years playing Call of Cthulhu. It’s interesting how the continents of the Dreamlands mimic that “T-O” shape used in Medieval European maps, which usually depicted the world as a circle with a T-shape drawn in it, with the world divided into three parts: Africa, Europe and Asia. Here, that would be the North, the West and the East, all of which have their own character, from the jungles of Parg to the vast and dusty deserts of the east, from the Basalt Pillars of the West the fearsome icy heights of the North. I’m looking forward to coloring it and expanding the map out to the southern edge of the Earth and beyond. This is fun! Hope you like it!

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Redrawing Pages – Strange High House in the Mist

by on October 14, 2011 at 3:26 pm


I’ve scanned all the pages of Dream-Quest and am working on getting the book into shape. I’m making some little tweaks to the old artwork, and a few pages have been particularly messy, with crumbling whiteout, liquefied screentone and other disasters that can happen to Bristol Board pages stored in a box for 10 years. (Actually, they were in nice light-blocking photo-sleeves, but…)

I lost all the pages to “The White Ship” and most of the pages of “The Strange High House in the Mist,” but I had most of them in digital format, so it wasn’t a problem. However, there was one page of “Strange High House” I only had in low-res and so had to completely redraw. The original version is here, but the new version is the one that’ll be going into the graphic novel. Click on the image for a bigger version!

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Redrawing Pages – Celephais

by on October 17, 2011 at 4:58 pm


I redrew some panels of Celephais page 10 for the graphic novel edition. You can see the original version here, but I was never really satisfied with it and I’m glad I had time to redraw it. Perhaps the new version telegraphs the ending a little more, and certainly the mood is different, but I like it. Ultimately the change was made for layout/balance reasons.

(Note from February 6, 2012: I eventually drew the page even more for the graphic novel: the final version is here.)

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Dream-Quest Kickstarter: Complete!

by on November 10, 2011 at 2:22 pm

Thanks to the support of so many people, the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath graphic novel Kickstarter project is finally over, and we made 198% of our funding goal! WooOOt! Thank you all so much! I couldn’t have done it without everyone who helped, and without listening while I draw to HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast and News from Pnakotus, steadily leeching their bandwidth like the life force of the inhabitants of the Shunned House. I’m incredibly happy that this is happening, and really grateful to everyone who contributed, tweeted, hooted and hollered about the project. I’ll write more later about Kadath and about other things that influenced me, but for today: thank you! You’re awesome!

Due to the way this ComicPress blog works, the newer updates have been hidden awhile by the last page of “Celephais” (you have to scroll down), but here is the latest draft of the cover of the book. The coloring is by my partner, the lovely Jumana Al Hashal. I’ll post later about the early drafts, and you can also see it on flickr. Right now I’m sending files to the printer, and in the remaining days before the absolute absolute final deadline I’m still working on lots of little fixes — not only in “Dream-Quest” but also on “Celephais” and “Strange High House in the Mist”. After all that’s done and is at the printer, I’m going to work on the color Dreamlands map and the sketches for the super-cosmic-level backers, and then I’m going to work on an adaptation of “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” for one Very Special Backer, building another window into the Dream/Myth/Pre-DreamQuest vision of Lovecraft’s universe. I’ve always liked “Sarnath,” but rereading Kenneth Hite’s “Tour De Lovecraft,” in which he raves about it, makes me even more eager to get drawing. Wait, did I say *get* drawing? I’ve been drawing continually for the past month! AWESOME!

And now back to work! Thanks everyone!

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