If you want to skip ahead and see what these dudes actually look like, and take a look at some of the other races, the Eldritch Foundry has a 'Lore' section now. Link is at the bottom of the post. Click through and Lore is on the top right.
Also we have an initial-area continental map coming with clickable backgrounds and descriptions for everything on there, if I can ever finish the writing for it.
.............
Writing - the main challenge for the EF stuff is that, at least initially, its driven by the market, or by what the market is assumed to be. Which to begin with means Elves, Dwarves, Half-Elves (maybe the most popular PC choice) Halflings, etc.
And then later, animal-people and tiny Fey, who are apparently major desired products for 3D printing as models for them are not well served by mass produced plastic-injection moulding.
So this is me trying to interact with, or at least approach, the general public. (Those who know me are sniggering behind their hands reading this).
I knew this going in, it was one of the reasons I took the job.
One of the general race-concepts for Uud is that everything is very slightly more pseudo-scientific than usual. Several of the 'races' are meant to be alternate versions of Humanity from parallel planes, trapped together when Yggsrathaal started to decay this one.
So the mind states of Aeth and Deoth are imagined as them having subtly different cognitive architecture, literally a different sensorium, biology, perception of the world and not just different biology in human terms but operating under the shadow of very slightly different natural laws.
Most of these 'races' have almost completely forgotten that they are from different versions of reality.
As to 'Humanity', essentially its defined by the majority. Somon, (Homo Sapiens) are from this reality. (This is also why they have only one name when encountering extra-dimensional beings, hence the name 'Somon'. As fast-breeding agricultural omnivores, there are a lot more of them, so they get to decide what it means to be human. Which mean Aeth, Deoth, Homon and a handful of others are *in*, and 'monsters', 'orcs' and definitely the Children of Yggsrathaal are definitely *out*.
I haven't got round to 'Orc' yet, but essentially, from the perspective of human cultures, its "Looks-Kinda-Human-But-Not", someone, or something, that is in the uncanny valley of human perception, human-seeming enough to freak people out but without some essential quality of 'humanity'.
So, this is both a physical, and in a way, a legal definition. Who or what is or isn't an 'Orc' can depend a lot on how the people around them perceive them.
Anyway, here are 'our-Dwarves-are-different' Deoth.
.............................................
ALIENATED FROM
NATURE
Imagine if, when you looked at a tree or a flower
unfurling, or a cloud crossing the sun, you felt as if you had seen a spider
crossing your hand.
Or if, when you saw a green shoot in fresh soil, or a
baby lamb, it felt as if you were looking at a skull, picked quite clean by
insects and time.
These things aren't necessarily awful, or even inherently
ugly or monstrous, they can be said to have their own strange beauty. But they
are Other; alien and strange. They are not like you.
The Deoth feel and intuit nature, in its immediate forms;
trees, plants, forests, weather, wind, rain and storms, the sun (but not the
stars) as something alien.
For them, a meadow surrounded by flowers is like a field
of crawling insects. Not evil, but not fun, and they feel the same way about
natural growth as you do about decay. It’s necessary, but you wouldn't want to
sit there staring at it.
Wherever they come from or however they were made, those
things were not natural to them and no matter how long they have been here,
those things remain other to them. This instinct never fades, or abrades with
time. They are not at home.
This bone-deep alienation from the natural world cascades
up and down the Deoth state of mind, affecting their culture on every level. If
they were ‘at home’, somewhere they intuited as ‘normal’, would they seem more
‘human’? Or even stranger?
BODY AND FORM
If Somon (Human) proportions are roughly 1 by 3 by 9,
i.e. three times as wide and nine times as tall as they are thick, then Deoth
proportions are more like 1 by 2 by 6, twice as wide and six times as tall as
they are thick.
They have slightly denser mass and roughly the same
amount of flesh, just differently proportioned. This makes them heavy, wide,
and strong.
The range of morphology crosses over with the edge of the
Somon range. An unusually short, dense or squat Somon and an unusually tall,
lithe and gracile Deoth could look very similar.
At the other end of the range, the extraordinarily short,
wide and thick Deoth look almost like creatures from legend of children’s
tales.
Their blood is denser than water and crystallises into
cuboid prisms, like salt, when it dries. Their bones, skin, nails, teeth and
hair follicles are thick, towards the end of the Somon range.
They are omnivores, and can survive on very little, but
they like to eat a LOT, especially of carbs. They are happy if they can add in
extra carbs as drink at the same time. Thick foods, thick drinks.
They like booze, because their extremely fast calorie
conversion means they have to work to get fat, and perhaps drinking aids them
with their mild and continual alienation from the 'natural' world. Low-level
alcoholism is common to many Deoth cultures.
They also sometimes nibble small pieces of metal and
mineral, and can often identify them by taste. They aren't getting nutrition
from them, but they may integrate trace elements into their senses.
SLEEP AND DREAMS
Deoth almost always lucid dream. They are aware they are
dreaming, can change the nature of the dream and recall it afterwards. These
dream-states are of enormous precision and exactness. If a Deoth dreams of
writing a book or sketching a plan, when they fall back asleep the same plan or
book will be there, exactly as it was before.
Deoth spend a lot of time in dreams, planning and
building, making and shaping. They have a near-perfect memory for objects so
every Deoth has a kind of internal catalogue of plans and built things which
they have developed from childhood.
They do not fundamentally need to sleep, but they can and
they enjoy it. Their dreams of craft are one of the few pleasures they are
afforded in their strange world and they are opportunistic sleepers.
Sleep also re-energises them a great deal, a
regularly-sleeping Deoth will seem to have a lot more energy than a Somon on
the same schedule and will usually wake up full of plans.
Tired or poorly fed Deoth don't dream, which is
distressing for them, and their para-senses and craft skills suffer. This isn't
very noticeable to other races - to an outsider their gross physical actions
remain the same. This is where part of their reputation for tirelessness comes
from. This lack of dreaming makes them grumpy, which is where part of their
reputation for being arseholes comes from.
Deoth find humanities formless, memoryless dreams in
which the dreamer not only cannot control what is happening, but does not even
know they are dreaming, really weird and mystical. For them, lived experience
is the strange, formless and uncontrollable part of existence, and the dream a
refuge from that.
A Somon waking up afraid from a nightmare, or talking in
their sleep, is a slightly magical experience for Deoth.
“Where did you go?” they ask.
SENSES
Deoth have a range of partial senses that Somon do not.
These vary a great deal by individual according to lines of descent, personal
aptitude, diet, culture and sheer randomness.
They have a partial magnetic sense, like a pigeon or
migrating bird which they describe it as a kind of 'tightness' in the air.
They have a very precise pressure sense in their sinuses,
like the Somon experience of quickly gaining or losing height, but much more
exact. They generally know how deep or how high they are.
They have a blotchy and imprecise short-range infra-red
sense, they will often see living things glowing slightly in the dark at close
range.
They can sense (but not 'see') the presence of
ultraviolet light and even more high-frequency particles. Birds and flowers
have a ‘brightness’ to them which Somon do not see. The irony of Deoth being
able to see this when they cannot appreciate its beauty has not been lost on
generations of poets and ironists.
The combination of these sense, plus a complete absence
of claustrophobia or of any fear of being trapped in a small space, means Deoth
are very comfortable underground or in enclosed spaces of any kind.
Somon become uncomfortable in these situations relatively
quickly and Aeth even faster but Deoth are completely happy rambling about
through narrow tunnels for days, months, forever really. There are no
'infinite' depths for them since they always know how deep they are and they
never have the sense of being crushed or buried.
CULTURE
There have been Deoth in Blackriver since anyone can
remember.
It’s widely thought they built the Grey Cities. Under the
eons of decrepitude and grime, beneath the tattered flags, collapsed icons to
forgotten faiths and crumbling spires, many of the key buildings, and much of
the core design of Galdor, Vocht, Declension and Yga is clearly their work.
Today, they are massively outnumbered by Somon and are
usually allowed high-status functionary roles that minimise social interaction.
Anywhere from Blacksmith to Bureaucrat to Executioner. But they are often are
kept out of Somon hierarchies. Their usual low sociability and disinterest in
social position means they barely object.
A local Deoth might be the village blacksmith, money
changer, house builder, night watchman, village drunk or all of the above.
They can do well in the military, where social roles and
reactions are all written down and their enormous capacity for work is
rewarded. There are no Deoth Emperors or Kings (in Blackriver at least), but
you might find one acting as the Marcher Lord of a watch-tower on the margins
of the Waste, a mix of military commander, colonist, monster fighter and feudal
lord.
Its standard for most Deoth to have at least one or two
of the personality traits we associate with Aspergers; difficulty with facial
expressions, literalism, trouble with eye contact or metaphors. They are not
necessarily very deep on the spectrum but it’s rare to meet one that has none
of these markers at all.
Just because they have difficulty in social situations
does not mean they are necessarily anti-social. They can draw as much pleasure
from the company of others as anyone, but their strange relationship to the
world, strange mentality, intense focus, object obsession and long lives (300
to 400 years usually) mean they find it hard to maintain social bonds.
Generally as they age and get more familiar with Somon
they find ways to adapt to the surrounding culture. They live so long, with
such regular habits and private interests that to generations of Somon they
seem almost to fade into the background.
GENDER
Deoth are less into Gender than Somon.
They like to have something on their face, either a
beard, tattoos, piercings or some other body modification or mask.
The classic Deoth look is a bearded male and a tattooed
and pierced female, but with Deoh you never really know since males do shave
occasionally, women sometimes grow facial hair and they often don't signal gender
much.
Its entirely possible to spend a long time with some
Deoth without ever really knowing what gender they are. They might not think to
bring it up themselves.
It's theorised that they have a breeding season or some
specific thing that activates sexual desire, with it being low or neutral the
rest of the time. Whatever it is they don't talk about it much and others are
often too embarrassed to ask.
In theory Somon and Deaoth can cross-breed, with a low
likelihood of producing young and a near-impossibility of producing fertile
young. But since almost no human wants to sleep with a Deoth and they have
little interest the other way, half-Deoh are extraordinarily rare, and usually
just look like short Somon.
THE STEEL KEEPS
For the Deoth Blackwater the Steel Keeps are legendary
places. They are described as mountains of steel or huge towers of metal,
mistaken for shining castles but growing deep, deep into the earth, with
mountains and forests grown up around them.
Deoth legends place the Steel Keeps at the centre of all
their origin myths.
These all differ, in a few the Deoth were created in the
Keeps. In most the Keeps are what brought them here, to Uud, from wherever they
were before. In some legends they fell from the heavans, in others they were
summoned or rose up from the ground. The tales all differ except to say that
the Steel Keeps pierced the world and the Deoth came forth.
All the Keeps are lost, except for one. The Waste of the
world and the Ash of Yggsrathaal has consumed and folded over them, lost to
monsters or time, or the children of Entropy, or to cultural change, abandoned,
ruined, sinking.
Except for one. In the most distant of the Mountains of
Reality, on the border of the Cataclysm and with the ruins of lost Phosphorfall
just visible from its peak, stands the Beothoborg, a sky-piercing shard of
steel that shines like ice, with black scree-slopes gathered around it like
blankets.
Few Deoth live there and those that do are considered
even stranger that Blackriver Deoth. High-minded and difficult to deal with and
extremely unimpressed. They hold to what they claim are ‘older ways’ and wield
‘pure’ runic magics. It’s said they make food by alchemy and nothing grows
inside.
Most Deoth have some kind of vague dream of repairing or
reconquering, re-inhabiting the Steel Keeps, or a specific one, though to
exactly what effect they either do not know or will not tell. A vision of
shining walls on a distant horizon hangs before their eyes - a dream that mutes
the loneliness of a world that never feels quite right or makes sense.
THE AWAKENING
Every month there seems to be some report of Deoth
springing into unlikely action.
Striding into the ash to seize back names from
Name-Takers, leaguing with Somon or Aeth to fight spindlelimbed taxmasters,
troubling, or even directly defying the authorities. There have always been a
few radical monster hunters, easy enough to divert into pointless or
low-success missions out in the ash, but now things are getting really out of
control. Who would have thought it, from the Deoth of all people?
For that editor I have illustrated a couple of roleplaying adventures, one for the game Ragnarok called "Pryroda Zvira" and other for Dungeons & Cthulhu "La Siniestra Fortaleza de Bahía Espinosa"
I also illustrated an adventure for the roleplaying game "Tesoro y Gloria", called "El trueno sin relámpago" but it hasn't been published yet. http://tesoroygloria.com/
I have done other things, a couple of book covers and illustrations for a children's book and for local cultural and historical expositions, but I believe the best examples of my current work are those above."
And here is a preliminary sketch by Daniel of the Green Knight scene
"The blood burst from the body and blackened on the green.
And neither faltered the fell freak, nor tipped,
But started and sprinted forth upon strong shanks,
And running he reached out among the standing ranks,
Leapt to his lovely head, and lifts it up quick;
And turning boldly to his bronco, the bridle he snatches
Steps into the stirrup and strides aloft,
And his head by the hair in his hand holds;
The sire sitting neatly in his saddle seat
As if no mishap he had, though headless now
instead."
For the past, months? year? multiple years? Its been a while. For a while now Daniel has been working on a set of illustrations to go along with my strange semi-translation of the Gawain poem.
Aaaaaand, they are all pretty much done.
That's twenty illustrations, plus a cover, for an A5 book of a little over 100 pages.
All of this is laid out by Mateo Diaz Torres who used to blog at Gloomtrain and who I think now blogs at Hex Culture.
"At each warp-over-water where he wished he could cross
If he found no foe before him, a wonder it was
And one so foul and so fell that fight them he must.
So many marvels in mountains there the man finds,
It were too sore to tell of the tenth part.
Somewhile with wyrms he wars, and with wolves as well,
Somewhile with Woodwose who waited in stones,
Both with bulls and with bears, and boars otherwhile.
And Eoten that him attacked from the high fells;
If not grim and grit-hard and God he had served,
Doubtless he had been dead and dashed full oft."
So, this is going to be a book and its going to be available one way or another, the only real difference is exactly how.
We can do a kinda-OK'ish PoD version easily enough.
However, this blog post is about trying to discover if there is any interest in a fancy Kickstarted properly-printed high quality version.
This would still be A5, just with a fancier cover, real binding, thicker paper and just generally more like an actual book. We would probably print in the U.K. and ship from here as, being small, the book should be relatively easy to post.
I haven't made any of the calls required to cost this out yet, this is more of an exploratory post to see if there is any interest at all.
I mean, its a book of poetry, translated in a wierd way, with illustrations. It has almost no game or RPG utility at all.
"The wild one was aware of the weapon in his hands,
His bristles bunched, out burst such a snort
Those lads feared for their lord, lest befell him the worst.
The swine surged him out at the stalking man so,
The boar and Lord Bertilak both fell in a heap,
In the swift part of the water; the worst had the former,
For the man marks him well, as they meet first,
Set strongly the sharp in the swines throat,
Hit him up to the hilt, that the heart sundered,
And snarling he fell, was swept under the stream,
into its core."
One reason some of you might be interested is that, if you have got your hands on Silent Titans yet, or have looked through the PDF, and if you are familiar with my Gawain semi-translation, then you may well have noticed certain clues or elements suggestive of a certain someone and their presence in the Silent Titans background.
Not that the Gawain poem gives you any firm answers to anything in Silent Titans, or that you need the poem to understand the book, or the book to understand the poem, but they are, in a way, slightly parallel texts.
So, if you want this in a fancy specially-printed version, say something somewhere, either here in a comment, or on facebook or elsewhere I will see it and if there is a non-trivial response I will start looking at costs and printers and postage,
Thanks to everyone who responded on my previous post about G+, and to Alex for blogging. (And other Alex.) There were a pretty wide range of responses from "Let it burn!!!" to actual grieving for something lost. It's interesting to see the very different experiences that people had with that damn Social Media Thing.
I suppose that since everyone else was willing to speak, I should be too.
I miss it but I don't.
G-Plus was dying for me for a long time, from hundreds of small cuts that most of you didn't see. For me G-Plus is tied up with the blog and the books and everything else and my attitude towards it is a mirror of my attitude towards them.
That attitude is; tired, alienated, ambivalent and caked over with bitter secrets. I've had so many bad/weird/troubling interactions with that system and that community, most of which you will never, ever hear about. Being very-mildly successful in a small 'community', or being perceived as such, is awful. I've gotten a very clear look at the disturbing mixture of insane drama and extremely narrow but intense perceived power that slowly drove Zak insane, or just cracked open the narcissism and rage that was already there.
So for me, watching the towers of G+ burn was like hearing about the destruction of a city that I fled months, or even years ago. I'm a little sad for the 'good times', Flailsnails, Constantcon and the period of relative stability and sanity leading up the the first big Summer of Hate in 2015. After that it slowly decayed. Then the Trump election in late 2016 really started to drive almost all the Americans online fucking nuts in one way or another. That dark energy seeped slowly into every interaction. Then came the initially-slow but then-precipitous collapse, and finally the Ultimate Doom in early 2019.
It was a hell of a thing really.
I think I just felt relief for it being gone to be honest.
The world is changing, or fracturing into sub-worlds, and I don't really feel any deep kinship or what Brendan might call 'Communal Sharing' relationships with any of them. I find myself just as placeless and other as I was before blogging and G+, though not quite as directionless.
I try to keep comparing my state of being to how I felt just before I left my last major call-centre job, when my suicidal ideation was vivid, intense and daily. My life now is certainly better than it was then. I'm not happy, but I don't feel as bad as that.
David thinks any idea of online community is a category error. Perhaps, but I have no talent for speaking to my neighbours and am way too far along the scale for some kind of cognitive oddness to easily make friends with actual people. I like making things, its my primary means of being around other people really, so I will probably keep doing it. I have very little choice. It's this or the call-centre.
Look at the mountains from the plain, or, if you dare,
from the Waste.
A slice in the suffocating sky makes a break in the
eternal grey; a sapphire blade on the horizon, glowing like a candleflame-lit
gem. A knife against the throat of time.
Even before the mountains themselves are visible, their
effect on the atmosphere can be sensed. The air clears. The terrible weight of
paling gloom fades away. The sun, the real sun, glares down. True day, True
night. And the Waste rages at a boundary of storm.
Then, beneath the sky; hanging from it like an obsidian
necklace upon the breast of day - shards of black. Fierce sharks teeth from an
enormous jaw closing on the axis of the world.
Closer.
You trudge forward, hour upon hour. The sun sets. In the
fresh black sky, pale lamps gleam.
You walk on.
Day comes.
The necklace of obsidian blades has grown. It sweeps
across the sky from side to side. The tooth-points lost in haze of an azure
vault, and the mountains have birthed a high family; serrated triangular
children, black glazed with shining white like tarnished diamonds. Tongues of
white fire spill from their jagged lips. Glaciers. Cloud-crowned palaces of
stone and ice, scarred with cracked valleys like gospel books torn open by a
circus strongman.
Closer.
Wind picks up. You feel cold, not the amorphous,
directionless life-sapping refrigeration of the Waste, but actual weather, cold
life. Fingers of air press against you, gently teasing, pushing you back.
Closer.
The mountains grow again, spreading across the sky. The
black blades almost lost behind cloud. Passing gaps, like the masks of dancing
players, reveal their shapes and near-impossible size.
The glacier-tongued children are kings themselves. Each
sits imperious, attended by a court of cyclopean queens, the least of which
might overawe nations. And though crowned in ice, the queens are robed in
green. Forests tumble from their shoulders like light silk, transforming into
seas of life, for these size-sovereigns are themselves attended, thronged by an
hundred crags who clamour for attention like hungry gulls.
Still you walk.
Closer.
And night falls again.
The falling sun sends beams of rose riding the air like Valkyries,
skidding up, up over the mountains, over the robes of green, stained
gloom-black by their red light, up to their burning crowns of ice set into
vermillion fire by the suns last light. Up. Light licking the glacier tongue of
the ice-glazed imperial hills, riding higher. Up. Up. Up. to the diamond-bright peaks of those attending kings. Up. Up.
The ground has been dark for hours. The sky-bowl fills
with stars once more, but high above the sun is not done setting on the
Mountains of Reality.
Blood-red beams crawl the black blade edges of the
highest peaks. They glow, almost resentfully, like a freezing, bitter priest
before a slumbering fire. The faintest infra-red emits, the merest hint of
sunfire on the bitten edge.
Your neck cranes. Far, far above the light of black roses
burning with a black fire fades into the boundless night. And then it is dark.
You walk, and the wind follows.
Closer. Closer.
You smell trees and hear the teased strand of a moan, a susurrus;
wind in leaves. And a keening - high, high above, a black sword of stone
slicing a banner of eternal air. Unlike the soft nothing of the Waste, the
mountains have a sound. They glower, but they breathe.
Light, and a bird cries.
You stumble. Up through the cracked pumice, salt, dust
and sand of the Waste, rises stone. Huge boulders, shards, solid planes of
water-rippled limestone and sandstone banded in ochre and blue like veins
standing up on a clenched hand.
The sun arcs in a blue and storm-tossed sky. Slowly and
by faint degrees the dawn-pale light infiltrates the air. As a tear building in
the eye first blurs the world and then leaves focus in its passing, the
mountains stand before you like a wall of time.
The black blades of the high peaks are invisible now,
lost in the vault above the clouds - the ice-rimed rulers explode with sunlight
like shattered crystal prisming the golden light of dawn. The green-robed
Queens pulse with distant life, trees in their billions strung with
silver-bright rivers. Waterfalls roar a bass note in the imponderable visual
distance. Attending crags bow, crack and scatter down their sides and beneath
these smaller crags, hiding near their feet like mice, mere mountains, some not
even a thousand feet high, with paths and rockfalls, forests and moorlands,
streams and climb-ways spreading like spilled needles, a hundred-thousand
gateways to an unbounded land.
And crawling at the skirts of these, the foothills of the
Mountains of Reality, are you.
And over here, on the other side, is organised crime.
(This is largely terrorising and abusing the weak), lets say that’s this comma
here,
.,
You see the space between the dot and the comma?
That space is not large.
In fact, it’s the exact width between one of your
shoulders and the other. And it's shrinking.
Yes, it was hard growing up without parents, and with the
farm repossessed, and an Ogre eating your families final pig, supporting seven
siblings on your own - that's what you tell everyone.
It's ok though, you've got things under control. You are
already looking for an angle. An unseen exit (the roof?), an unguarded treasure
(that cotton merchant takes his ring off to eat chicken with his fingers), an
unexpected vulnerability (will you ever really forget the smell of your one
true lov.. wait not yours, theirs! Get back on track!)
Actually, your precise address is in another city, and
was lost in a fire [TEARS], so you threw yourself on the mercy of the church,
and that’s how you became a Priest of Ark-the-Father (reformed), which explains
the vestments in your pack, officer (my son).
Anything. All you need is one slim chance and you can
still turn it all around. One throw of the dice, that's all, you can still
survive this. They are depending on you after all.
Really, statistically, you should already be dead. No
spells, no shield, no armour and a vague disinterest in the sword. (You do have
about ninety-nine knives, (you can never have enough knives) and an I.O.U from
a card sharp in South Sinter (they still owe you!)), but otherwise you are
underpowered, underpaid (definitely!), arguably over-equipped, and running out
of time.
It's fine though, really, you counted the exits on the
way in. You know who's wearing mail under their shirt, who has shoes poorer
than they should be (always check the shoes), who is richer than they seem. You
can climb a wall in evening-wear without a stain. It's fine. Things are going
to be fine.
The world is webbed with little cracks. Gaps. Gaps in
behaviour, gaps in preparation, (sometimes literal physical gaps like in a
wall), gaps in thought.
It's not that you ever wanted to actually break the law,
to do anything wrong. It's just, look
at all these little gaps. Everywhere! They're everywhere. And everyone just
strolls past them.
You just couldn't resist it. (Still can't).
Just taking one finger and sliiiding it into one of these
gaps, just to see what happens.
To see what you could make happen.
To see if you could get away with it.
And you did! You got away with it. You walked away like
nothing happened at all. You always
get away with it. Always.
Except for that one time.
Wait, rope. Did you remember to bring rope? Not the hemp,
the silk, its lighter, stronger and silent.
(May the gods bless silence!).
Of course you did. As if you would forget the basics!
It's nice up here at night, you can see the whole city.
Curious point - three drops of sweat from the Lesser Grey-Ghoul Toad will incapacitate
a normal man. This guy is a fatty though (you can hear him moving, heavy feet)
so maybe use five. And he left his food out on the sill to cool! Handy!
It was the lesser
toad wasn't it? because the sweat (is it really sweat? It’s more like ooze), of
the Greater Grey-Ghoul Toad, is
deadly.
No. You definitely would have noticed that. They are
differently-sized toads for goodness sake.
And there are rules. Well, guidelines...
Never steal from the poor, (unless they are really
irritating, of have the wrong politics), or from... orphans? Widows? It was
something like that.
Don't set fire to any more bakeries. Definitely not.
Just... try to set fire to less places in total. Zero would be good. (But don't
forget your naptha and matches, just in case).
Be kind to.. animals? unless they're ugly or weird.
You're pretty sure that was a rule at one point.
There's definitely no law against robbing monsters, you
are certain of that (perhaps there should be?), well, you didn't shape
the world, or screw it up, you just live in it.
See, he's asleep now, and not dead. So it was definitely
the lesser toad.
Admittedly, this guy is not a monster, but he's not an
orphan either, and you're not taking money
(onyx ring left hand middle finger - NO, he has to wake up with nothing
missing) he just has information your friends need.
Is just reading
(and carefully copying) stealing? Of course not, don't be crazy!
Look, if a situation comes up and you have a rule for it,
the rule will come to mind, till then, you have stuff to do. (Hid his papers in
the curtain rod, sloppy).
Wait, you could put the merchants ring on his finger,
just to freak him out when he wakes up.
No no no no, that's stupid, wait, did you steal the
merchants ring?
Ok you have it now so looks like you did. Ok. Why did you
do that?
How long will it take that merchant to finish their
chicken?
You put a goddamn chicken timer on your break-in didn't
you. (They'll just be frantic in the dining room, it’s nothing to worry about.
It'll be fine. Fine).
Well you have the map copied and he's still asleep..
Ok, lets do it. May as well right?
What's this? A key!
And its Deoth work, curled like a leaf, making it
impossible to take a wax pressing. Clearling indicating MAXIMUM SECURITY.
Its written for business people. Chapters are short and punchy with a form as regular as poetry; a set-up, investigation, explanation and then musing on meaning.
"One of America's longest-running Guy Grand pranks takes place every day just off 1-40 in Amarillo. A giant steer statue us blazoned with a sign advertising a FREE 72 OZ STEAK."
From here we descend into the Gospel of Poundstone, or more like the Torah of Poundstone as the Gospels themselves are micro stories of the lives and investigations of academics, economists, psychologists and business people investigating the nature of prices.
There is a study, or a series of studies, or a 'latest study', which takes place in a lab, in the U.S. or Israel. These labs are like temples of logical knowledge which issue out these subtle riddles of behaviour or thought which are meant to reveal something about humanity and the way it thinks. In one scene a guy in the U.S. constructs a room in a building that _invisibly tilts on its axis due to hidden workings_, this is to measure if or how much people are aware of their actual balance without meaningful cues. The room is set to lure people in with fake free eye tests and then to move around secretly and see if they notice.
(People sense something is wrong, but they often don't relate it to movement.)
The riddle is considered, examples are given.
Some thought is dedicated to the overall meaning of the consequences should the riddle be found to be a full truth. But only for a few paragraphs. The chapters are short, like blog posts, magazine articles. They are *punchy*. Constructed like SEO-optimised trade-speak clickbait blog posts. Artfully constructed; bit of human interest, bit of academic soap opera, bit of theory, dab of mathematics, knowing tie-up at the end.
So those are the onrushing pebbles of Poundstones argument. They never entirely or purely cohere into a directly-stated synthesis or final statement. But it is not hard to work out his meaning. His argument is that the prices for a lot of things are very close to being imaginary.
You probably have a rough personal intuition of how imaginary or made-up most prices are; well double that, or maybe triple it, or increase it by a factor of something. It is all light and air, or so it would seem.
Humans judge by ratio very keenly and are totally bonkers when it comes to abstract values. If you want to change someone’s thoughts about pricing, change the ratios that are present when someone thinks about it. Therein lies almost all of everything anyone ever did to find a way to raise a price.
Humans assign value by primate-relevant qualities. Considering Price, alone, deeply, actually brings you back into contact with the whole of the human experience, because when assigning an abstract value to something, it seems that what really matters is human context. People draw from their entire physical and social experience of the world when negotiating with each other.
In particular, people are much more loss-averse than they are success hungry, and they are much, _much_ more averse to letting someone treat them in an 'unfair' way than they are desirous of getting free, or extra, resources.
So people will literally turn down a free lunch if it comes with an assumed loss of relative status or participation in a deal in which someone is seen to have an unfair advantage over them, even if in rational absolute terms they only gain by the exchange.
So, 'value', though seemingly abstract, is like a puncture hole though the skin into a deeply human world of social networks, personal status, testosterone levels, fear of loss, desire to impress and just a very apelike, living, human experience of reality.
Heuristics are a thing. Humans use simple, usually ratio-based intuitive shortcuts based on environmental factors in order to work out the value of thigs. When considered singly, isolated away from their ecology of thought and zoned-in on in a lab, all of these heuristics break down. They are 'non-logical' and can be made to be wrong with tricks of logic.
The question of how powerful this effect is in real-life is a primary moral axis of the book. Unusually, Economists and Humanists are on the same side in this one, they both want the decisions people make to 'make sense' and to be fundamentally rational, or at least, reasonable. Even if they break down in the lab it is hoped human decision making works 'as a whole'.
Poundstone seems to be on the other side, the general drift of his argument is that prices are deeply and worryingly ethereal and much of human value-assignment is basically a holodeck episode.
Takeaways;
Priceless absolutely abounds in factoids, little slivers and pieces of counter-intuitive, strange or just interesting discoveries and secrets. Here are a few;
There is/was a weird culture war/intellectual war between Economists and Psychologists. Economists seem to move in an ethereal realm of pure figures and absolute values on which the great machinery of their thought is based. Psychologists are a bit dirty, manipulative and fluid, they chew away at the absolute values Economists need to build their palaces, revealing them to be little more than dreams.
So in the partial history of the relations between Psychologists and Economists that makes up a strand of the book, Economists have a habit of just straight-out dismissing anything Psychologists say with "Oh, _psychology_)", at least for the start of the book. So that is an interesting example of subjects or cultures deciding to just not talk to each other. Or at least, not to listen.
..............
'Anchoring', shaping assumptions on price by opening with a super-high figure, works much much much better than most people intuit it does. It works on the average Joe, and it works on experts, it works on people who decide quickly, and it works on people who consider deeply. The depth to which you have thought about something, alone, does not meaningfully change the extent to which Anchoring will work on you.
.............
"Fisher aspired to predict prices from supply and demand. His thesis described how to do that, and Fisher went so far as to build a price-generating machine (see page 225). It was a tank of water with a flotilla of half-flooded wooden "cisterns" connected by a system of levers. Adjustments to "stoppers" and levers fed in data on incomes, marginal utilities, and supplies; then prices could be read off scales. Gibbs must have been pleased. The device prefigured, if not parodied, the direction of twentieth-century economics. ("Press stopper I and raise III," read part of Fishers instructions for the thing. "I, II, III now represent a wealthy middle class and poor man respectively...")
.............
"I absolutely thought [pay] would go down because the disclosures would be so embarrassing," recalled Graef Crystal, an architect of those disclosure rules. "But it turned out that when somebody is hauling in $200 million, he's not embarrassable."
.............
"After years of work-around like half-dozen cartons of eggs and ever-shrinking containers of milk, it bit the bullet and raised its top price to $99.99. For president Jeff Gold, it was almost like a death in the family. 'The number 99 is a magic number - deviating from that is something we absolutely are not taking lightly,' he said. 'I find significant discomfort emotionally about considering making the change.'
............
There is much much more, its something of a wunderkammer of these, more than it is a book almost.
There were layers to my response to 'Priceless'. I often found it 'clever', in a mildly frustrating way. The glib single-idea 'gotchas' of business writing or magazine articles. I intuitively strongly dislike what I perceived as a mild wash of slightly sneering superiority through the opening parts of the book.
Under that, its actually interesting. The basic deal is that price, which bills itself as a firm and near-abstract unit of measurement, is a deeply human construct. On the down side this means the world economy is largely a collective hallucination and could collapse or change hugely at any time. On the more positive (to me) side, Economics is not just a part of the Humanities, it’s actually a Romance. Piercing through the needle-dot of price reveals a cosmos of human emotion, human feeling and human social relationships, illogical, 'irrational', but making organic sense, not without reason or meaning and if not entirely within our control then at least within our capacity to understand.
Fire on the Velvet Horizon, that hipster Monster Manual that China Mieville liked
"Superpositioning with strange panache, Velvet Horizon is an (outstanding) indie role-playing-game supplement, and an (outstanding) example of experimental quasi-/meta-/sur-/kata-fiction. Also a work of art. Easily one of my standout books of 2015." - China Mieville
Ben Milton did a Review-
And we have added the following backmatter, previously only available in the Luxury Peecho edition, to ALL editions;
Blastitsu: an Introduction, Curseling Riddles,
Command Structure of the Navarch of Acht,
Report on the Palace of Iksladzord (partialy redacted),
Play fragment from the Nightmare Sea,
An Announcement from the Judge Who's Court is the Air, Lord of the Pathless World.
Dust Storm falling with Dusk - a view from Quarst
The Wyrm Rise - depiction of the Eochian Wyrm
Now exists in three Print on Demand formats of varying cost and quality. Which, for us, is actually a careful rationalisation of what we were already doing.
From Drivethru. A somewhat fancy and robust book in an American size.
This has all the monsters and all the pages from the original edition.
And its U.S. Letter size, so a little shorter and fatter than the A4 version.
Its in Hardcover.
Drivethru's highest possible print quality.
The paper is thicker, the blacks are blacker, you could crush a Trachea with it.
SHOULD BE - about $39.99 AMERICAN. That's U.S. dollars, but check because stuff moves around based on relative currencies.
And, from the False Machine Publishing store you can access all the other stuff we have up, like the new Silent Titans PDF, the very old Deep Carbon Observatory, and hopefully new stuff coming over the (next several) year(s)
Games Workshop has its in-house podcast/Youtube videos for 40K and Age of Sigmar (watch John Blanche draw a witch!)
A recent one had their artist Kevin Chin for what I thought was a really exceptional interview that goes over a great deal of ground fascinating to me.
I don't really think this got enough attention so I spent, a long time, transcribing it, and have some essential quotes below.
(Also, sorry Games Workshop. I'll take this down if you ask. Not trying to steal clicks but I thought it better so ask forgiveness than permission.)
Becoming an Artist
WAID PRICE - When do you decide you wanted
to be an artist or an illustrator? When did you turn art from a pastime or a hobby
into something that you thought, “I’m going to make money doing this”?
8:33
KEVIN CHIN - Well,
since I was young, I always wanted, like to draw. So I remember I was more
excited getting, I was really, so you know how it is as kids, you've got a box,
a box of toys, but I'm that kid that looks at the box cover.
WAID PRICE – Mm.
KEVIN CHIN - And
just go “that's really cool”. You know, it's like that art piece that you paint
back then. So usually Japanese robot toys. But I was quite lucky, my uncle
works in a toy store. So he gets some kind of discount usually for those. And
when he gives them to me, I remember I spent so much time just looking at the
covers and “how did they do this?”, “How did they do that?”
I grew up watching lots of movies, action movies,
and so, these things, stick with me and just say “okay, I just want to
draw that” and that, that drive to draw something and doodle something has
never left.
I never really thought about, say, making a career out of
it. But I do remember very clearly that I was pretty young when I said “I want
to be in”, “I want to draw for a living”, you know, I want to be, either a
comics artist or I know what I want to do. You know, and I will put all my
effort into that, that direction.
WAID PRICE –
Yes.
KEVIN CHIN – It’s
like I said, it's not the most you know, it's not the most lucrative career, or
people don't really know, like my parents don't understand it. My, most of my friends,
they’re kind of like, they know I can draw very well. They say “Hey can you
draw this for me, can you draw this dragon for me?” Like “yeah sure”, you
know as for me drawing a dragon is cool Yeah. I can draw dragon you know, and
that's why my “don’t do this at home kids”, my textbooks are full of doodles, I
was like, (laughs) just started doodling so it never really um. Never end, it’s
never really stopped for me.
My mind is always wondering in places.
And yeah, just drawing is just a form of expression.
For me as I, it's almost like
a instinct, I just do it you know, it's not really something
that I have to force myself to do. Nowadays is different from back then, I just draw cool stuff. And it's just changed when
I went to art college. That's why I went to art school. And going into art
school in Singapore, there’s only a few schools, not a lot, there's probably
two or three of them back then. Or maybe actually just two.
So I just picked
one and just went for it. I made sure I got the grades and the appropriate
portfolio that I required to get in. And I know when I got in and say “there's
no way they’ll let me do comic artists” as my you know, my final year, you
present a final year project. So I have to be a bit more realistic. My brother
kind of told me “Dude you can't do comics art at art school. So you have to
try to use whatever they're telling you to do, and present it in your own way.
So it's. you’re kind of still practising it.”
So that's what I did, I looked for the subject that gave
me an opportunity to draw the most. So I’,m; “I’ll do that, because I get to do
a lot of drawing.” So even though some of the drawings are, you know, a bit
over the top, like not really the other requirement, but it's still there, I'm
still practising my drawing. So I came up with a graduate of graphic design,
for example. I still had to learn everything else like advertising, graphic
design, typography and the usual stuff.
But all these knowledge comes back to
me, like I, I'm using some of them right now. So it's that point,
when you kind of in life, you go through a journey, and along the
journey, you learn and pick up a lot of stuff. And you never know what you've
experienced along the way, will come back and help you in some way or one way
or another.
And that's why I realised that maybe back then, when you're doing
it and not really feeling, like “why am I doing this, this is so boring” but when you're further in life, you go like, “Hey, I'm actually
actively using the things that I've been taught”, subconsciously, or not know
it. But you you become aware that “hang on, I didn't do this for a long time.
But yeah, I still have that basic fundamental knowledge of of all these things
that I've picked up along the way.”
So I don't what's the best way to explain it,
but it's just, you, as maybe as for me, you go around gathering information.
And everything that you see is information. And you try to accumulate them,
sometimes you forget them, but sometimes it just comes back around just before
you realise it. So all these things are really useful for me. So that develops
your, what everybody says, your style, but I kind of prefer it as more of like a
visual preference. Like “I prefer doing this, I have this preference towards these
things” “I have a preference to this aesthetic, sometimes they are static. Might
change, your preferences might change, but you are changing mostly based on
some… as for me, my personally, I change it based on how I feel at that point. It’s
like I want to do this. So I'm gonna try this.
And all these knowledge they've accumulated starts, you
know, points, because they kind of direct you one way or another,
subconsciously “this way, this way”. So then “oh”, and then you can let it go in a certain direction that you
never really expected. So it's a journey, like I said. So you pick things up.
So don't really disregard the things that you pick up. That's
what might be fair, anyone has any good, you know, wants some good tips; don't
disregard them, as it's all information that you will need, or you eventually
use.
Because you, if you are really serious about creating something unique or
you know, something that purely belongs to you, all these parts of you will
express itself one way or another. And learning how to have a paintbrush or be it
traditionally or digitally, all these counts as a form of expression. These are tools. And these tools will help you express what you think of, what
you were trying to, you know, bring out into life. Or not into life, into a
piece of white paper, or digital canvas. Even though
what you're doing may not be the most exciting thing to you right now.
But you
use that opportunity to learn, to pick up things. And one day you will be eventually,
for me personally, I always felt that you'll eventually be rewarded, that these
things don't just resolve to nothing. These things give you something, and it's
up to you. What kind of expression do you want to use? Do you want to opt out
of traditional medium, digital medium, sculpting, you know, even traditional
sculpting or woodcarving or anything. So is everything art is mostly like a
form of expression. So yes.
15:32
WAID PRICE - There's
some great life advice in this podcast. Doodle in your textbooks. Make sure you
get great grades to go and study what you want to go and study in college.
I've
been struck when I as I've grown older, because I'm old as well. But there are
times, there were times when I was younger, I thought “I'm never going to need to
know this”. And the amount of times where that knowledge comes back, a lot of
maths particularly maths, I think, remember at school people saying “you need
to know maths”, and then you start trying to work out army list in your head
probability of dice scores during a game you think yes, that's actually quite
useful, isn't it?
16:02
KEVIN CHIN - Yes.
That's that's, the most, that's the best use or the most consistent use of maths
in my life how to, you know, added plus and minus the subtraction. But these things
come back to you.
WAID PRICE - So,
keep hold of all the bits of information, because you never know when you
might,
KEVIN CHIN – “Yeah,
and to be honest, you, I mean, for me right now, it's like, if you don't go out and really live it, live in that moment and look at things around
you and truly absorb them. I think it's almost like you're, you're not fully
exploiting a potential. Because what you see and what you live around you is an
experience that you take with you. And the more experiences you have, the more
rich your expression will become. I mean, that is if you choose to express
yourself in terms of art.
And I always, I always find that certain things touch me
or you know, just grabs me a lot more than others. Because when you when you
see them when you're young, you kind of laugh at it. But when you grow older,
you kind of realise oh, is actually very different, its the same thing, but
you're looking at it at different ages, different time. You kind of realise
that hang on, that's a different message. And those works are to me, the classics,
you know, “this guy really knows what he's doing” he makes you laugh when
you're a kid and makes you cry when you're an adult.
So it's, say "wow" are these works, you tend to realise that, grow older and "wow, this guy's
amazing", and you kind of go back. But you can't really, you have to see it, you have to live through it in
order to get that information. And it's only later in life that you when you
look at it again, sometimes you look at it through nostalgia, and then you see
differently, you see completely differently. I think that happened almost way
too many times already when I grew up, as I just realised, okay, these things
are actually all this information is very useful. It helps me grow not only as a
person but also as an artist as well.
Anything that just gives you that, mental go, “wow”,
you know, and that spark in your head, and all it takes is just one spark. And
lots of things will gush out, you'll be, almost overwhelmed, by that amount
of information. Sometimes it's a trickle. But you need to build on that
momentum. If you feel like there's something there. No harm trying, seriously.
I mean, the only harm is, you spend time trying to express yourself, the final
form of expression in what you do. And for me, my choices are, you know,
drawing and painting.
And those things will, whatever your expression is, your
chosen form of expression is, was almost irrelevant at that point. It’s more
like I'm trying to bring out something that's part of me. I think that that
kind of those works are more personal, you know, you feel like, Okay this. I think that those works usually to me when people
have (???) reaction to, some of the works. So they really like this work that
I've done, I was like “ohh Okay” and I felt good one is the work that I feel
like I put a lot of thought or a lot of expression into it. And
those are really satisfactory to me.
Hobby Shivers
WAID PRICE - I
remember when we were talking before this recording, we talked about the sorts
of things we'd say, you have a turn of phrase, you talk about hobby shivers.
KEVIN CHIN –
Yes.
WAID PRICE - Sometimes
you see things and you read something, and it gives you the hobby shivers.
KEVIN CHIN - Yeah.
WAID PRICE - I
think I have a sense of what that means. I think how would you describe that for
anyone who maybe hasn't ever felt a hobby shiver of their own?
37:45
KEVIN CHIN –
Ahhh
(laughter)
KEVIN CHIN –
Let me introduce you. Well, hobby shivers to me is, when you read about
something in the background and the narrative, maybe Black Library novel, or in
the army books. The codecies, the battle
tomes. You read about it, and you go, that's
cool. I mean, for me, my moment was I had a few very good ones. First one,
the most deepest impression that I had was of course War of the Beard, or War
of Vengeance, and when I'm playing Si, I was like hmmm. But you feel good. No matter at the end of the day, you win
or you lose, you felt that you participated in that narrative. And that
the visual of you of two fully painted armies on the table. Just slugging
it out. Exactly. Well not exactly but like how you feel like you've read it. You
read it and then you play it and you kind of live in it at that moment. And that
to me at the end of the game or the moment when you when you do something really
cool that's described in the book and you really feel that [BREATHS IN DEEPLY] Oh, yes, that's that's good. That's good. and
how you get that good vibe coming in and that was the first one.
The second one was, Space Marines have always been called
Angels of Death. I think that was the one of the key phrases I always associate
Space Marines with. And one of the key tactics was, why are they called angels
of death - because they from the sky. Come
in drop pods you know, and they smash into the ground and just unload from drop
pods and just start killing everything. And that to me, that that visual is
amazing because well you know how in real life its more that paratroopers that
does this but in Space Marines big giant machine, they just drop them into from
atmosphere, down onto the onto the ground, I was like “wow”. And that drive me
to make a 10 drop pod army, I collected ten drop pods. I want to do that. They
will I do that. I don't care how it works, but I want to do that. So I did. And
I played an Apocalypse game and for the first time I used 10 drop pods on to the
table. And I tell you at the moment 10 of them dropped, I was like “yeah [BREATHS IN DEEPLY] hggggnn”.
Yeah, you get a sense of achievement. I mean to me that's
how I get it, I get that vibe that you got back. So that's exactly how they
write it in the book and I understand why we're so deadly, you know. It's it
just feels good that you have a responsive feedback from a hobby that says “accomplish
something” And I was like “yes! Ten drop pods at the same time!”
It does
feel really cool when I do it, especially, because that's how I envisioned it.
And it's not too far from it as well. So win or lose at that point the job is
done, the hobby has given you the feedback that you need. And that to me is the
best kicker. It was “That's good. That's good.”
And of course the latest one so
Dan Abnetts ‘The Emperors Gift’ [EDIT – its by Aaron Dembski Bowden]. a
part in it, the highlight of the novel for me was when they had to fight Angron
in the first war of Armageddon, and had 100 Terminator Grey Knights teleporting
down at the exact same time forming a circle that surrounds Angron and his Bloodthirsters.
And the feedback blew out all the all the windows in the Leman Russes. I was
like “THAT’S AWESOME. I WANT TO DO THAT”
I want to collect a hundred terminators, I know realistically will never be
able to play 100 Terminators in a 1500 point game. But it's when I play another
Apocalypse. Yes, I want to do that. I want to fulfil that that visual.
41:24
WAID PRICE - Yeah,
you have something historical, something momentous, that has taken place.
KEVIN CHIN - It's
the same as, I think is probably the similar as people play historical wargames.
You participate in something that's been written before. You feel like you're
engaged in that. And I think the more engaged you are, especially for me, when
I feel engaged in a game, I say, “Well, this is good.” You know, you're immersing
yourself into your hobby. How many hours and how much time and money that you
put into, and this is the best, this is almost like the best thing that can
happen to you. Yeah, you get a reward back to it.
Most people won't understand
because they never really, people from outside the hobby, will understand, but to
you. And that's for you a personal achievement, that you've done this. And to
me that that gives me the hobby shivers, I was like “yess”, you know, you feel
you feel it, you feel it from your spine. Seriously, you will feel it. Because
you…
WAID PRICE - You'll
know when you…
KEVIN CHIN - Know,
yeah, you know, because you've done it. And it doesn't really matter, you win
or lose at the end, as you've done some really good cool things. How many
people can actually say that with their hobby. I mean, it's your personal hobby.
You've achieved it.
To me, that's the highest point of that, high colour that
you you can push your hobby to. Most people get it from many other things. So
some people can go for a smaller scale and get a good vibe from it back. But
for me personally, you know, the bigger it is the more gratifying it is when
you achieve it. So it's good things. I was saying those are the ones that gives
me the motivation to, and I want to try this, I want to do this, that will be
great when it happens. That you just get it, you just know it and you
understand its just gonna be cool when it happens. Right?
SELF EXPRESSION
WAID PRICE - So
how you practising? Or how are you going to get more proficient at conversions?
If you've not really done that much before. Any tips for anyone in the studio?
You must have a bunch of people to call on.
KEVIN CHIN - Yeah,
yeah, definitely. So many people that come with models like (unclear) like he's
just sit right next to me every day I see him converting his Orks I was like “wow”.
It’s the admiration not only of his work but his hobby as well. His dedication
to his hobby. I was like “this is so cool”. You get inspiration from people
that you work around with. And then, of course, Phil Kelly, he converts his own
models, he does quite heavy conversions as well.
And of course, John,
can’t ever forget John Blanche. Every
time he brings in a model its like (…..). You just stop breathing for a while
like “what have you done?” “What is this?”
WAID PRICE –
Just copy John Blanche.
KEVIN CHIN –
Easier said than done. But yes, you get inspired by all these things. And and
because it's social media, there's so much more groups that showing up that
does converted models, and you look at it “wow it's so cool”. I really enjoy seeing people doing conversions.
So when I do it is quite ham fisted to be honest, as “uughhh, I’m like an Ork
when it comes to converting. It’s not a good thing.
So I try to be a bit
more subtle with my conversions now. And I know that the ironclad I’m, planning
to do is going to be a lot of work. But I but I guess that's what's rewarding
about it, as well. “Yeah its a lot of work. But I think I'm going to enjoy it.”
WAID PRICE – Yeah.
KEVIN CHIN - As
long as I understand exactly what I'm trying to do and trying to achieve. I
think just need to have that. That courage to say, “Okay, let's let's try this
out. Let's play with this and see how this works.” Or if it doesn't, there's always
ways to patch up. Just one thing I’ve realised about conversions is that there's
always some way to patch it up. You can patch it up with paint job as well, if
you think that will keep as a big problem there. But you can actually cover it
up with Paint or even sometimes it's just a purity seal. Very handy. “Yeah,
that's you, you seal that hole over there. Thank you very much.”
So it's a very
organic process. It's about discovery like that, that form of expression that
we talked about in the beginning, is that you express yourself through
converting models and John Blanche is great at that.
And his drawings are like his models. His models are like
his drawings. You can’t almost pull them apart. Like, that's him. That's his
language. That's his expression. And people get really attracted to it, I get
attracted to him. Again, this is his signature its his own hobby thumbprint. So
that's why I always very much appreciate people who take the time convert their
own models. That’s your hobby thumb print. It's a good way to express yourself.
And to me it's always good to be in a hobby to be able to to express what
you're what you're going through, or you know, certain aspects of what you
think, your sense of aesthetic, what do
you like about a model and what you're
trying to achieve with the model. I think that when you look at the model, and
you go “Wow, that's really cool”. You can already tell stories behind it. I
think that's good. That's a good conversion. Okay, I get what you're trying to
do there and that's really cool.
So sometimes I get people come to me with, it’s always very
rewarding when its one of the pictures I've done. Came up to me and he showed
me the conclusion they did of the pictures I’ve done I was like “Whoa”. “Ok
that’s really cool. But I was pleasantly surprised. But it gives me a good good
vibes as well. I was like “cool” my pictures gave you inspiration to do
something, is really nice. I mean that that, to me is part of the reward of the
job as well that people interact with the (???).
They get inspired and they try
to make one. I wouldn't make one because I don't know how to express myself, through drawings and paintings that convergence is a completely different skill
set. But they just did a good job of it, it was a water. It's really cool.
Thank you so much. Oh, thank you. Thank you guys, for those. I mean, that to me
is very rewarding to see.
1:09:48
WAID PRICE –
Congratulations.
KEVIN CHIN - Thank you.
WAID PRICE - Have you been practising different artistic
styles through your time in the studio? As you've been talking about adding
another string to your hobby bow with conversions? Do you practice with the
artistic style still already established your favourites and you stick with
them all?
KEVIN CHIN - No,
I find that I can't stick with one for too long. I always want to, I think
that's almost like a slow and very agonising deterioration for me, say, to do
the same thing over and over and over again.
The good thing about working in
studio is that you get the opportunity to do everything in the book. Everything. Even from the little graphic that
surrounds the page number. That needs to be painted as well. A lot of people
don't realise that that needs to be drawn and painted. So from the smallest of
details to the largest of pictures, there's so much things that you can do, and
I enjoy switching around. I find that gives me better, it gives me more
inspiration, more creativity as well. Because I need to switch. Different jobs have
different requirements. I need to switch here to quickly understand what this
is supposed to do and achieve the best result within a given time. And that
that fosters my brain to work differently.
And I find that switch much more useful than rather than
constantly doing “okay, have you got four double page spread, spread out over
the next six months.. Go". Oh boy, of
course I’ll still find ways to have fun with it to express the different
expressions of it. Otherwise, you be doing the same picture over again. And
that's not good.
I find the advantage of working in studio is that you do
everything. And you have the opportunity to do just about everything, from even
designing tokens as well like gaming tokens. And you can do that, you can design
it as well, you think about “Okay, well what do people interact, how do they
interact with a token”? All of a sudden you're evolving a bit of engineering
and know-how being a gamer. So how do they use the tokens? What's the best way
to design it in a way that's intuitive for them that's useful for them? And
these things, again, it clicks to buttons.
And I think I find that experience a lot more rewarding because
you're learning new things and you're forcing your brains, your mind to think creatively
in a different aspect, you find a solution differently. And sometimes you’re
not even given a lot of time. But that's the kind of pressure that forces you
to be creative at times. It's not the most ideal situation but you force, as
your brain just goes overdrive. And sometimes the results that you have can be
surprising.
Some of the most rewarding projects that I've done is when I
was when I was almost a given very little time. And I had to find a solution
quickly for it. But it came out really well, as I think I've handled the
situation well enough to actually own “it was actually quite fun”. Actually
enjoying myself in the stress as well.
Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm not enjoying
myself when I'm doing it, I'm just thinking that, “gotta get this done, but how”
you know, but “ah, got it” and just do this. And that process of it. I mean,
you just “Okay, now I can go back to normal again”, because not every day to
kind of do everything.
But it's, it's, it's good to have that challenge.
Because you force again, that you just force yourself to think differently, and
apply different stuff, different knowledge, a technical knowledge to achieve
the end result. Like sometimes, because what we do now most days is digital
illustration. My free time, whenever possible, I will paint and watercolours,
sometimes I just walk out in lunchtime, just with watercolours in my hand at a
sit down to start painting whatever's in front of me. Because that's life
drawing is you're just looking at it. And you don't have to think about a toy
soldier anymore. And trying to make it work. You just paint whatever's in front
of you just do the end, sometimes very liberating, because you don't want to
think about it too much. Just trying to accurately as much as possible, paint whatever
you see in front of you, and use your unique expression to capture that, whatever
you're trying to achieve.
So that again, it's an exercise, because you have no Undo
button, you can’t save it, so you’re kind of like “I'm stuck with this mistake
now”. But again, it's Don't be afraid to make mistakes. That's the thing that I
always tell people. A lot of people come to me and ask what is the key thing
that you must have, in order to be a good illustrator? I would say from my experiences,
never be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes are there so that you can learn. And
if you're a really committed illustrator or really committed to a craft, you
will find a way, and those mistakes was just a stepping stone to help you get
to higher places. Or not to say higher places, a different place. And that different place might be your own language,
your next question. And I think that's very rewarding.
Out of a mistake, you gradually created something that
actually it's not a mistake, it's a reflection of yourself, you're just
exploring it, just removing the fog. And putting other things together make it
more interesting. I think that's much more interesting. You won't do it until
you've made mistakes. I would saying made by famous Bob Ross; “there are never
any mistake, they're just happy accidents”. Which I think is actually quite
relevant, or you don't think of them as you make them. It's inevitable. You
just have to make the best of it. And move on with that learn from it. So that
you have no fear of making those mistakes.
Those are not mistakes anymore.
They're stepping stones You switch your mindset into thinking, “Okay, I've done
this now, I'm going to learn from this”, take that to the next picture. And
that's why traditional drawing and painting it's good because there's less
forgiving, you don't have an unsafe, you don't have an undo button. So you are
forced to make, sometimes, errors or even foster explores and aspects that you
never you never think of. So by doing that you learn.
1:15:58
And that process is very important for me. Because if
you're trying to learn something about something, learn something new, you
actually that process is almost not only learning something new, but also taking
a part of yourself along with it, and come up with something completely on your
own of your own vision. I think that's very exciting. But you need to take that
step to try different thing, Don't get stuck in one thing, try many things.
Because I think that's the best way to really find and have a very rich
vocabulary. So that you can pick and choose, “I like this one like this one,
let's try put them together and make something” it may not be what exactly
you're thinking about, if you persist through it, you'll find that silver
lining, it is something most of the time is a very, it can be very, you can get
very insulated because you're always doing some stuff on your on your own. But
there are friends and communities out there that does it together. And some
year for me to discover the aspect can be sometimes quite….
1:17:05
It's your own personal discovery. But you're sitting down.
Think of it as you're trying to find an expression for yourself. And don't
really think about risk. Just look at that, do some painting. And you'd be
surprised how much you can do once you, when you get into the practice.
You
know more or less how to handle the medium, you can “Oh ok, I can try this and
do that”. Just try to have fun. and not worry about “oh its gotta to be a masterpiece”.
No it doesn’t have to be. It is a process. The more you do, the more you look
at things differently your information about light about depth comes in and you
know we've talked about and we’ve talked about anatomy, you gotta go for life
drawing to learn all these things. Or if you can’t go for life drawing, just
sit down the cafe and just start sketching people around your people
walking on the streets.
And sometimes you, you force yourself to think
differently as because they’re moving so fast, you have to draw them quicker.
So you your gestures become more expressive, because you're not really thinking
about the technical aspects anymore, just trying to capture relevance of what
your impression of what you're trying, you're trying to catch.
So that you have
your own language as well, you kind of developing in your own way because you
learn this from books, all the facts are in books, all the instruction books
there are all there, all the information is there but how you express it is
completely on your own. You have to, either looking for self expression that's
completely on your own little journey that you have to take.
