Update on Oubliette

Between age and the -Rona I’ve been having real issues with basic mobility much less creativity. At best I’ve been able to revisit a rotating group of projects – concept designs, short stories, paintings, models, and cut-paperwork I’ve started in the pat but have been forced to shelve before completing them. Taking an idea all the way to completion is quite often a wish rather than a reality to I try to organize my work into a series of small victories and chipping away at old ideas is a good way to keep working.

….like this rendering.

Oubliette is a project that I have had in the works for more than twenty-five years. Set approximately three hundred years in the future, it is a first-contact story set against the background of a solar system that is a bit different than the one we have now, starting with the red dwarf star that occupies the space the planet Jupiter does in our times.

The aliens in question are the h’Nifeh, an  aquatic race living at a technological level equivalent but not identical to that of humanity, and instead of being slimy, fanged, skeletal-framed or pumping acidic blood in their veins they’re nice – in every aspect. They’re nice-looking and noble in nature and rather that looking like something left after an explosion in a auto shop their ship and equipment are as well designed and functional as those usually attributed to humans.

Pictured here is DuudLee, the father of the h’Nifeh family featured in the story along with his environmental suit. Scattered amongst older posts are additional concept designs if you’re interested in what I’ve worked up so far

Music: Apocalypse by The Mahavishnu Orchestra

I didn’t actually see Star Wars (known later as A New Hope) until two months after it premiered when my battle-buddy Doug and I managed to escape FT Lewis for an afternoon and make our way into Tacoma for a non-government issue meal and a movie. I’d known about it, having suffered though the novelization the winter¹ before and feasted on preproduction art published in Jim Steranko’s seminal trade journal Mediascene not long afterwards. We managed to get the last two seats, so I saw everything from the center of the third row where I was mesmerized by the stunning visuals and breakneck pacing.

…but as much as I enjoyed Mr. Lucas’s masterpiece, it wasn’t the most important piece of speculative fiction that I encountered that year. That honor fell to Larry Niven’s Known Space series as published by Ballentine Books. My Beautiful Saxon Princess and I spent a good part of our leisure time that first year of our marriage scrambling between bookstores in search of those books, which were readily identifiable by their superb Rick Sternbach covers. As for why I preferred the books: I prefer hard science fiction to the softer variety and (oddly enough for a soldier) “space battles” lose their appeal for me quickly as I am more intrigued with problem-solving and dealing with a harsh environment (totally believable for a kid raised in rural Alaska).

I’m not sure of the exact moment Apocalypse got paired up with the Niven books. We were “economically challenged” that first year so books were our main source of entertainment and I always had something on the turntable while we were reading. I’d inherited the record from my roommate² the year before and being so new this particular record was played a lot…and as it played while I read the ethereal, other-worldly music seemed a perfect fit to the books in both scope and mood,

It still does. Whenever I dive back into Protector or Ringworld I cue this album up, albeit via streaming tor CD these days instead of vinyl.

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Notes

1. The only shaky point in our engagement was when I elected to stay in and read rather than take my betrothed to dinner on Valentines Day. I was totally oblivious as I had plenty of books for my Beautiful Saxon Princess to read while I finished the book.

2. Lonnie Magnusson a.k.a. the one non-family member that I had lived with the longest prior to marrying Lori (one year at Ricks College and another at BYU after serving our respective bicycle penances.)

Real-life Gerry Anderson Vehicles pt.7: Flying Train

(1) Flying train. Dahir Insaat – YouTube

It’s been a while since I last paid a visit to this subject but when I came across this video in Facebook a week ago it just screamed for inclusion. It actually took a bit of effort to find the clip – Facebook had dropped it and my Google searches would just dig up clips about airliners, high-speed trains and why airlines hate high-speed trains.

Luck – or more rather perseverance –  won out and I found the video…and as I look at it again I find it difficult to believe that wasn’t a prop from an episode of Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet. Given a choice I’d have picked the first show – I always thought the switch from the big-head puppets to the smaller/more correctly proportioned small puppets was a mistake. Not only were the more life-like figure unsuitable for “walking” they looked creepy.

All I have to do is squint my eyes and I can see wires moving models and canned freon standing in for rocket exhaust….

Commander Null Jade Jaguar

Thought I haven’t written about it for quite awhile my Fireball XL5 reboot is never far from my heart and mind. Unfortunately, I am coming to the end of the named characters, so I’ll have to go through my DVD collection and come up with guest characters.

A lot was made of the fact that Space City is located on the equator on an island in the Pacific. Finding it has proved to be somewhat of a challenge as the “landing back on earth” sequences show a mirror image of South America with Brazil pointing to the West instead of the East. It looks like the Space City island is located roughly in the location the Galapagos islands exist in real life. How that works out with the reverse UNO card dealt to Brazil is beyond me.

Yep  at this point I am definitely overthinking this, but while I was overthinking things it occurred to me that names on the personnel poster should reflect the Central/South American location so Commander Wilbur Zero became Commander Null Jade Jaguar of the Mayan contingent of the World Space Patrol complete with a pet flying serpent  named Quetzalcoatl.

Before you start…

…let me warn you that you’ll never guess which Traveller supplement this illustration appeared in or which unpublished Metagaming project it was intended to be used in (but was subsequently “eighty-sixed” when Howard  left the company.) I wasn’t art for the program book of some convention that named me as Artist Guest of Honor and it wasn’t a self-promotional portfolio piece I came up with during a slow week…because it’s NOT my work .

It was drawn by my son Sean during a middle school art class.

Proper dad-ship rests on the idea that a father does everything in his power to launch his kids successfully in life and Sean when started high school he was manifesting all the skills and knowledge necessary for a creative career not just equal to but surpassing mine. I’m not kidding – his drawing skills at sixteen were better than mine were at thirty, but when he started college he knew that as much as he loved art he needed an income more stable than art could provide. After spending twenty-five years watching me battle with the vagaries of a freelancer’s life he chose the path that I often wish I’d taken and kept creativity as an avocation instead of a vocation, a hobby to help alleviate stress rather than creating it.

…and he still manages to routinely add to an already impressive body of work.

XL5 Re-boot: Roberta’s Jetcycle

I’ve personally had to battle severe mobility issues lately so it should be no surprise that the subject would manifest itself in my work as I was going back through my XL5 designs. In the original series Robert would use a regular jet-bike just like the rest of the crew but after I replaced legs with the “uni-ball” that option is – well – no longer  an option.

,,,then it occurred to me that given her modular construction Roberta could be plugged into the jet-bike rather than riding it which would save weight/mass/maintenance. I’m not sure where the unplugged parts would be stored while she’s flying around – there would be plenty of room on Xl5 and possibly room for internal storage on this vehicle.

 

LibertyCon X Program Book Cover

Dimensional illustration ( or sculptural work photographed and used as editorial illustration) was a fairly short-lived discipline in the commercial arts. Used occasionally more as novelty it came into its own in the “80s and ‘90s and even had its own annual awards competition¹ but by the turn of the millennium it had been thoroughly supplanted by computer graphics.

It was during that brief period of popularity that My Beautiful Saxon Princess and I were invited to be the Artist Guest of Honor at LibertyCon X, a regional relaxacon chaired seemingly forever by the late SMOF² Uncle Timmy Bolgeo; given my interests at the time it was a no-brainer that I’d come up with something sculptural for the program book cover. As a subtle tip-of-the-hat to Sir Gerry Anderson’s work it has always been one of my favorites but at the same time it has been the source of frustration to me over the last 22 years, mostly because I’ve never had a decent image for my portfolio.

It was used for the convention program book and T-shirt – and while the shirt turned out pretty good the book cover was terrible, being printed black line on a dark-colored background. The original sold in the art show and while I was happy to have at least one month of my mortgage paid as a result of the sale the purchaser soon moved far away and all I had was a fuzzy ink-jet print to show in my book.

…then my good friend and digital ace Kent Gardener stepped in and did his magic smoothing out backgrounds and generally making the image presentable.

Production notes: The original measured approximately 24”X12”X5” and was constructed from Super-Sculpey, styrene plastic, wood, illustration board and paint.

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Notes:

1. Go ahead and ask me: “ David – did YOU ever win an award for your dimensional work?” to which I humbly answer : “Aw shucks folks I did win me a Bronze medal in 1993”

 

2. SMOF: Secret Master of Fandom

1984: Skye Boat Song Promotion

Other than knowing how to sling an airbrush and wield a marker I was totally clueless at the outset of my freelance career. As I’ve written earlier my parents were not overly enthusiastic about my career choices and until my second year of college the only bona-fide artist I knew was Peninsula pioneer and Renaissance man Cotton Moore…and it didn’t get much better when I finally started studying art in college as practicalities of an designer’s life were glossed over in favor of draftsmanship and technique.

Somewhere along the line I discovered CA (Communications Arts) magazine and learned about promotions and hustling up work…which immediately started the internal Stukas tearing up my innards. Along with all sorts of naturopathic remedies I had been spoon-fed in my youth with the idea that you “didn’t shoot off your mouth about yourself”, that hard-work and professional results were the best advertisement ever and in the initial stage of my illustration career that proved to be a sound plan.

…then came the evening in late 1984 when I looked at our snug little home, my sleeping children, the moths flying out of our checkbook and realized that at my current income we’d soon be getting our mail at nsmCardboard Box 5, Under The Overpass at Exit 272 , Utah 77340

My first step was to increase my efforts showing my portfolio locally, but I also went back to CA (then subsequently Step By Step and How-To magazines ) and started researching the idea of promotional mailers. As I was living in the creative wilderness of the Intermountain West a decade before computer aided design (with printers and scanners) the process of designing/printing/distributing promotional mailers was extremely labor-intensive but I managed to churn out some nice work which in turn brought in new clients and an increase in assignments. .

Skye Boat Song was the first promotional image I sent out – the image was inspired by Gordon Dickson’s classic military science fiction novel Tactics of Mistake while the title was a pun playing off the title of one of the first bagpipe tunes I ever learned. The type was all set by hand using Letraset press-type and pairing with the image involved more work with a PS 79 Proportional Scale than should be allowed by law. As photographic prints they were a little pricey to print up, but I sent 25 out in December of 1984 followed an equal amount a month later. As a promotional mailer it wasn’t too terribly successful, but it did startle an existing client into formalizing our relationship and feeding me a LOT more work, so it definitely was one for the win column.

The Wonder That Is Colin Furze!

I was actually indulging one of my secret vices (“Choosing Beggers” videos by YouTube content provider RSlash ) when I stumbled onto this young man’s work about a month ago. As I watched Furze document his creations via time-lapse video I was convinced that I was seeing some rather ambitious digital work but as I’ve gone through video after video I finally realized Colin is the person that I’ve always styled myself to be: the man who can make anything.

I’d like to say that Colin is a younger version of me – a 30+ year younger version but he has twice the skill-set I do, a rather hefty sponsorship from eBay and a physical presence I can only aspire to (think Bryan Adams with a Lincolnshire accent.) His life is the most compelling argument for young people to actively consider going into the trades as opposed to incurring crippling debt for a college degree.

I’m including just one of these video clips but there are plenty more to choose from.

Traveller: New Era “Path of Tears”

One of the last projects I did for Game Designers’ Workshop was the cover for the Traveller: New Era supplement Path of Tears…and like just about every work of art I’ve created there are stories involved in the making of the painting. For example, I’m sharing both the finished art (left image) and the preliminary comprehensive sketch (center image) that had to be approved before I started work – but I’m also sharing my first concept for the cover (right image) that was rejected as not having enough action.

…and then there are the figures themselves.

When the cover was published I took some good-natured ribbing from friends for hubris I was showing by using myself as a model for the central character…except this was painted in 1993 and by that time my sons were teen-agers and accomplished models, so it was my older son Conrad that served as the model for the central character. He just happened to have developed the Deitrick “look” by that time.

You may also notice that the group was a bit more diverse than was expected for a gaming supplement in 1993. GDW was always good about that sort of thing, especially it wasn’t an effort at political correctness on my part but rather my own inherent “there’s room for everyone” mindset that made the original Trek series a favorite when I was in my early teens.