More about S&C

This is a continuation of what was written here. If you would like to read everything story-related, go up to the The Story so Far tab and you can read from the beginning.


And just so you know, I have art to post, it's just a matter of getting it scanned in and editing it.

Once Marcus has Cate and her team signed up, he runs into a little bit of a problem.  The military transport he had lined up is going to be delayed for a month or more.  With the fall storms building, a months delay could make traveling north completely impossible.  Fortunately, Cate has a solution.  A friend of hers owns an airship, and she and the crew have been in town for the past few weeks on the off chance that Cate’s funding would come through and she could hire them to do the tracking, reconnaissance and general shipping and traveling of her and her team.  They’ve been pulling the small odd job here and there to make ends meet while Cate waited and have found themselves with time on their hands and not enough of anything to rub together in their pockets.  

Marcus jumps at the chance, only to discover that the “friend” is actually his sister - or sisters as the case may be.  Sisters who are kind of ticked that he and Matthias missed the last few (or six) family get-togethers.  But he turns on the charm and manages to squeeze himself (tentatively) back in to Elle and Sun’s good graces at least.  Sydra is another matter altogether, but he figures two out of three sisters on his side is better than none.

Besides, it’s Elle’s ship.  And it’s the ship that he needs.  

So despite Sydra’s protestations at the vague and undefined ulterior motives of the expedition, Elle prepares her crew for the trip.  

The trip north is as uneventful as might be expected; they weather a few early storms but arrive at their first destination in one piece.  While Cate and her team do some initial research forays, Sydra reaches out to her northern contacts to get a lay of the land.  Strange rumors abound.  Outlying shepherds and farmers and farmers have been steadily retreating back to the safety of towns and villages along the coast, chased away by some unknown creature that killed their flocks and destroyed their storehouses.  

Merry Christmas!

I've been having a crappy kinda week so far - I know it's only Tuesday, so I guess it's been a lousy couple of weeks, but anyway.

To cheer myself up and try and banish this overly dreary mood I've been in, I decided to have some fun and threw together this little piece.  

My little gift to all you who have been keeping an eye on my progress over the past few months.  I love you guys!

These were done in Illustrator - I've been working on a Christmas card with a similar "cartoony" theme and started messing around until I had all of these.  Anyway, I hope they make you smile.  I did when I was making them.

Happy Hols!  

Airships, Steampunk, and Photo Reference

This probably doesn't matter to anyone else, but I sometimes wonder (as an illustrator) how artists direct and coordinate photo shoots for reference.  I see things in my head, but I have a hard time telling people what I am trying to accomplish in a picture.  For example, if you take three random people and tell them to look contemplative you'll probably get three very different interpretations of contemplation.  


So here is a little glimpse into my (albeit random and disjointed) "process".  Doesn't that sound swanky?

I hated asking people to pose for photo reference for me in college.  You would not believe the lengths I went to to try and get reference without having to ask anyone for help.  Now, that said, I did get some people together this weekend (mainly instigated and accomplished by my very organized and no nonsense younger sister).  I had ordered a few various props and costume articles, and since a few of them arrived just before Thanksgiving, I had mentioned to said younger sister that I might want to get some of the group together to take pictures.  

Now, you have to understand that Sun - this is her character's name, you'll be introduced to her later - is kind of like a force of nature.  Mentioning to her that you might possibly in the near future like to do something is like saying and your very existence depends on your being able to do whatever it is that you mentioned.  Nothing is impossible in her world: if you want to do something, you just do it.  

So, not an hour after mentioning that I wanted to potentially take some reference with the new props, a mass text has been sent to nearly all of Silkwood & Co. and I find myself having to figure out a time to meet and what people should wear/bring and trying to figure out where we can go to take pictures, etc.  At the same time, I'm driving my mother around (on Black Friday) so she can pick up the one or two things she's picking up for other people, running to the grocery store and trying to get back on time for everyone to show up.  By the time I get home, everyone's there and I still have no clue what exactly I'm hoping to accomplish with all of this.

I scrounged around the house for a few more costume articles and then we headed out.  Much hilarity ensued.  I had some worries about the light, it was rather overcast for about half an hour, but the pictures I took during that time didn't turn out to bad.  By the time the sun came out the angles of the shadows were kinda perfect.  So everything actually turned out pretty nice.

I ended up taking over 500 photos, and I'd say about 300 of them were "usable" in some way or other.  In other words if you think this is all there is, you're wrong.  I'm saving the best for later!

When we got back to the house, the doorbell rang and the mail man was there with the rest of the steampunk props - the best ones!

Why couldn't he have been 2 hours earlier?!

I'm drawing as fast as I can!  Hopefully I'll get 1 or 2 character sheets up by the end of the week.  But really, with so much awesome inspiration, I don't see a problem with getting something up!

Wish me luck!

A Quick Intro to Some of the Characters

These are a few of the characters that will take the stage in this experiment.  The names have been changed of course to protect myself from future harassment by the people they are based upon.  This is fiction guys.  As the Law and Order franchise so elegantly states: "The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event" (emphasis mine). I'm not telling who's based on who.  You can't make me.  No, Mark, I said I'm not telling . . . 

• Marcus - a career military man who now operates on behalf of several ACS governments to coordinate attacks and the gathering of information against the invading enemy from across the rift.
• Matthias - Marcus' younger brother, a mechanical and strategic genius, he works with his brother to defend the ACS against the people from the other side of the rift. 
• Cate - a longtime family friend of Marcus and Matthias, she's a brilliant scientist, but very unconventional; she loves to be in the middle of things and is fascinated by the world around her.  
• Andreas - one of Cate's research assistants, he's a quiet steady young man with an eye for detail who can fix almost anything.
• Kris - another research assistant of Cate's and Andreas' sister. As quiet as her brother and never without a smile, she has a boundless and fantastic imagination and the mechanical skill to bring some of her more fantastic designs to life.

Eventually, there will be posts on each character going a little deeper into who they are and the part they play in the "story" along with sketches of them and their attire.  There will be a lot - I have a big "family".