First a quick update on the book launch for All Tomorrow’s Futures, which I wrote about last week. From editor Ben Greenaway:
The paperback and hardback and ebook are all now available on pre-order from Amazon - we have a new universal link should help you find it from non-UK web browsers: https://mybook.to/atf
We've heard about an issue with Apple Books and are investigating ahead of launch. The ebook is set at a heavily discounted launch price to encourage early reviews.
We will be streaming the in-person launch into Cybersalon’s virtual reality and online space: a full recreation of Cyberia, the first cybercafe, at 39 Whitfield Street :
https://bit.ly/cyberia-in-spatial
For those of you unfamiliar with Spatial . . . We also have a one page how-to-guide on Spatial to use from any web browser - it’s really easy and you don't have to use VR. https://bit.ly/cs-spatial-access-howto.
The launch itself will be online and in-person at 17:30 (UK time) on Saturday 30 March. If you’re at Eastercon you can come in person, see note above for options & training/orientation invite. In-person guests will have the chance to put on a headset and come meet you, the remote contributors, in Cyberia (39 Whitfield Street).
That’s 1:30pm Eastern Standard Time here in the US. I do plan on being there, if I can get the browser thing to work. Then I can be socially awkward in a whole new way!
Lizard Wizards
Three weeks ago, when I described Glenwood (who has since leveled up and now has the last name Grassland, from his Druid circle), I mentioned having done an image search for inspiration and reference. I was struck by how approximately half the artists posting things to the Internet seems to agree with the game’s publishers that Dragonborn do not have tails, and half of them agree with me that tails are cool and should be present whenever possible.
This is not merely an academic question, or even a nerdly one. Lizard limb regeneration research is real. Scientists have been working on this for a long time, since before the fictional Curt Connors of the Spider-Man comics of my youth.
Humans are not entirely helpless. Our livers are pretty good at regenerating, and sometimes we can manage a fingertip, if the whole joint isn’t gone.
And, to be fair, regrown lizard tails are not perfect, just floppy rods of cartilage and skin without the proper patterning of nerves and muscles that would make them fully functional. Until very recently (2021), when people started injecting stem cells into them. We still have quite a ways to go before we have to worry about warring reptile-men, but we can dream, right?
Anyway, On to our Interview
For the record, artist Francisco Iglesias Periañez appears to be fully mammalian / human. From his photo . . .
As a teeny boost to him, I include a link to The Sample, an automated newsletter referral service.
RH: I was especially struck by the image below and would like to learn more about what went into it. What was your process?
FIP: When I thought about this character design I was looking for the greatest contrast within the character but without changing his abilities, a dragonborn usually has charisma, so I based myself on that characteristic to create a bard, now I think that in some rule expansion book a character similar to this.
RH: That would explain the musical instrument in his left hand. Huh. This next image combines some of the others. Why? Is this your own party?
FIP: I wanted to bring my idea of characters with the greatest possible contrast in their capabilities, hence we have a dwarf with a bow, a pregnant paladin (by her own God?) and my vision of a hypothyde, a character created by "El resurgir del Dragon" book edited by Nosolorol.
RH: So trope-hacking. That’s cool. I have similar aims, sometimes.
Are you a gamer yourself, or are these just commissions? What do you play?
FIP: I like role-playing games with an old flavor. DND 5 is fine but I like the sensations you get playing Dungeon Crawl Classics or Mork Borg. And of course I make commissions.
RH: Looking more broadly at your website, you seem to work in multiple styles and media. Are you self-taught? What was your training, if any?
FIP: I studied at an art school in Madrid called Esdip and of course every day you must learn something new on your own.
RH: Thanks so much for your time, and for the inspiration towards my own creative efforts.
Sometimes I think I should call this thing “Documentary Eclectic.” Been watching a lot of those lately, what with bad weather, family things, yada yada yah. There will be more today. Just so you know.
Comics Docs
Comic Culture is back for its sixth season on PBS, though four of them so far this season have been convention episodes. I don’t like those as much, despite the fact that I might be in one of them. I stopped by their interview booth at HeroesCon in Charlotte last summer. Probably I’ll end up on the cutting room floor, which might be for the best. Not all of us are cut out for television.
Dave Stevens: Drawn to Perfection filled in a lot of gaps for me. Like many people, my first exposure was The Rocketeer. I had seen his inks over other people’s pencils, probably, but had never clocked the name, so he seemed to spring out of nowhere as this fully formed master. I had no idea how much work he had done previously in Hollywood, for animators like Hanna Barbera and storyboarding films for Steven Spielberg and other directors.
I got to meet him once, for a minute, at some con. I don’t remember which one, probably a DragonCon in the late 90s or early 2000s. He might have been sick already at that time, and still hiding it from the public. The documentary said that he used to get “pumped up” on blood transfusions so that he could get through four days of sketching and signing and talking to people. I hate to think of myself as being a drag on someone else’s time and energy, but realistically I would have been, definitely. I’m not very good at walking up to strangers and enthusing on command, no matter how much I might love their work. And I did love pretty much everything Dave Stevens ever did.
Future Shock! the Story of AD 2000 was equally educational, because I never read that magazine, and I had no idea that those British guys who showed up in the 80s and 90s — Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Brian Bolland, so many others — all got their start there before the big American companies showed up and poached them. Judge Dredd was British? Who knew?
As an aside, I found a stripped copy of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock in a Little Free Library in my neighborhood park. I had to read that book in high school and hated it. It may be interesting to see how it — and I — have aged.