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Posts tagged "worldbuilding"
I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, ‘Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.’ That’s for sure. That’s why I paint. It’s because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news.
A thought: Ross was kind of like a video blogger. He gave away all his knowledge: he did the PBS show for free, let viewers in on his secrets…in return, they bought all his books and art supplies and he became a wealthy man.
via mlarson
“What is a knowledge game?” by Dave Gray
Really great little post that lays out the difference between play and a game. (I myself was confused about the distinction…) The sketch above, to me, also shows the process of art: the artist imagines the world, he creates the world, then the viewer or reader enters the world, explores the world, and leaves the world.
Definitely worth a read. See also Dylan Horrock’s essay, THE PERFECT PLANET: Comics, Games and World-Building.
Hillier’s project is a beautifully realized example of something I’ve long been curious about—for instance, if a book like Ulysses had been “written” not with a typewriter but with a 3D printer, what sort of architectural world might result? The Emperor’s Castle offers at least one possible answer for how literature could be translated directly into urban and architectural space.
Now reverse-engineer this: take a landscape garden somewhere—or an accidental assemblage of parks, buildings, rivers, and homes—and interpret that setting as if it is literature. Do a reverse-Hillier, so to speak: start with the landscape and extract characters and motivated dramatic actions from the objects placed within it.
Matt Groening once did a great Life in Hell strip that took the form of a map of Bongo’s neighborhood. At one end of a street that wound among yards and houses stood Bongo, the little one-eared rabbit boy. At the other stood his mother, about to blow her stack—Bongo was late for dinner again. Between mother and son lay the hazards —labeled angry dogs, roving gang of hooligans, girl with a crush on bongo—of any journey through the Wilderness: deadly animals, antagonistic humans, lures and snares. It captured perfectly the mental maps of their worlds that children endlessly revise and refine. Childhood is a branch of cartography.
See also: my posts on worldbuilding and maps of fictional worlds.
I really liked this graphic — it reminded me of my idea to make a comic out of a pre-made, clip-artish construction set…
Fuck verisimilitude! Build worlds!
I might make this my new slogan.
A long, meaty post about comics, time, and cartography — hits all the good targets: McCloud, Ware, Huizenga, Horrocks, Larson, Kochalka…good stuff. Well worth reading.
Mark Larson reports on an Umberto Eco lecture:
- Most of his fictional works start with an image
- When he first does research he starts with collecting documents, travel, drawing maps, and even sketching the faces of his characters.
- “The structure of the world is fundamental to the writing.”
- “Constraints are fundamental to any artistic endeavor.”
- “For novels, Stick to the subject, and the words will follow. For poetry, stick to the words, and the subject will follow.”
- “Literary research must be narrated. Scientific papers should be written like a whodunit.”
This game was created by Tim Schafer, mastermind behind GRIM FANDANGO and FULL THROTTLE (beloved LucasArts adventure games from my youth.) You play a kid at a summer camp for bad-ass psychics. It’s one of the funnest games I’ve ever played, and I’m totally obsessed with it at the moment.
As Yahtzee says, it isn’t just a video game, it’s a piece of art and real storytelling.
Here’s Kurt Anderson interviewing Tim Schafer about the game
How to play it:
You can play it for free on a PC at Gametap. (How I’m playing it.)
Buy it for the PC on Amazon for $10
You can buy old copies for PS2 and Xbox dirt cheap.
However you find it, you need to play this game.
Great review w/images here. And here. And here.
I am so obsessed with this book right now and the idea of having an alphabet for drawing.
Drawing as a simple collage of lines, dots, and shapes!
Both Dave Gray and Dan Roam are doing the same thing with their books on visual thinking…I smell a meaty blog post coming on.
Newspaper + Marker = Poetry. Pre-order it now for $10 on Amazon.com
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