This week in Designer Bruises: 3D and fail.

There isn't enough gloss this week. One project is finally being pushed into production stage as another takes on the ghostly form of ideas becoming half-reality, the result was this.

Kestros Development Diary 4: Art Merlot

I've spent some time trying to think of an appropriate style genre for this story. There are several pre-existing ones working together to deliberately conflict. There is the excess of the 1960s. This should really be decorated with pop art, something kitsch. Instead, there is strictly art deco (which fell out of favour in the 40s) geometry with occasional hints of art nouveau in some of the older decors. I've attempted to apply washed out, deliberately and audaciously bad choice of colour - something I associate strongly with the sixties. The resulting 'style' was initially going to be defined as 'messed-up glamour' which is a slight variation on what Clive Barker once described his intentions for the design of his cenobites in the Hellraiser franchise. (It was, in fact, "repulsive glamour"). I'm not sure if this one has been coined - I daren't google it to disappoint myself - so I'll say it first. I would like to describe this style as 'Art Merlot'.

WHAT IS ART MERLOT?

Art Merlot takes it's name from the general appearance that the artist embarked on his design sober; he put down clean and bold lines with a grand vision in mind. Somewhere between drawing and applying colour, he was introduced to a large volume of red wine and the result of this becomes apparent in the final grubby aesthetics. Stylistically it is inspired by the Art Deco movements and fantastical art, as well as Film Noir and expressionism.


In terms of narrative, Art Merlot is characterised by excess and debauchery; it is often set out in the same way as a party - beginning with a boisterous introduction, fizzling out quickly to shyness before growing into a transgressive and hideous train-wreck of rambunctious events where there is no such thing as 'too much' and subsequent regret is almost certain. It is decorated with malice, humiliation, passion and sickness. (Frequently all four simultaneously.) It paints a landscape filled with adulterous lovers, prostitutes, elitist socialites, corrupt politicians and thieves. In a similar manner to the visual style, it is as if the writer introduced a set of noble and virtuous characters and eventually decided to turn them into monsters for a laugh.

There, now there is at least a ready-made label to stamp over the style. Anything to avoid 'gothic'.

Kestros Development Diary 3: Dressing the Dictatress

At present I'm trying to think of a suitable opening line for the prologue. I've written dialogue for several chapters but not in the proper order. Dialogue mostly comes naturally, rolling with a mild 1960s tint of 'Gee' and 'Boy', but distant narration is harder to pen. It opens with a brief visual-and-textual description of the world, explaining the context of the opening scenes which depict some heavy brutality.

This is a story about...

What's this about anyway?

A side-note about the design of Kestros.

HENDRIX, EPILEPSY AND THE CAKE



Herein is sixties girl group THE CAKE performing You Can Have Him. Watch it.

Oh I know - the freaky dancing, the audacious outfits, the bizarre Star Trek set, it's easy to laugh at. But this is one of the best performances I've ever seen. I keep going back to watch it again. Jeanette Jacobs, the stunner in the green suit, is part of it. The way she stays motionless while the others really get into it - looking the whole time like she's about to cry. It adds this edge to it, sort of enchanting yet vaguely discomforting.

Information on her is difficult to find even in the vast internet world.

She had epilepsy, medication for which may account for the static performance. (Naturally this was the sixties, so most people seem intent on shrieking about drugs whenever seeing the above video.) She was close friends with Jimi Hendrix and apparently suffered some sort of breakdown after his death.

She died in 1980. She was thirty years old.



So there is this depressing halo to seeing You Can Have Him, and particularly hearing Baby That's Me.

Actually there is an undertone like this to a lot of the music from the era, like there was something seriously unpleasant lurking behind the wonderful sounds. A lot of the singers were hooked on drugs, one of the best songs is a disturbing defensive stance on domestic violence, and one of the biggest names in music turned out to be a lunatic and murderer. The music becomes incredibly haunting to listen to. This is the element of the time I want to recapture and represent - something sinister in a carefully maintained facade of glamour. The story exists within a time where the veils are on the verge of falling and all Hell is about to break loose.

Oh yeah, back to the Kestros design - can you see why it's a good idea to write this? Off on a tangent of a side-story...

Jeanette was a large inspiration in the visual redesign; the hair, expressions - not so much the clothes (Jackie Kennedy, there). Yeah, that's it. That was a lot of history for a small note. I just wanted to write about THE CAKE really.

BEST SERVED COLD

The element of knowing too much about the grim history of this pop culture is related to how I'm writing. The climax of the story sees the country being decimated by a savage war with many of the pampered elite being torn out of lives of luxury and civilians forced to fight for survival; a sort of 'new world order'. The result of this is that - as the writer (I'm not sure what effect knowing this would have on the reader) - all characters are viewed as fated; killing time as they draw closer to some serious unpleasantness.

This has been achieved by scripting scenes in reverse. Twists of betrayal, murder, torture and battles have been written before most of the characters have even been established. It's probably the worst way to write, I know, but it does allow a different way of seeing the characters from the start. It almost makes an empathy for the unpleasant ones.

'This is a story about revenge, moral decay, power, etc.'

Nah.

'This is a story about how one person attempted to destroy the world'?

I don't know.

Maybe I should write the ending first so I can find out what it's actually about.

Kestros Development Diary 2: It's All Good Fun Until Somebody Gets Sectioned.

THREE LUNATICS

Madness is a long-time favourite in all forms of entertainment. Once it was confined to literature, opera and theatre. Shakespeare couldn't get enough of it! In more recent years it branched out into other media. Film, television, video games - occasionally even musicians can't help but snapping in the public eye and creating an ongoing cycle for the modern voyeur where the same standard of questions repeat forever: 'Has Britney Spears gone insane?' And, 'More importantly, have her legs gotten fatter?'

How do you portray insanity convincingly?

"There's fennel for you, and columbines:
there's rue for you; and here's some for me:
we may call it herb-grace o' Sundays:
O you must wear your rue with a difference..."

William was fond of a bit of complete lunacy. This is why he is fondly celebrated within England; he captured the victim complex of this windswept little island and retold it on a backdrop of alien Europe sections. He had King Lear screaming at the weather before stripping off and running into the wilderness, only to emerge later on as some flower-decorated wild man. The long-suffering Ophelia finally snapped from manipulation and decided to take a nap in a brook. In King Lear, the weather served as a metaphor for the King's wayward mental health. As his brain exploded (RE: gore: there are no literal head explosions in King Lear but if I remember correctly, somebody's eyes get ripped out) the landscape was hit by a giant storm which is almost treated like another character. In Hamlet, there is some witty play on the names and properties of flowers and herbs during the 'mad scene' of Ophelia.

This is entertaining, clever and provocative. But it isn't what I'd call convincing by today's standards. I've met people I'm certain are insane before, the frightening thing is that they don't wear the warning signs. They don't tear off their clothes in company and start trying to hand you flowers - they hide it well. People don't notice the madness bubbling beneath the surface until it's too late and they cover the house in tin foil, or start believing in werewolves, or start listening to Lady Gaga, or think the rain is a sign of the apocalypse.

It's all good fun until somebody gets sectioned.

My madness - by which I mean the madness I'm writing about - is gradual descent from normality into bubbling, drooling mess. This is one difficult element to blog about as it's a potential 'spoiler' (before the damn thing is even written, and that); three characters are insane by the end, two seeming perfectly healthy at the start. It is never quite a snap but a slow and sturdy fall from grace. The journey is more exciting than the destination - and in a story all about 'downfall' there is nothing more fitting. Sanity remains a subjective thing, so this is a job for unreliable narration. Warning signs may hint at the future. Or they might be drug-infused banter.

A background element is the chaos of MASS HYSTERIA; life in a metropolis when the threat of the opposition attacking becomes something very genuine and real. People are prone to this behaviour even now - the effect it potentially has - within a time where conformity is a prerequisite to functioning within a society - is devastating.

Whose eyes are you looking through today?

A CULT RUNNING A COUNTRY

The cult is a widely-accepted religion built on the Catholic church and the beliefs of Ancient Rome. The symbol of this faith is the inverted Christian cross, with a mythology explaining that a family of gods are responsible for all creation. This is named THE CHURCH OF ESTERICES and the influence of it goes beyond simple worship into all areas of life: law and government, business, science, medicine and education. It often goes beyond bad taste and indulges in a sort of self-perpetuated blasphemy with gods being mindlessly used to flog luxury goods and propaganda ideals. The idea is as preposterous as the Catholic church selling premium vodka in Jesus Christ-shaped glass bottles - but it happens without anybody batting an eyelid at the thought.

The Illuminati also served as an influence for this. A popular conspiracy in the real world is that this shadowy group controls the media and the elite; dropping their symbols (the all-seeing eye, masonic black and white tiles, horns of Baphomet) as occasional hints in everything from corporation logos to pop music videos. In Vessand this is blatant - a deluge of religious symbolism everywhere to confirm the grip the Church has on the population.

A common slogan, maybe the equivalent of 'Jesus saves', runs:

PRAY FOR YOUR SINS.

The core value of this following is balance; a sort of yin-yang concept combined with Catholic guilt. It explains that the world was born in an event that caused a great deal of pain to the top god - much like natural childbirth - and that sin was created out of this as a sort of afterbirth to counter and highlight positive virtues of earth and humanity. The punishments are dire but the apparent rewards are sweet. The political effect is a casual equality with official tolerance between the sexes, age groups, and social backgrounds. The reality falls short with hushed up bigotry and snobbery.

Kestros Development Diary 1: How We Reached The Sixties

I've been meaning to do this for some time.

In fact I've attempted to write this twice before now and ended up deleting all the words in a fit of rage or something for one reason or another. An ongoing battle in any project I embark on is that my plans become too convoluted. I end up confusing myself to the point of creative exhaustion. By writing this and jotting down all my ideas along with the history of it - I hope to make some sort of steady reference material for my own brain. Something I can return to when the quiet 'Where did it all go wrong?' questions set in.

I've lost you already, haven't I?

Well I'm not writing this for your benefit anyway so stop complaining.

Fine. Here's some music. It sets the atmosphere I'm looking for, if nothing else.



Retracing history seems like the place to start. In late 2008 I wrote a poem. It was not very good, remaining unsatisfying as a complete piece of work, but the core image of it still interested me. Any project I work on begins with an idea in the form of an image - usually something climatic, surreal or disturbing. The project is the over-elaborate attempt to justify why the image is there. By 2009 this mental picture was still in my brain so I decided I would try to turn it into a complete work of fiction. It assumed an Ancient Roman setting and some themes and items were drawn from this: slavery, gods, magic, insanity, war.

The project was titled QUEEN KESTROS. It would detail the rise and fall of the fifteen-year-old eponymous queen as she descends into a world of madness and depravity following the violent assassination of her parents and her sudden coronation as the monarch of a massive, powerful society.

The introduction of new laws in the United Kingdom affecting art and images, however, would have placed the story in dubious legal status.

Back to the drawing board to make things a little less Caligula.

So it was quickly pushed a couple of thousand of years into the future, to a land mirroring Georgian-Edwardian-Victorian England. The image was now taken up with corsets, absinthe, opium, fairies, class divides, art nouveau, Rococo, towering hair and giant dresses.

What seemed ideal at first quickly became a problem. These three periods of fashion reside in an alien universe unfamiliar to 90% of any potential readers. The clothes worn by the elite within the story were intended to be over-adorned, flamboyant and ridiculously impractical items - how do you convey this in a time where even the plainer outfits for women consisted of giant hats and waists corset-tugged to the size of a wrist? Variety in design quickly became impossible.

Ideally the next stop was going to be the 1980s. Power ballads, shoulder pads, lens blur on everything - you know. But then I realised there was no way to put power ballads into a graphic novel / webcomic format, and lens blur abuse would quickly make everything look pants.

The final future trip leaves the setting as a 'mirror' of the early 1960s. This is where the project has become something more comfortable and with room for design variety. The cast of characters has exploded - including primary, secondary, minor and mentioned there are now over 50 of them. All have unique lives, motives, and fates.

Furthermore this is a much more familiar and relatable time - aided by an apparent popular fondness for nostalgia... that will probably have long-evaporated by the time the story is completed. I see a lot of reflections in the current 'War on Terror' and the Cold War, a great deal of suspicion and paranoia pointed in virtually all directions: abroad and at home, the right wing and the left. This isn't the popular 60s. People often think The Beatles, paintings of soup, they think of LSD-carved landscapes of sunshine and hippies twirling at Woodstock, that weird Austin Powers tinted passage into the past. That's not it. No, that was the end of the decade. I'm aiming for the start. This is how the story reflects and adjusts:

This is a dark time. We emerge from the 50s wondering what is next. Years of war left the country in massive poverty mere decades before. With this overcome for for the middle and upper classes, new aspirations emerge: materialism to reflect status, pride in the home. Foreign countries are regarded with quiet hostility from an unfounded sense of superiority - and yet the politicians at home have begun to reveal themselves to be less trustworthy than people had believed. Rebellion and protests rise in popularity; people learn to express themselves in new ways, and everybody begins to question what the future holds in store. The poor begin to question the corner they have been pushed into while the elite grow frustrated at their own weakening grip on things. And both start to say 'our day will come'.

I mentioned goals as the core basis for these diaries. My goal is to tell a story about the following:

Sanity is subjective.

If you have something worth taking, nobody is to be trusted.

What happens when a country falls to pieces?

Power is everything.

I want to write something that doesn't fall flat too quickly on any level - with artwork, characters and action interesting enough to draw a casual reader in, but with a plot thought out and told well enough to keep people reading on. I've decided to publish this 'development diary' step by step as the story is written in an attempt to push myself into working harder and faster because the moment this is a public entry - though in reality all of 2 people will probably read it - it puts my ideas up to be stolen and I'll need to get in there making this thing properly before the phantom thieves strike.

Productivity is the most casual form of vigilance.

Next time: towers, madness, and how a cult can run a country.

#55 - #70

Time for a new entry. I would like to tell you about how I haven't been keeping this journal all modern and up to date because I've been so busy with art shows, soaring sales and a rampant social life.

But really I've just been lazy. A little uninspired. I think I've been trying to do a little too much at once, mainly producing a lot of polished works at the same time. It's like trying to kill a fly with a shotgun.

Here comes a batch of work. A bit of a mix, finished pieces, works in progress, sketchier things. Going to link to these directly instead from now on because uploading them onto Blogger makes the quality horrendous.