I recently came across a sheaf of character concept drawings that Russ Nicholson did for my gamebook Heart of Ice. I thought these were as lost as one of those Patrick Troughton episodes of Doctor Who that the BBC wiped to make room for Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em, but then they turn up in a video library in Hong Kong. (Metaphorically, I mean. In this case, they were actually under a pile of dusty old Dragon Warriors posters in my attic.)This concept stage is typical of the meticulous level of work that Russ puts into a project. Many artists would just send you the illustrations they were paid to do, but Russ takes the trouble to nail the costumes, architecture, etc. And the finished work stands as testimony to that care and attention he puts in, making him surely the pre-eminent illustrator of fantasy and science fiction gamebooks. Anybody who wants to argue with that is going to have to take it up with the redoubtable Sikh warrior Vajra Singh and his mantramukta cannon. Rather you than me.
Thank you Dave, that is appreciated, I've been posting a few bits about the work too on my blog if anybody would care to check it out.
ReplyDeleteWere any of the "competitors" in Heart of Ice based on people you've met in real life? Did you know, for example, a "Vajra Singh" in real life?
ReplyDeleteHi Russ - yep, in fact the link to your blog is right there in the post. So a note to everybody who likes this: there is LOADS more on Russ's blog!
ReplyDeleteI have a Sikh friend who was in the Royal Marines, Hamza, hence quite a tough cookie - but I wouldn't go so far as to say he was a model for Vajra Singh! Quite a few of the HOI rivals were based on characters in our Tekumel role-playing game: Kyle Boche on Min Smith's character Ibash, Janus Gaunt on Steve Foster's character Jamesh, Golgoth on my own character Chan. And Hal Shandor is sort of based on Min in real life, come to think of it.
(When I say "based on" I ought to add that they aren't precisely like the originals. Those are just springboards I used to get things like the speech pattern or appearance of the character.)
By the way, was there a specific reason you named the automaton in the book after the eponymous hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh? It's just something I've always wondered.
ReplyDeleteGood question - I think there probably was a reason, but I'm going to have to mull that one over and see what's buried in my memory...
ReplyDeleteHey Dave! Read Heart Of Ice and was impressed! Now I am curious of the other Virtual Reality Adventure books. Are there other books which you wrote for the series?
ReplyDeleteHi - glad you liked it. I wrote Down Among the Dead Men (pirates and magic), Necklace of Skulls (Maya folklore), HOI and Twist of Fate (Arabian Nights adventure). You shouldn't miss Mark Smith's Green Blood (medieval mechanists threaten the wildwood) or Coils of Hate (racial prejudice in a Venice-like city) in the same series either. Not sure if any of those are still available anywhere, but I am thinking of turning them into ebooks.
ReplyDeleteAny plans on any ore VR books? The system is very versatile as the current books have shown.
ReplyDeleteGilgamesh tried to pass some tasks to live forever but failed. However, he came to the realisation that it didn't matter as he would live forever through the wall he had built.
Maybe the robot is an undying guardian.
Undoubtedly the robot's role as a guardian would have had something to do with the name, Stuart, but I'm trying to recall if there was any specific link to the Gilgamesh epic that made me choose that name rather than, say, Heimdall... It'll come back to me :)
ReplyDeleteHm. Vajra Singh seems a lot thinner in the illustration than I imagined him. Might just be me.
ReplyDeleteCoils of Hate sounds interesting, though I'm wondering if Mark Smith's writing is overly political, just from the two capsules you gave us.
Well, Gilgamesh is a far better-sounding name than Heimdall in my humble opinion.
ReplyDeleteAnon, yes, Vajra does look a little on the skinny side there. Of course, we're used to his image in the book, which has him in full armour and furs that rather bulk him up.
ReplyDeleteMin (Mark) is a far better writer than I, and his books do often tackle serious themes, but don't think that doesn't mean they're top notch adventures too. Coils of Hate in particular absolutely drips with menace, alienation and eerie fantasy, and Min masterfully mixes in flashes of humor and friendship (particularly with the gamin Lucie and Falstaffian Caiaphas, two characters drawn as finely as you'll find in any novel) to show why life is tolerable even in the darkest times.
Dave, is mantramukta a word in an Indian language? Sanskrit or Hindi perhaps?
ReplyDeleteHi Hamza, good question. Mantra of course is a hymn or magic formula, and mukta are thrown weapons. "Mantramukta" means in the myths any weapon cast by a spell, like a magic thunderbolt. More here:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_martial_arts
One interesting thing that I noticed about Singh the first time I read the book and saw the illustration was his lack of a long beard. I realize that not all Sikhs have beards, but it struck me as odd.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that's interesting about Singh (tied with Janus Gaunt as my favourite of the "competitors") is that being a Sikh warlord, he is a testament to the fact that (major) religion has existed into the twenty-third century in the book's setting.
Race and religion are big themes in Heart of Ice, Hamza - for a whole bunch of reasons that probably require a whole review!
ReplyDeleteRace you say? Didn't really notice it during my reading of the book.
ReplyDeleteReally? Almost every character's race is referenced. It's a world in which people believe others are defined by innate racial characteristics (I don't, by the way) such as Gaunt's British bodyguards and the Fijian security teams. But it's not overtly a theme, just a way of suggesting the fragmentation of humanity as the end draws near.
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