Making Fake Japanese Prints By Hand

 

If you haven't heard, I'm working on a new Asian-themed project, The Nebulith. This is a video I made showing how I hand-print the bestiary pictures to make them look like old Edo-era Japanese prints.

Some New Demon City Stuff

Albequerque, New Mexico. Long story. Anyway I was there.

I was walking through what I take to be some outskirt of some part of the center of some part of town. Like 2pm. Dust, rust. Broken car. Everything yellow.

Homeless guy: "Spare a torchlight?"

I carry a lighter, not for me, but for people who need a lighter-- "All yours."

He lights up a lightbulb pipe, something blue collected in the bottom, breathes meth or crack smoke.

"You look like a man in a hurry," he says.

I'm super not. Especially these days. Lawyers aren't even awake in half the time zones I'm dealing with.

I'm waiting for final versions of Demon City pages to come in for proofreading and every other thing, so I figured I'd make a few new pictures to illustrate action rounds while I wait. Here are a few of the batch that I like best:

Thanks to the girls for modelling. More on the goons soon, for those waiting on that.

Cesaire

A place of great waterfalls, green-blue jungle and wide, bloodstained savannah.

The Gods in Cesaire

All gods have visited Cesaire, but when they visit, they must walk on two legs. When in Cesaire the gods may only be the size of their worshippers. For this reason, many have died there. In death, they grow again, and mingle with the stone which makes up the Cube.

Currently the most widely-worshipped are:

• Vorn, god of iron, rust and rain, who is known locally as Vorgun, and, when in Cesaire, is female.
• The Leopard God.
• Tiamat, The Glistening One.
• Rangda, Queen of All Spiders.

Customs

Costume

As the gods walk among their worshippers, it is common for those on sacred business (the businesses of ritual, treasure-hunting, murder, great questing or war) to go about masked or in strange disguises, so that the gods may not know them. Conversely, sometimes costumes are worn to attract or enlist the aid of particular gods.

The Hour of Knives

Despite this, human lives may only be taken between the hours of 3 and 4 am, lest the dreaded Hybrid Curse of All Gods be summoned on the murderer. This prevents a great deal of open warfare.

Events and Calendar

Death’s Parade—Death, the Second God, visits Cesaire once per year, and takes a tour throughout the entire continent. His skull-face luridly painted, he walks in a tattered blue robe and carries a staff made from the bone of an unknown animal. The dead rise from their graves and follow, then follow. As the parade approaches their homes, the living paint their own faces white so as to be mistaken for the dead.

The Gleam Tide—Each summer, the tides bring in the cargo from sunken ships. Coastal villages and port cities open the Gleaming Season with a childrens’ festival dedicated luck and beach-scavenging.

Feast of All Heroes—Once per year, all civilized cities of Cesaire throw a feast, to which all the heroes who have rendered great service to the city-state or the nation are fed and feted.

Night of the Vampire—On the last day of the harvest, all cities and villages are visited by one vampire each. Lines of sacred salt are drawn around the perimeters of civilized areas, of every home, and around the cribs of all children. Bold boys and girls dare each other to challenge the vampire, though, tragically, more fail than succeed.

Days of Testing—Most human societies within Cesaire have Days of Testing, where those youths who wish to embark on dangerous life-paths are challenged. Those who succeed act as waitstaff at the Feast of All Heroes

• The First Test of the Priest and Shaman: Typically involves taking something of value to a distant temple of the same faith.
• The Second Test of the Priest and Shaman: Typically involves finding a god somewhere and asking them a question of importance to the local priesthood.
• The First Test of All Thieves: Typically involves stealing something of great value from another nation.
• The Second Test of All Thieves: Typically involves stealing something of great value from the gnolls, vervets or chameleon women.
• The First Test of All Warriors: Typically involves hunting down an dangerous animal that has been plaguing the village or city.
• The Second Test of All Warriors: Typically involves rescuing a prisoner of another faction.
• The First Test of Wizards: Typically involves entering the Dream Jungle and surviving three sleep-cycles or a fixed number of hours of sleep (usually 24).
• The Second Test of Wizards: Typically involves bringing back a rare item from the Dream Jungle or from a rival wizard.
• The First Test of Warlords: Given to older warriors just before they are given troops to command, this test involves defeating defeating at least ten gnolls out on the open plains of The Place of Screaming with a force no larger than half their size.
• The Second Test of Warlords: This test involves defeating at least ten chameleon women in the Dream Jungle with a force no larger than half their size.

Typical Adventures, Quests, and Assignments for Adventurers, Native and Local

• Gnolls have enslaved an entire village and have them building a stronghold high in cliffs. Free the slaves and take vengeance.
• A star has allegedly fallen deep within the Dream Jungle: investigate.
• Find and defeat a platoon of enemies somewhere in the Dream Jungle during the Hour of Knives.
• Enlist a distant group of rebels to aid a local faction against their enemies.
• Find the leaders of an opposing faction and negotiate a temporary alliance with them against a horde of gnolls or foreigners.
• Find an obscure god in the Dream Jungle and enlist their aid against another faction.
• Something is making the animals around the Lake of Translucent Mist hostile—investigate.

*For foreigners only: A faction enlists you to pretend to make “first contact” with another faction, acting as merchants from another land. You will be asked to sabotage the target faction’s war efforts or liberate a prisoner or artifact.

Note on sourcing/appropriation/complaining etc:

You can have one of two opinions on African-inspired game stuff--

1-Nobody who isn't black or African should make it ever

2-Well, they can but only if they did their research.

On the first criteria, I obviously fail. On the second: if you insist I name-drop who I read and talked to before writing my game stuff I can, but it would be hard to name a hurdle I didn't jump. I am 100% sure I talked to more contemporary African artists than you think I did. And at least know where Cesaire got its name before asking.

This plus all the rest of a 17-page Cesaire module is available now in The Store for 20$ (25$ if you use Onlyfans).

The Best Saint George

Lancing point-first from horseback is the hardest way to hit a dragon. By the Renaissance—with its humanism—St George had graduated to a sword and was taking slashing blows at it. But Bernat Martorell, painting his George in the International Gothic style of the mid-15th century, was still holding to the Medieval ideal—the one in all the best paintings: take the creature at spearpoint.

You can see the reason—keeping the dragon very far away. It was said to have plague. If you like metaphors, you might say it was the plague. St George’s dragon specifically is always curiously small and at the bottom of the painting. This seems to be an allegory of poisonousness—it is not a great beast that rips your head off but a thing low and insidious, that nevertheless is dangerous enough to require a sheep a day and that—when you are out of sheep—will take your virgins. Also: harder to hit.

Regardless of the numerous delusions and myths involved, there is a kind of real success here: for humans, for art. 

You and I know more about the world and science than Bernat Martorell and that audience of victims crowding that zigzag fortified city ever will. You might even say we know more about art—we know what perspective is, for example. They thought pelicans had tits and squirted blood from them, and almost all of them were very unfair to people in ways that we now know are barbaric, they were scared and religious and every kind of -ist. But they were capable: they knew about horses, they knew about the weather, they could handle shit-stained terror you will never know, and they survived the fifteenth century—and you didn’t. They didn’t die or crack up. And, importantly: they resulted in you. We need them.

And we can all agree: the fifteenth century was terrible. Even a normal day would kill us all five times over. Nearly everything you’ve ever complained about was for the lack of something they hadn’t even invented yet. But they kept going—and that is real. That is why you can read this now.

They had ideas and one idea was St George. St George the man is unimportant here, what’s important is what idea they wanted out of him.

He’s a saint doing something interesting for once—pictorially and philosophically. He’s not just getting burned alive for being extremely Christian or pointing at some wheat and then the wheat grows, he’s taking an action we can look at in a painting. And he came prepared: he wore armor, he brought his charger. He knows he needs a weapon. God will not protect him—he didn’t protect the sheep.

Take a moment to appreciate this image not as an emanation of an all-encompassing faith but as a series of choices that were not like the previous ones. So much of early Christian legend is about the heroism of being martyred for being Christian—boiled in oil, poked by sticks. The stakes of those tales are: getting to be Christian. This isn’t that. The stakes here are people in a town getting eaten. 

We all know what it is like to cower behind our battlements, hoping to not be the next to die.

Not new stakes in the history of human myth but positively pagan by the standards of Medieval philosophy and that’s the point: St George was not theologically important (or even consistent)—he was popular. The people would take a miracle, sure, but what they imagined was a person who would show up and offer practical help. This was more comforting than the hope a hippie would offer waving his hand and hey food, or hey the dragon is nice now. This was a compromise that faith, hope, and charity made with the life of people, as lived: brutality, everywhere, and nobody doing anything about it. They didn’t hope for a miracle, just some guy would do.

People always want a hero, of course, but style tells us how they wanted it, or expected it. St George is not carrying a boar-spear: thick-bladed, stout, with a cross-piece to keep the boar from getting at you as you puncture it. St George isn’t in hunting-gear—he is dressed for war—he is dressed to kill people. The dragon isn’t just an animal, it’s a philosophical terror from the other team—it is all philosophical terrors. Nature, bad behavior, the unknown, whatever.

It’s easy to condescend to medieval people and the typical analysis of this would focus on how we have an oppressive armed class trying to present itself as noble and helpful and pious but there are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. One of the nice things about art is that—even at its most propagandistic—it has to pass through the hands of an artist, who has to translate from the desires of the patron to the impact on an audience. People have to want to look at it. And the artist can only speak to what is human: art only ever works on a person if it speaks to real feelings people have while avoiding the easy stuff—the buttons every other artist knows how to push. And every other artist did push them—there are remarkable St Georges by Paolo Uccello, Vittore Carpaccio, Raphael, Rogier van der Weyden, as well as thousands of more obscure and totally unknown artists. Painting a St George that stood out was like trying to do a triple-A FPS. Yes, its all very exciting and violent, Bernat, why should we care about yours?

There are always these Medieval faces—they barely react—any expressions they have seem like they might be accidents. But the very ordinariness of that trope or limitation carries a meaning. Bernat Martorell has very closely observed a great many things and he knows that people have facial expressions—and he has decided that he doesn’t care. He is eminent in his profession, he has brought to the field of painting a great many technical, compositional, and observational innovations, he has looked very closely at the faces of people and animals, closer than most people in his lifetime. And, he has accepted the wisdom of the age: fuck facial expressions. The knight looks positively drugged.

The monster gets to have a facial expression—everyone else: you just do it. This is life: horror, jawbones littering the ground, watching from the parapets of a walled city (the cities needed walls—that was normal) and what you feel about it? Not the important thing, to Bernat Martorell, finest painter of his nation and his age. Women and men and even the innocent sheep are stoic. Goodness is stoic, facial expressions are for villains. Who has emotion in medieval art? The laughing skeletons of the danse macabre, ferocious beasts. Passion, immoderation, indicates a problem. Which, y’know, in a world where the guy with the bigger stick than you is almost always also the person with more rights than you and all doctors suck, is understandable. So: what does Martorell offer in the way of hope and counterforce?

Precision. The opulent precision of every detail, eminently D&Dable:

Three dark and jagged shapes: saint, beast, cave-mouth. Three white shapes: horse, cape and breastplate, the virgin's ermine. Gold on the knight but far more gold on the dragon. Then all the rest: outer works of walled fields with a grape arbor, moat with swans and ducks—two definitely mallards, embankment with a wandering path on the far side, walls 30-40 feet, 4 towers, one balcony, battlements, arrow slits, three alternate entrances, a towered bridge with two openings where the moat splits, king in brown, queen in blue, exquisite jewels for the virgin, three local salamanders, a clever horned sheep which has somehow worked the line so she’s still alive even when the virgin’s supposedly next, armor flared at the side wing and gauntlet, misericorde with gold pommel, horse with gold rosettes at bit and browband (worth at least 450gp), white leather saddle matching the coat of the courser, sheep skull, human skull, jawbone, section of spine, and the dragon, you might now notice, is collaged from batwing, peacock-feather, lizard and crocodile, and all these people in their hats, leaning out to see how it ends.

A comparison: Carpaccio's St George (one of three) is also very precise, and full of ornament and gore, and wonderful, but it doesn't have near the balance and clarity of Martorell. It's almost Games Workshoppy in all its self-annihilating, protobaroque detail:

The soil we've grow in is so much more scientific than they ever were—but they had to wrestle what order and understanding they had from a morass of ignorance—everything incomplete, inaccurate, provincial, poorly-communicated, shipped by donkey, suboptimal, and translated from latin by drunks with scabies—and yet look at Martorell's canal, tunnel, swans swimming, the magnificent painted armor: these were achievements not to be measured against how much better we could do now but against a daily saga of mud and misery and guesswork and repetition we can’t even imagine. There is no real religion here: this painting is a human achievement which celebrates human achievement. Saddlery, metalwork, architecture, orderly and protected fields. A humanism not of human feeling but of human doing.

The painting has so many of the limitations of its context—that horse’s head is just too small—but it’s so much better than Masaccio’s Holy Trinity with its perspectivally accurate barrel vault. Just as the lance is a tactical gamble—minus to hit, plus to initiative—it's an artistic one as well: the whole painting has to build off the tension of that one loooong diagonal. And it does. (This is hard, most contemporary fantasy illustrators don't try it. When Wayne Reynolds gives you a big-action diagonal, he usually gives you four or five other cris-crossing angles to support it.) The painting takes what technology it has and makes a marvel from it, which is all anyone can do. We are ignorant and insufficient, but we are necessary. This is what we have and we do our best. This is how you kill a dragon.

Frazetta Says There's Gonna Be A Fight

Sword & Sorcery is Frank

Sword and sorcery is very Conan, by which we mean to say it's very Frazetta. Unless your Conan looks like this...

The Conan of heavy brow, long dark hair, aswarm with muscle--the one in Marvel Comics, the one Schwarzenegger played, the one Jason Momoa played--is Frazetta's.

As the graph shows, people kinda had stopped talking about Conan until he showed up and started doing covers:

A thing I notice more than I expected to notice once I started gameblogging was how much images and illustration shape our ideas of what genre stories are going to be like. And I don't know about you but I've seen way more barbarians than I ever read about.

So, the question I want to talk about now is: what stories is Frazetta telling us about the genre he paints? 

Frank Frazetta grew up on comics, he started out as a comic book artist, he worked for years doing nothing else (including ghost-work forever on Lil' Abner), his work appeals to comic book fans, the comic pages he produced with his mature style were amazing, the originals of his paintings are sold on websites that also sell comics, but I don't think Frank would have achieved the status he did or would have had the impact he did on a public that did not--up until that point--give a rat's ass about who made fantasy art if his paintings were basically just "great comic book panel, but on a longer deadline". This is not to say Frank was better than any given great comic cover artist, but that he was giving us something subtly different than the great comics cover artists, supplying some until-then-unmet demand.

Which Was What?

Here's a thing you can do with a painting, to see what story is being told: List what you notice about it, in order.

Red beard on right.

Mountain.

Foreground guy's extreme pose.

Blood on the sword.

High axe on the left.

(Left beard guy's pose isn't great.)

The modulation of the snow.

The reddish foreground and vague intimation of rocks.

Everybody's white.

The right beardo's brow is kinda wormcolored.

He's losing his helmet.

Snow sprays.

What is going on with right hand beardo's non-axe arm?

The way their ankles sink in snow.

The gray in all their muscles.

Their belts and armor are so thick.

Lots of circles in this composition.

Ok, so let's look at somebody else (Ian Miller):

Fish.

Globes.

Wait is it a machine or an animal?

Wait is this zigzag thing a border or is this a machine?

Wait does he have a lighthouse on his head?

Is the fish moving or rotating? If he was how come the lighthouse is straight up and down?

Hey there's a little guy.

Does he know the fish is there?

The fish's expression is mournful.

Is this a metaphor?

He is part-machine but he has feelings.

Also he's old. Like: this is some janky old technology?

Look at how those scales are done. 

Hanging over those shadow areas.

Yeah this is a weird little world.

etc.

So what are the important differences here? Well for one--Frank has no question marks. You always know where you are in a Frank Frazetta painting. Frazetta's fantasy world is not enigmatic. We don't go "Oh what's this?" We know exactly what this is. It's frost giants. And we definitely know why it's there: so we can watch them fight. Where did those shields come from, what culture? The store where you buy fighty shields. 

That's not an automatic or even usual thing in art: we are in another world and yet we know exactly what's up.

Frazetta saves all depth and subtlety for rendering alone. The axes, poses, mountain shadow, these are Vermeer-Velasquez-tier attempts. The light falls where it will be most beneficial. It is magnificently rendered. In service of? Showing you that it's magnificently rendered. This is not as common as you might think--especially among illustrators, who are allegedly supposed to be telling you a story about the thing the illustration wants you to buy.

This painting's for the cover of "At The Earth's Core":

Never has any fantasy illustrator--nay, perhaps anyone in any way involved in fantasy as a genre--ever given less of a shit what is at the earth's core. What's there? A monster and a babe. Why? So we can see the monster be black and green and coiling from purple mist and we can see the babe be hot and fleshy. What layeth within the veins of this pullulating Earth, oh Frank? Uh...brown. Not even a stalactite, Frank? Nah.

Frazetta's backgrounds are gorgeous but they don't ever make us go "What's up with that place?" What is up with that place is the painter painted it with subtle colors in a way that makes it look cool. It's like Frazetta has a little bottle of Gaspar David Friedrich that he squeezes into the back of the painting...

Friedrich (1800s, German romantic) cares about ice. You see the ice, you see its complexity...then you see a boat. We've just been told a story by this painting:

Once upon a time ice, which I bet you thought was boring and static, got all crazy and spiky and killed some people. And now it's terribly quiet and lonely again at the north pole. Isn't nature wild?

Frazetta's paintings tell a story, too, but it is a remarkably simple and consistent story: There was this cool ____ who met this cool ____ in this beautiful, faraway place and they fought:

And, yes, there are ones that aren't fights, like the ones where somebody's just won a fight or is looking for a fight. Some of his best ones have no fights:

But I've never seen The Reassembled Man on the side of a van.

Just as Michaelangelo had the Medicis and popes, Frazetta's biggest career-peak patrons were Clint Eastwood (who got Frazetta to do a poster for The Gauntlet) and Sylvester Stallone (who wanted him to do a poster for Paradise Alley).

Who are these guys? Actors--that is: artists, who took acting classes and had to read plays and sometimes learn to dance and sing--who play tough guys. This is a nerd-jock overlap, where the question posed is often: What do I, a jock, want with a story about ancient civilizations and monsters? Fights. 

Ok, so it's maybe not an amazing insight that Frazetta paintings have a lot of fights, but let's look at how Frazetta paintings interact with the narratives that are attached to them.

Your Story Vs Frank Frazetta

You ever see From Dusk Til Dawn? Here's what I remember: Salma Hayek is in it and not nearly enough. That's pretty much it. That is also what Frank remembers:

Robert Rodriguez got interviewed about the poster:

That's why when Frank Frazetta saw the movie originally he called me and said “Where did you find this gal? I wish I was painting her when I was painting these things!” I said, “She's based on your paintings, that's why she looks like your paintings!” He said, “Oh, okay.” The whole costume design and headdress was all based on that painting....His whole comment on the poster is “That's all you need on the poster. You don't need anybody else but her and that snake.” I said, “Well, we kind of have to put in the other actors, too, because it's George Clooney and Harvey Keitel...” He said, “Alright, alright.” But if you look at the painting it's 90% Salma and at the very bottom is George Clooney. He didn't even bother to put Harvey Keitel on the poster! It's just George Clooney, Richie and he didn't even draw in the vampires, he just [put in] the monkey guys he usually does. Quentin and I thought that was the best. Alright! He didn't even bother with our vampires, he put his own creatures that he always has in his paintings! It's so fantastic.

Frank decided the only good thing about the movie was Selma Hayek with snakes and then he took it out of the movie and put it on the poster and now the movie is boring.

Have you every read this book?

I have. It sucks. I mean, ok: Edgar Rice Burroughs is a visionary, yes. He invented 4-armed apes and those martians and decided to have a story set on Mars before most anyone else did. These are all good ideas--but the execution is like: Jon Carter is good at everything! Then he gets to Mars and, guess what? Earth men are better than everyone on Mars and are super-strong and can jump like whoa. Then he meets someone who looks like a human on Mars. Guess what? She is super hot and loves him. Also a princess. He gets in a lot of fights, and you know what? He wins. 

What did Frazetta do? He put everything good about the book on the cover. Mars! Alien flowers! Alien building! 4 -armed apes! A weird alien! Heroism! Fights! Ok but where's the hot babe?

Ah, there she is. On the back. Along with a cool building.

Here's Edgar Rice Burroughs' description of the first building Jon Carter ever sees on Mars. That's a big deal, right? First evidence of an alien civilization. Time for some awe and wonder, right?

I was determined, however, to explore the low structure which was the only evidence of habitation in sight, and so I hit upon the unique plan of reverting to first principles in locomotion, creeping. I did fairly well at this and in a few moments had reached the low, encircling wall of the enclosure.

There appeared to be no doors or windows upon the side nearest me, but as the wall was but about four feet high I cautiously gained my feet and peered over the top upon the strangest sight it had ever been given me to see.

The roof of the enclosure was of solid glass about four or five inches in thickness, and beneath this were several hundred large eggs, perfectly round and snowy white. 

That's it. am I being unfair to the ur-titan of sword-and-planet sci-fi? Maybe, let's try to find a more impressive building. Let's see what else he's got:

A word from the leader of the party stilled their clamor, and we proceeded at a trot across the plaza to the entrance of as magnificent an edifice as mortal eye has rested upon.

Oh shit, this is going to be good... 

The building was low, but covered an enormous area. It was constructed of gleaming white marble inlaid with gold and brilliant stones which sparkled and scintillated in the sunlight. The main entrance was some hundred feet in width and projected from the building proper to form a huge canopy above the entrance hall. There was no stairway, but a gentle incline to the first floor of the building opened into an enormous chamber encircled by galleries.

I mean...ok? Now look again at Frazetta's building. It's wonderful--especially from a guy who never draws right angles, hates painting architecture and--as noted--doesn't start you off with mystery.

In a million ways, Frazetta is far more of a poet than Burroughs: his Mars has fights and monsters and babes but it also is a place of weird, looming, colored light, picturesque while it is brutal. It's all in the rendering. The Burroughs books best use is to simply: let you pretend you are in this painting for a few hours.

I had a job to work on a Conan-influenced RPG once and the publisher sent the Conan book he wanted me to use as a model. I was reading it at my girlfriends' Airbnb while she was falling asleep--

"The girl on the cover is so cool I want to be her"

"Oh yeah?"

"Will you read to me the part you're reading while I try to sleep?"

"Sure"

Four sentences in...

"Oh it's so bad. Ok stop."

And this is a non-native-english speaker. Now, Howard's not for everyone but the point is: at least for her, Frazetta sold the book and the rest is details. Worse details.

So what is sword and sorcery according to Frank? Beautiful. The women are beautiful, the men are beautiful, the monsters are beautiful, the jungles and animals and plants and (rare) buildings are beautiful, the horses are beautiful, the backdrop planet that hangs like a moon too-big and in the wrong colors is beautiful, the violence is beautiful. Everything is a paragon of its class, nothing is undercut by being a lackluster example of itself.

Ok, fine, what artist doesn't like beautiful? But consider some side effects: since everything is a paragon, almost everyone is the same in Frazetta:

The two guys? They're heroes. What are they like? They seem to expect some danger but otherwise--one's blonde and one isn't. The woman? She's like them only wearing less clothes. 

It's not just that Frazetta makes things beautiful, it's that the beauty of the things is his story.

Just because a painting is beautiful and a genre illustration doesn't mean it has to tell that story:

That's Bob Pepper. He's telling a story about danger and conflict and monsters but...it's saying something else. Also, Pepper has achieved something Frazetta never has--he makes the book look like it might be good.

Frazetta tells us only this story: These people fought and it was beautiful. Because it is not just a beautiful painting but part of its beauty is based in everything in it being very good at being itself. Some artists find beauty in ugliness, humbleness, quietness, not Frazetta. He finds beauty in beauty. Or, as anyone who has tried to photograph the Grand Canyon and failed can attest, he does a harder thing: he shows us a painting which makes the beautiful thing beautiful even after its been reduced to two dimensions. 

Frazetta and the Sword and Sorcery Narrative (or lack thereof)

.

Ok, I do have some questions about the Egyptian Queen: Is she, like, supposed to be there? Is she a captive? Is she scared of the leopard? What is that column made of? But something about how she's lit--like a stripper at the beginning of her stage time--tells me no-one involved cares or will tell me.  They're there so the painting will be there. Frank serves no god, not even the narrator. The column is made of those colors because that is the most beautiful thing. She is smooshed against it because it is the most fetching pose. The leopard looks hungry because Frazetta finds the beast at its most beautiful when its stalking. 

The genius of Frazetta as a sword and sorcery illustrator was that he told you not so much why you'd want to read that book but rather why you'd want to read sword and sorcery at all. This world is beautiful that's why. The flipside is: not a single fucking plot detail. Sometimes he didn't even read the books.

Think of a really good sword and sorcery tale--as soon as you get into details you get away from the Frazettian vision. That Fritz Leiber story where the Snow Women are waging cold war on their husbands? Too satirical for Frazetta. Jack Vance? Too clever by half. Clark Ashton Smith's 7 Geases? What kind of hero just shows up and gets immediately cursed?  Frazetta would fight you and all of nine nations before he put a trap or make a picture that showed how a magic item worked or painted an evil king next to an advisor maybe he didn't get along with.

It's hard to make an engrossing time-based entertainment that's just a string of superlatives. You can watch seven seasons of Game of Thrones because it has politics and treachery and characters that aren't all the best fighter in Westeros, you can read Tolkien because there's a riddle game and Frodo and Bilbo aren't sure they are heroes, and Boromir is maybe bad and there's an invisibility ring and...details details.

But there is no time in a painting--you get it all at once. So Frank doesn't care. There doesn't need to be a plot. All that shit they tell you in screenwriting class about setting the stakes before the fight? Don't need to: everyone in the fight looks cool and they're fighting in a cool place. That should be enough for you jamokes. Fuck stakes.

That Frazetta movie, Fire and Ice? It should've just been like John Wick with skeletons. Just 120 minutes of axes forged by a generic non-culture smashing skeletons.

I don't know if this makes Frazetta the best or worst possible tutelary deity for game masters and game designers. It is beautiful to be in a dungeon, it is beautiful to fight a dragon, who cares about anything else?

The Opposite of a Dungeon

 Sometimes the best way to figure out what something isn't is the best way to figure out what it is. That is: what's essential to it.

It also helps if the opposite is--or is incarnated--in something you also think is good, so you're not just listing off bad qualities you want to do the opposite of.

So, I submit, the likable opposite of a dungeon is Gustav Klimt's landscapes. The Park from 1910ish:

What we've got: Light, space, air, freedom of movement, color, abundance. And, crucially: there are no nymphs, satyrs, weird faeries or even unicorns hiding in these trees--they aren't twisty or architectural--they aren't mysterious. Head out on a day off to the museum and stare into that green and you don't see mystery you see a bubbling static of permission--this is nothing, you're alive, trees are alive, all life is one life, variety is infinite but in that infinity: simple.

Unlike the forest in, say, Durer's Knight, Death and the Devil, these trees don't have any narrative opportunities--they're a terrible place for a random encounter. How would you describe anyone's position? Where's the orc? Where are you?

It's a park and not a forest. A park in the mid-city lunch-break sense: not a national park, not park-land, just green. The purpose of these trees is not to tell you about the trees, its just a place for you to sit and see green.

This is nature as only a civilization where the average person never really saw nature as a threat could see it.

And what is there to see in this green? Hold up your finger to cover the bottom fifth of the painting and you lose all context, it's just colors moving. Nothing concrete--it's pure emotion.

The outside world as just a bright, super-saturated meditation space for whatever you're thinking over lunch, with your bologna sandwich. No demands on you, just openness. You're free to let your mind wander not because the world is blank but because it is abundant with all the signals about what you need: there's food here, there's water, there's no need to worry.

Definitely not gothic.

So what's a dungeon then? And what's the aesthetic of the dungeony world that has villages and mountains that also feel of a piece with dungeons?

Unfree, simple wants thwarted, twisted in some way, toward purpose and intrigue. The simple made unsimple. A kind of clarity (Klimt landscapes are blurry) but the clarity shows things you have to deal with. Emotions aren't just there to be experienced --Ah, Spring!-- they're passions in the Shakespearean sense, pushing toward trouble--The King covets the Duke's hunting grounds. Contorted and demanding, everything in the dungeon and the dungeonized world has a purpose or might, every detail a thing, a constant anxiety you're not noticing the things--nothing is an abstract field of open play. 

Inside-Outside Dungeon

 You can get killed outside or inside...

29 pages plus. 15 bucks. Lots of art. Now available in The Store.

Demon City Coming Along

These just arrived from the graphic designer (yes, there are typos). Click to enlarge.