I appreciate Myst on a much deeper level than you.
It's no secret...I am fanatically devoted to the Myst games. Not only are they a major influence on my art, but they're wicked fun to play. I bring this up because not too long ago, I got a new laptop and had to immediately exchange it for a different one, because the first one had a blown pixel in the screen. Unfortunately I left the first disc of my End of Ages Myst game in the drive when I returned it, whoops! So now I can't play End of Ages anymore, which blows because I was halfway through it! I'm hoping to borrow a friend's disc and copy it, and also borrow a copy of the complete Uru saga (which includes Path of the Shell and To D'Ni expansion packs). Anything to get my Myst on.
The Myst franchise has turned out some of the most spectacular art I've ever seen...mostly because characters are virtually nonexistent in the games, which means the focus is mainly on the environments, and you know I love that! No magical +3 swords, no shiny armor and elf-women warriors in chainmail bikinis to render in the game...just screen after screen of awesome scenery. Also I love love LOVE solving puzzles, which is largely why I was stuck on the same puzzle in Ages for over a month...I just didn't want to go online and get a hint to solve it! Hopefully I can borrow the first disc soon and finally SOLVE that stupid puzzle. It haunts me.
Another thing I love about Myst are the crazy inventions and infrastructure of the worlds within...I've said before I love inventions and mechanical drawings, but I REALLY REALLY love these things, which is yet another reason why I adore Myst games. I don't get enough opportunities in my current series to include and explore some of my nutty invention drawings :( I actually DO have sketchbooks full of mechanical doodads and inventions that were intended to go into the Bizenghast books...some of them made it in, but with a minimal amount of space to explain how they work, they were simply glossed over or explanations were emitted altogether. For example, there's a gigantic machine in the ground under the mausoleum that extracts, bottles and contains human souls before dispensing them into their own personal vaults...this machine is AWESOME, yet with the limited amount of space in the series, never gets shown or described. I have to make decisions every day about mechanics versus plot...one gets sacrificed for the sake of the other. And considering the lack of machines in Bizenghast, you can guess which one usually wins the debate in the end. If I had like ten more volumes, I'd be able to include all the gadgetry and stuff I want to show, but I don't. My colleagues tease me sometimes about how I have a fixation on really boring, technical things, like mechanics or historically accurate stuff (which is why I'll never get to do my awesome Sherlock Holmes manga)...these things don't appeal to the common reader. So I love to look at the concept drawings of Myst inventions and machines from time to time, just for fun.
If you've never seen the concept art for the Myst games, you really should do a quick search for it online. Below is one of my favorite pieces of conceptual art from Revelations. This is the kind of art to which I aspire...someday I want to be able to do these kinds of backgrounds and scenes in my own books.
I've been working overtime in developing new environments for book 4 of Bizenghast that more closely match what I want to do with my art, which means they take an enormous amount of time and 250% more effort than before. It's not only a question of having a good imagination, but also of painstakingly mapping each scene so that when I put the characters in and arrange various camera angles for each panel, the characters can move about in a realistic fashion and I'll have reference for every square inch of the scenery. This also means taking my level of art up several billion notches in order to pull it off, which in turn means long nights studying anatomy books and technical drawing manuals. I don't just sit around watching cartoons in order to do my job (although that happens too). Every day I actively try to learn one new technique and then practice it in my sketches.
The result of this is that any work I've done that's over two weeks old seems obsolete and terrible to me XD Which is why I'm constantly putting down all previous volumes of Bizenghast. I can't even LOOK at book 1 without cringing, it's just so bad and hastily done. But maybe that's how the makers of Myst feel when they look at the first game...they see it as simplistic and blocky and don't really like it. Personally I love all the Myst games...thus the title for this journal entry.
I think it's important to feel that all my previous works are crap, because it means I'm improving. If I ever look at a former volume and feel that it's just fine the way it is, I'll know I'm not doing my job. :)
The Myst franchise has turned out some of the most spectacular art I've ever seen...mostly because characters are virtually nonexistent in the games, which means the focus is mainly on the environments, and you know I love that! No magical +3 swords, no shiny armor and elf-women warriors in chainmail bikinis to render in the game...just screen after screen of awesome scenery. Also I love love LOVE solving puzzles, which is largely why I was stuck on the same puzzle in Ages for over a month...I just didn't want to go online and get a hint to solve it! Hopefully I can borrow the first disc soon and finally SOLVE that stupid puzzle. It haunts me.
Another thing I love about Myst are the crazy inventions and infrastructure of the worlds within...I've said before I love inventions and mechanical drawings, but I REALLY REALLY love these things, which is yet another reason why I adore Myst games. I don't get enough opportunities in my current series to include and explore some of my nutty invention drawings :( I actually DO have sketchbooks full of mechanical doodads and inventions that were intended to go into the Bizenghast books...some of them made it in, but with a minimal amount of space to explain how they work, they were simply glossed over or explanations were emitted altogether. For example, there's a gigantic machine in the ground under the mausoleum that extracts, bottles and contains human souls before dispensing them into their own personal vaults...this machine is AWESOME, yet with the limited amount of space in the series, never gets shown or described. I have to make decisions every day about mechanics versus plot...one gets sacrificed for the sake of the other. And considering the lack of machines in Bizenghast, you can guess which one usually wins the debate in the end. If I had like ten more volumes, I'd be able to include all the gadgetry and stuff I want to show, but I don't. My colleagues tease me sometimes about how I have a fixation on really boring, technical things, like mechanics or historically accurate stuff (which is why I'll never get to do my awesome Sherlock Holmes manga)...these things don't appeal to the common reader. So I love to look at the concept drawings of Myst inventions and machines from time to time, just for fun.
If you've never seen the concept art for the Myst games, you really should do a quick search for it online. Below is one of my favorite pieces of conceptual art from Revelations. This is the kind of art to which I aspire...someday I want to be able to do these kinds of backgrounds and scenes in my own books.
I've been working overtime in developing new environments for book 4 of Bizenghast that more closely match what I want to do with my art, which means they take an enormous amount of time and 250% more effort than before. It's not only a question of having a good imagination, but also of painstakingly mapping each scene so that when I put the characters in and arrange various camera angles for each panel, the characters can move about in a realistic fashion and I'll have reference for every square inch of the scenery. This also means taking my level of art up several billion notches in order to pull it off, which in turn means long nights studying anatomy books and technical drawing manuals. I don't just sit around watching cartoons in order to do my job (although that happens too). Every day I actively try to learn one new technique and then practice it in my sketches.
The result of this is that any work I've done that's over two weeks old seems obsolete and terrible to me XD Which is why I'm constantly putting down all previous volumes of Bizenghast. I can't even LOOK at book 1 without cringing, it's just so bad and hastily done. But maybe that's how the makers of Myst feel when they look at the first game...they see it as simplistic and blocky and don't really like it. Personally I love all the Myst games...thus the title for this journal entry.
I think it's important to feel that all my previous works are crap, because it means I'm improving. If I ever look at a former volume and feel that it's just fine the way it is, I'll know I'm not doing my job. :)