The Galaxy’s a fun place. You’ll need to have this fish in your ear.
Posted by: John Martz
Book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur’s ear, and he had the sudden sickening sensation of the fish slithering deep into his aural tract. Gasping with horror he scrabbled at his ear for a second or so, but then slowly turned goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing the aural equivalent of looking at a picture of two black silhouetted faces and suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white candlestick. Or of looking at a lot of coloured dots on a piece of paper which suddenly resolve themselves into the figure six and mean that your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a new pair of glasses.
The Babel fish is a living hearing aid that decodes the brainwaves embedded in all speech patterns. Like Star Trek’s universal translator, the Babel fish is a simple plot device used to avoid the obvious obstacle of an interstellar language barrier.
But like all good science fiction, the story and the characters here exist as vehicles for larger ideas. And with the Babel fish Douglas Adams, a self-described radical atheist, dismisses both Intelligent Design and the circular logic of religious extremism in one fell swoop:
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolve purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’
‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
I nearly didn’t illustrate this scene. After my first illustration, I was very aware that I hadn’t actually drawn any of the main characters yet. So I thought my next move should be to introduce Arthur Dent, the story’s protagonist, in some straight-forward, literal interpretation. But as I started to reread parts of my dogeared 1979 paperback, this image of the Babel Fish with a brain for a speech bubble materialized.
And it’s these little moments in the book that make Douglas Adams so fun to read. The characters really do take a back seat to the ideas and philosophies sprinkled throughout. The main character isn’t Arthur Dent. As Douglas Adams would say, he’s just this guy, you know. It’s the book within the book, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that allows Douglas Adams to bounce from one idea to the next, and inject his world view into a series of events that can give it shape.
For kicks, here are iPhone-sized wallpaper versions of this, and my previous scene featuring Arthur’s home about to be demolished. Click for full size:
Add comment March 12, 2010
The Rats
“There were a dozen of them, and at first she could not quite see what they were up to. Then she saw something moving, between them and behind them. It looked like a thick piece of rope, a long piece, maybe twenty feet. No. It was stiffer than rope. It was electric cable, the heavy, black kind used for outdoor wiring and strung on telephone poles.”
This is the first scene introducing the rats, and presents them in a mysterious way. Also curious is how the cat, Dragon, sleeps so soundly not too far away.
1 comment March 11, 2010
The Hobbit, part two
“Dawn take you all, and be stone to you!”
This scene with the three trolls is one of my all time favorites in literature. I love the trolls arguing about how to cook the thirteen dwarves, and their dimwitted back and forth with the unseen Gandalf. It’s the first real scene where Gandalf reveals some of his power, keeping the murderous trolls occupied until the sun rises and smites the three.
I’ll be posting a rather lengthy post on the process of this piece on my blog come Friday, which should make me look like a real idiot.
Next month I’m looking to do something a lot more simple; these extensive pieces are sometimes pretty nasty to deal with.
4 comments March 10, 2010
Peter And Wendy: The Flight
"Second to the right , and straight on till morning."
As I’m reading through J.M. Barrie’s story of Peter Pan I’m quickly liking Peter less and less. I must admit, it’s a shame that I’m more familiar with Disney’s adaptations of this adventure seeking boy. However, I understand why changes were made…Peter might as well be throwing rocks and giving these kids wedgies as they’re blindly “following the leader” to make believe land.
With that said, my interpretation of Peter is light hearted and currently leading the children on an adventure like a boy scout on the trail to summer camp. He’s got some charm in his knobby knees while soaring under Marc Bolan’s bebop moon. Try not to fall asleep while flying, catch ya in Neverland doods!
Check back tomorrow for the amazing Sam Bosma and his wonderful vision of The Hobbit!
7 comments March 9, 2010
Alice part two: the return of the White Rabbit.
posted by Meg Hunt.
click to enlarge.
Just at this moment her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was now rather more than nine feet high…to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again…After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid-gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other.
In this scene, Alice is in a great hall of doors and just after drinking that fateful ‘Drink-Me’ bottle and shrinking, and then eating the ‘Eat-Me’ cake, she finds herself too big to use her little key to go where she wants to go. Her tears are the start of the Pool of Tears– right now harmless, but in a little bit that’ll change!
Anyhow, I wanted to be sure to introduce the White Rabbit into this second scene, as otherwise you wouldn’t see him til late into the series. He’s a little fussy, a little dapper, but mostly shocked at this giant girl! I guess I would be too.
Next month, we get outdoors and start exploring Wonderland. I’m excited, how about you? Check back tomorrow though for Will Bryant’s next scene from Peter Pan!
5 comments March 8, 2010
An Unexpected Visitor
posted by Kali Ciesemier
On these nights, Sabriel would lock herself into her study (a privilege of the Sixth Form–previously she’d had to sneak into the library), put the kettle on the fire, drink tea and read a book until the characteristic wind rose up, extinguished the fire, put out the electric light and rattled the shutters–all necessary preparations, it seemed, for her father’s phosphorescent sending to appear in the spare armchair.
My first illustration deals with Sabriel while she is still in Ancelstierre– an indeterminately located country that seems to be set in an early 1920’s time period with a vaguely british atmosphere.
I wanted to show Sabriel in her Ancelstierran school surroundings before grim and mysterious happenings force her to venture over the Wall into the Old Kingdom (a vaguely medieval place, where the seasons run slightly differently and magic is afoot). This is the moment when things start to go wrong: her father does not show up, and a terrified knocking on the door startles her and alerts her to a strange occurance.
There’s so much story to this book, I was really hoping to have a spot or two done in addition to this illustration! Alas, time was not on my side! I’m thinking I’d like to do spots in the future though, in the same flat & limited color style as my bookplate. I ended up exploring a slightly more textured and rendered style for the main illustration, so we’ll see where it goes!
I have been/will be posting parts of my preliminary process with these images…feel free to take a look! http://kalidraws.blogspot.com
(and Sabriel, of course, is (c) Garth Nix. I don’t want to step on any toes!)
5 comments February 26, 2010
She planned very carefully.
Claudia had planned her speech. “I want you, Jamie, for the greatest adventure in our lives.”
Jamie muttered, “Well, I wouldn’t mind if you’d pick on someone else.”
Claudia looked out the window and didn’t answer. Jamie said, “As long as you’ve got me here, tell me.”
My first illustration shows 11 year old Claudia Kincaid informing her younger brother, Jamie, that she has selected him to accompany her on a great adventure. She plans to run away from home and she wants him to come with her. At first Jamie isn’t terribly interested (Claudia pulled him away from his daily game of war with his pal Bruce to break this news to him), but after some convincing he agrees.
He sat up in his seat, unzipped his jacket, put one foot up on the seat, placed his hands over his bent knee and said out of the corner of his mouth, “O.K., Claude, when do we bust out of here? And How?”
Claudia stifled the urge to correct his grammar again. “On Wednesday. Here’s the plan. Listen carefully.”
Jamie squinted his eyes and said “Make it complicated, Claude. I like complications.”
This seemed like a perfect scene to start with. It paints a terrific picture of the relationship between Claudia and Jamie. Reading this scene, my growing excitement for Claudia’s grand scheme mirrors Jamie’s growing enthusiasm for the adventure to come. As Claudia is trying to sell the plan to Jamie, it’s almost as if she’s attempting to convince the reader: this is going to be good.
3 comments February 25, 2010
Tell us how you thought of us…
click image for larger
A chance encounter with a garden of experimental dual colored roses served as the inspiration for Aloysius Binewski’s ’dreamlets’.
“The roses started him thinking, how the oddity of them was beautiful and how the oddity was contrived to give them value. “It just struck me – clear and complete all at once – no long figuring about it” He realized that children could be designed. “And I thought to myself, now THAT would be a rose garden worthy of a man’s interest!”
Geek Love is the story of the Binewski family, both of their past glory and of what remains of them in the present. Former geek Crystal Lil and ringmaster Aloysius run Binewski’s Fabulon, a traveling carnival. Their children, who serve as the Fabulon’s main attractions, were designed as human wonders through a variety of experiments involving drugs, chemicals, and radiation treatments. There is Arturo the Aqua Boy, the firstborn with fin-like hands and feet. Next are the violet-eyed and musically talented Siamese twins Electra and Iphigenia. Our narrator Olympia is a hunchbacked albino dwarf, deemed too ordinary looking to be much of an earner. Lastly, there is Fortunato (called Chick) completely normal in appearance but gifted with secret talents. The Binewskis are a tight-knit family and each ‘dreamlet’ is fiercely proud of their abnormalities.
It was a hard time choosing how to start this project. There’s a wealth of inviting images to pick from. The main tragedy of Geek Love is the loss of family, and I thought it best to start off with an image of better times. So here they are, before things got complicated. Papa Al, the dreamer surrounded by his dreamlets.
posted by Laura Park
8 comments February 24, 2010
CHP. 1 Mrs. Whatsit
Mrs. Whatsit Chapter 1
For those that haven’t read A Wrinkle In Time, the story centers around the Murry family, specifically Meg Murry and her youngest sibling Charles Wallace. Meg is a awkward pubescent high school girl with a fiery temper, terrible grades and braces to boot. Charles is the baby of the family, an extremely bright boy but outside the company of his family, is silent. Most people assume he’s a little slow causing Meg to defend her brother in countless fist fights. The Murry household is rounded out by Sandy and Dennys, the middle siblings, their dog Fortinbras and their mother, a brilliant scientist. Their father is also a scientist but has been missing for months, supposedly on a business trip doing who knows what somewhere in the universe.
The novel opens on a dark and stormy night and Meg cannot sleep while a terrible hurricane whips the sides of her attic bedroom. This compounded with a terrible week at school and a scuffle with a dumb boy that afternoon, Meg is convinced the world is out to get her. Going down to the kitchen for a midnight snack, she finds Charles who predicted her plan and has already started to simmer milk on the stove for her. Charles has a way about him, he always seems to know exactly whats bothering Meg, whatever it may be. The two kids are soon joined by their mother who is also restless and hungry. In the middle of the sandwiches and hot chocolate, Fortinbras starts to bark. When Mrs. Murry goes to investigate what could possibly be out and about on a night like tonight, she brings back a person bundled tightly in layers of clothing. Meg is convinced its the tramp she heard about at the post office, come to her house to murder her whole family. Actually its Mrs. Whatstit, a small elderly woman whom Charles had met in the woods a few days before. Her boots are filled with water and Mrs. Murry helps to remove them to dry them out, (as seen above). As Mrs. Whatsit leaves, she turns to Mrs. Murry and says, with no prompting, that tesseracts do exist. Mrs. Murry is shaken, the color draining from her face as the squat woman heads back out into the storm.
The door slammed.
” Mother, what’s the matter!” Meg cried. “What did she say?” What is it?”
“The tesseract -” Mrs. Murry whispered. “What did she mean? How could she have known?”
Stayed tuned for next months installment! Thanks again for watching!
P.S. I did a test image way back in December that I posted over in my blog back when this little gig got started. For those that haven’t seen it, I’ll post it again here. And for those following along in your own copies of A Wrinkle In Time, this picture is from page 37.
4 comments February 23, 2010
[Alice in Wonderland] Related tangents, prints…
posted by Meg Hunt.
Not to get off topic from the amazing art being posted, but these are Alice-related snippets of information, so please enjoy!
1) I was researching some things and remembered people being interested in Picture Book Report prints. Unfortunately due to the rights, much of our bookshelf probably can’t be reproduced (unless someone can set me straight!) but at least for me, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is in the public domain. So I decided to start posting my illustrations as available prints through Society6. So please check it out if you’re looking to bring Alice into your home! I will post these in the future along with each blog post so there won’t be a lot of cluttering.
2) There are a couple of very fun Alice-themed gallery shows opening up (coinciding with a little flick released soon) that I got to take part in. Little Alice is taking her journey to Alhambra, CA and Ottawa, Canada!
- Curiouser and Curiouser opens 2/27 at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA (word on the street is that there will be exclusive concept art and treats from the movie at the opening!)
- Two Days Slow opens 3/4 at Canteen Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario (in Canada!).
Both shows have a lot of awesome work, so please do check it all out!
Add comment February 22, 2010
