So I'm sitting here working on the third draft of my novel and my mind keeps tacking back to a tale I've growing in my mind for several months now. In a nutshell it's about metamorphosis and maturation. It's a about a young girl who hungers for adventure and who yearns to explore her world who starts out very much like Link from Nintendo's Zelda series or Sansa Stark from George RR Martin's Song of ice fire novels (Know to everyone in TV land as Game of Thrones) : nieve, brave, trusting and fiercely self righteous.
Over the course of her tale she grows and matures into a noble and fierce warrior. But also scarred by what she's seen and done. She essential transforms into a cross between Logen Ninefingers, Conan, Brienne of tarth, Guts and Mokoto Kusanagi. I want to write it in the old pulp style. A la Robert E Howard. Short, dense, fast moving and full. Each punt would be a maximum of eight thousand words. Figure I could write one a week if pushed. And I want to write it for a teenage audience. Something that teenagers could pick up when the become tried of their videogames. I want to write the kind of book that I would have picked up when I was fifteen.
But, and here comes the kicker, I would want to illustrate the hell out of the fucker. I remember being enthralled by the beauty of capcom illustrations by Shinkiro, Bengus and Akiman. Their work for such games as Final Fight, Magic Sword and, most famously Street Fighter 2 had me locked in my bedroom with an endless stream of paper and pencils trying to capture the brilliance and energy of those two Japanese masters of illustration.
I want to inspire the same awe in others that I felt when I was in my formative years. Or try at the very least. But i have a hell of a lot to learn and a hell of a lot of drawing to do, and a hell of a lot of bad drawing to get out of my system to do before I even begin to reach that level of proficiency Gotta start somewhere though, right? One illustration a week would force me to commit pencil, ink and brush to paper without fail. I'm so tempted to do it along side the writing of Frostfeld but I wonder if I might not be filling my plate with too much work. My reach has always been shorter then my grasp.
Well surely the only way to know for sure is to attempt it, right?
